Human Trafficking Research Lab @Millikin

During my last few weeks of fall semester at Millikin University, I was provided with the opportunity to attend Global Undergraduate Exchange Program (UGRAD) final conference in Washington D.C. Throughout the conference, I presented the research I was working on to representatives from the U.S. Department of State, students from different countries, and the World Learning staff (which oversees my UGRAD scholarship program). Through this experience I once realized how important it is to shed light on the issues that are neglected such as human trafficking. I firmly believe that working on Research with Dr. Dean at Human Trafficking Research Lab was one of the highlights of my exchange to the United States. Besides learning research design, specifics of the field, and content analysis of the data matrix, I acquired knowledge of the human trafficking culture and current trends in Russia.  As an International Relations and Political Science major my professional objective is to examine beh

Very recently, I was responsible for what I deemed to be my first “big” job as a member of the research lab team as part of the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force. Dr. Dean had me edit the Human Trafficking Vulnerability Assessment in Central Illinois and it was honestly really fun. I was excited to do something like this because I really haven’t ever done a professional job like this and it not be for a school assignment. The editing was pretty seamless honestly, with just a comma here, a hyphen there, and maybe putting “are” where it originally said “is”. All in all, it was straightforward, easy to do, and rewarding to finish. It was also kind of surreal to see something I had worked on included in the vulnerability assessment.  Once the edits were completed we presented our findings to the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force in one of our general membership meetings. The presentation was pretty neat too! I never have done a presentation outside of a classroom se

Last weekend I went up to Chicago for the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Conference. This is a picture of me presenting my paper on human trafficking as an outcome of Russia's war in Ukraine on a panel War in Ukraine: Displacement, Health Services, and Human Trafficking. The research focused on the characteristics of human trafficking, conditions that create vulnerabilities in war, and prevention tools used to combat human trafficking in war. It analyzes and compares three different periods of anti-trafficking work in Ukraine before 2013, 2014-2021, and 2022 as a within-case study comparison of three time periods. Human trafficking is recognized as an outcome of war throughout history in wars across the globe and based on my significant research on human trafficking in Ukraine before the 2022, I wanted to discuss my different observations as a result of the full-scale invasion. I always take the train up to Chicago since then I can work on the train on

Last week I also p articipated in a two part roundtable discussion this morning sponsored by Association for Women in Slavic Studies for the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) entitled Gender, Sexuality, and Violence in the Context of the 2022 Escalation of Russia's War on Ukraine. It was an honor to be invited to participate in the roundtable and I discussed my research on human trafficking and the recent changes due to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.  We had a great discussion and lots of questions but my favorite was this undergraduate student from Howard University who tweeted about my presentation. Undergraduate students can attend the online convention for free and it was great to have so many join the discussions!  Looking forward to presenting the full paper on a migration themed panel at the the in-person conference in early November! 

For the fifth year in a row the lab made the journey to participate in the Walk for Freedom sponsored by A21 in Springfield, Illinois. Walk for Freedom is A21's global mobilization event, rallying thousands of people in hundreds of cities all over the world to raise awareness and funds to end human trafficking. I worked with A21 when I lived in Ukraine and was able to visit their shelter and job training facilities for victims of human trafficking. Every year I march in Springfield wearing my buttons from Ukraine in honor of them and their work.   This year Millikin donated lanyards to every walker and the research lab team tabled and talked about our research on human trafficking with other local anti-trafficking organizations and activists. The site for the walk is the old state capitol building which is still under renovations but still offers a great space in downtown Springfield for the walk with lost of pedestrian traffic.  Normally the walk is scheduled the same weekend as M

This semester I have been working on a research project at the Human Trafficking Research Lab. I work to explore, analyze and trace the patterns of human trafficking within the given timeline. I am coding newspapers for a paper entitled "The Social Construction of Trafficking in Russian Media" and conducting a content analysis of Russian central and regional newspapers. Usually, while coding I go through two cycles of verification before deciding on a code. Once I code the paragraph or a specific sentence, I make sure that the given content fits the code descriptors and only then do I move to the following article. The gripping part of coding papers, which is also sometimes puzzling, is the dynamics between bias and objectivity. Throughout time it appears that the bias takes over the Russian media, hence, a decline in negative attitudes toward actors occurs.  The Human Trafficking Research Lab allows me to observe how empirical research can be carried out in practice. Another

I was recently appointed to serve on the Illinois Statewide Task Force on Human Trafficking! Over the past few weeks I have been attending my first meetings for Advocacy & Policy Workgroup and the larger task force and have learned a lot already about the wider anti-trafficking movement in Illinois. The larger task force meeting focused on a legislative advocacy & education training teaching us to how to find our legislator, track bills, and formulate one page policy briefs of your asks (I teach my students how to write these so it was great to see how they are used to inform legislators on human trafficking bills). I also learned how to file witness slips on bills to register my support, opposition, or no position on bills and it is a skill I plan to use in the future to advocate for more survivor informed trafficking legislation in the future! The Advocacy & Policy Workgroup meeting we talked about monitoring bills in the legislature and different methods for notifying th

My first assignment as a research assistant was to tackle a spreadsheet full of a different foreign worker visas issued in Illinois. The aim was to filter out all of the entries that were not in the counties we cover in central Illinois for part of the Vulnerability Assessment that the lab is doing for our Department of Justice grant. This was an interesting task for me to take on because prior to doing it, my knowledge of Illinois geography was pretty much limited to the Macon County and Chicago areas. So even though a lot of what I was doing was just reading the name of towns, looking up the counties these towns were in, and then checking the map of the counties we cover, I still found it to be useful and engaging.  Now it’s kind of nice hearing the name of a city in Illinois and actually having a general idea of where it is.  My actual findings when applied to realm of foreign workers were fairly interesting. The first sheet, which covered agricultural foreign workers, and the third

In August, our research subcommittee of the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force gathered again in person at the Human Trafficking Research Lab at Millikin for our meeting. We discussed the updates to the community assessment which are required by our DOJ grant and planned out data collection for all the remaining data points and data sharing. We are hoping to share our human trafficking threat assessment for Central Illinois at the next Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force meeting in November.    My undergraduate research assistants Gabby and Rhys left quickly after the meeting so they missed out on the subcommittee photo!

Last week I published an article on human trafficking during the war and renewed invasion of Ukraine for the Monkey Cage section of the Washington Post. Like many people that study Ukraine it was difficult for me to think academically about the war while I was watching my former home get bombed and trying to help where I could. This piece discusses my research on human trafficking policy in Ukraine and how stereotypes about victims can impede responses and robust trafficking policies in destination countries can help response efforts. The article is entitled "How many Ukrainian refugees have been trafficked? We won’t know for years" and it can be read  here . The article even includes a photo that I took this summer while volunteering with Ukrainian refugees. The sign warns about the dangers of and different types of human trafficking, and posts the trafficking hotline in Ukrainian and Latvian, at the entrance of the Rīga City Council Support Center for Ukrainians in Latvia. 

While I was in  Rīga, Latvia this summer conducting research for my next book project on women’s representation in the Latvian Saeima (the parliament), I volunteered at the Rīga City Council Support Center for Ukrainian Citizens. According to the International Organization for Migration in Latvia , over 115,000 Ukrainian refugees have crossed Latvia’s borders since February 24, 2022 and over 35,000 have applied for temporary protection. Ukrainians came to the support center to file paperwork, look for jobs, receive counseling, get childcare, or a free meal.  I went through a volunteer training and because of my Russian and Ukraine language skills was place in the children’s room. Other volunteers told me that there was another American volunteer that didn’t speak Russian or Ukrainian and they put her in the kitchen. So I was very thankful that my language skills allowed me to draw and play hide and seek with Ukraine children all summer instead of peeling onions in a hot kitchen! Here a

The Human Trafficking Research Lab at Millikin University has been working on a project that is expected to shine the light on human trafficking adjudication in the region of central Illinois. For the past three semesters my duty working in that lab was to analyze arrest data from counties assigned to detect crimes that could have been charged as human trafficking or fall under trafficking category. The past three semesters I analyzed three counties Morgan County, Macon County, and Rock island County. These three counties were not any different to each other. Most offenses committed that could fall under the category of human trafficking were from prostitution, child pornography, and aggravated criminal sexual abuse. This research process involved using a search toolbar to run all the coded crimes and record them into an excel document. As expected in these three counties Morgan only less than one percent of the arrests made were labeled human trafficking while the other 99 percent wer

The Association for the Study of Nationalities gave me a final opportunity to have a book panel on Diffusing Human Trafficking Policy in Eurasia published by Policy Press at the University of Bristol in 2020. The pandemic squashed my original plans for a 2020 book tour in the United Kingdom and then war destroyed my hopes of returning to Ukraine in 2022 to talk about my book and give copies of my book to my Ukrainian colleagues and friends.  This is why I was so excited to get the opportunity to celebrate the publication of my book with a few US based colleagues who were there at the beginning of my research and read through preliminary chapter drafts. My book panel included Cynthia Buckley from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, Lauren McCarthy from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Nadia Shapkina from Kansas State University and focused on policy responses and failures with human trafficking in Eurasia. We also discussed the implications of forced migration with

Millikin published a nice article on the Celebrations of Scholarship and the poster symposium showcasing performance learning, student research, and student/faculty collaborative research. Ngabo presented our Human Trafficking Research Lab project entitled "Human Trafficking Adjudication in Central Illinois" at the 29th Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and the Judith & G. Richard Locke Poster Symposium today at Celebrations of Scholarship at Millikin.  His poster won first place in the political science category and he received a ribbon and award money for his work. This is the second time a poster from our lab has won an award at the poster symposium and we are so happy to share our work with the campus community. Ngabo's research was also supported by an Undergraduate Research Fellowship at Millikin University in the summer of 2021 so it was also an opportunity to showcase the work from that important student research funding opportunity at Millikin.

I recently had the pleasure to attend the 79th Midwest Political Science Association Conference with the other members of the Human Trafficking Research Lab at Millikin University. We had the opportunity to share our paper on human trafficking adjudication in central Illinois with other political scientists not only in the Midwest area, but those who had traveled from other states or countries to be in attendance. It was a wonderful experience to be able to share the research we have been working on for more than a year with other scholars and academics. Though we had not completed our research by the time of the conference, we were able to present the findings that we had at that point and were able to get feedback on said research.  I feel that through the feedback from others as well as their questions regarding our research, I was able to understand even better both our work and the importance of it by defending it. We were also able to meet other political scientists and hear thei

We hosted the Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Family Services' new Decatur team and Sara Sefried  from the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force at the Human Trafficking Research Lab in early April. We talked about labor trafficking in Central Illinois and opportunities for cooperation in the future. Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Family Services won a $2 million grant to fund and expand legal services and outreach to agricultural workers in Central and Northern Illinois who are at risk for human trafficking. The grant, funded by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, allowed them to establish a new physical location in the heart of Illinois’s agricultural district. The attorneys will assist clients in reporting trafficking cases to law enforcement, provide victim rights advocacy, assist in immigration matters including T-visas, work with federal agencies on wage claims and workplace violations, and file civil litigation to recover lost wages and damages.   We are looking f

Last summer Aimable Ngabo was awarded an Undergraduate Research Fellowship from Millikin University to conduct research on the adjudication of human trafficking cases in Central Illinois. Millikin's PR team caught up with him recently in the Human Trafficking Research Lab and they talked about his research, future plans, and the benefits of student and faculty collaborative research. We will be presenting our preliminary research findings at the Midwest Political Science Association Conference and then Ngabo will also present a poster at the Judith & G. Richard Locke Poster Symposium as part of Day of Scholarship at Millikin. It's been a busy spring semester in the Human Trafficking Research Lab! Here is the story to learn more about Ngabo and our current research project. 

The second peer-reviewed article to come out of the Human Trafficking was finally published with a research assistant as a co-author Julisa Sierra. The work for this article "Multi-Sector Human Trafficking Task Forces in the United States: Typologies and Overlapping Jurisdictions" began in 2018 with the support of a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) at Millikin University which funded Julisa's work. After numerous revisions the article was accepted in late 2021in the Journal of Modern Slavery and then it was finally available in early March. This article focuses on the development and cooperation of human trafficking task forces, anti-trafficking institutions established to combat human trafficking around the US. We use task force as an encompassing term for over 200 human trafficking multi-sector coalitions, working groups, and/or commissions throughout all 50 states at different levels of jurisdiction. Our research determines the origin, scope, and variati

Our fifth annual Human Trafficking Awareness Month panel discussion at Millikin University was covered by our local newspaper in Decatur, the Herald and Review and a colleague sent me a picture of the published story in the newspaper below. I am very thankful that the reporter took time to cover this topic and listen to my critiques of media coverage on human trafficking. He also published the Human Trafficking Hotline number at the bottom of the story and said he would continue to include in other stories on human trafficking in the future.   Here  is the online version of the story if you would like to read about our event. The panel discussion was covered by the Millikin University public relations department and you can read that story  here . Thanks to everyone for raising awareness to this issue during Human Trafficking Awareness Month!

We just wrapped up our fifth annual Human Trafficking Awareness Month panel discussion at Millikin University and the event was a huge success. Around 40 students, faculty, staff and community members came out before the big snow storm to learn about the intersections of human trafficking education and training. We hosted Matthew Fuller, Human Trafficking Training Specialist at the Center for Prevention of Abuse in Peoria, Cindy Kuro, Prevention Educator from the Set Free Movement-Macon County, and Cheris Larson, Program Manager at Project OZ in Bloomington. The panel discussion focused on the educational opportunities, prevailing pedagogies on human trafficking, challenges to teaching about this hidden crime, and how to combat disinformation through learning opportunities. The panel discussion was sponsored by the Set Free Movement-Macon County and the Department History and Political Science at Millikin University. We are thankful for our wonderful advocates and educators in Central

On January 18th 2022, I accompanied Dr. Laura Dean, Millikin students, and community members to the Decatur City Council meeting. The purpose of our visit to the city council was to read the Human Trafficking Awareness Month Declaration, I was lucky enough to be designated to read it for the whole council and broadcast live on public access television around the city. Since 2010, the President of the United States has dedicated the month of January as human trafficking awareness month. The month in geared towards general education events with the public on how to identify and help prevent these crimes both domestically and abroad.  Unfortunately, the population of Decatur has little knowledge on human trafficking so having the proclamation of Human Trafficking Awareness Month being read in the City Council is a great opportunity for city’s population to learn about this crime. This is because the city hall meetings are broadcasted on local TV public access channels which helps spread t

All of the details are set for our annual Human Trafficking Awareness Month talk. Every year we pick a different theme to cover regarding human trafficking and with the emphasis on education and training lately we thought this would be a good to discuss. This is the fifth year of our panel discussion and we are bringing in educators and trainers on human trafficking from Peoria, Bloomington, and Decatur. We will discuss prevailing pedagogies on human trafficking, challenges to teaching about this hidden crime and how to combat disinformation through educational opportunities. The panel discussion is sponsored by the Set Free Movement-Macon County and the Department History and Political Science at Millikin University. We are thankful for our wonderful advocates and educators in Central Illinois who take time out of their busy schedules to come and speak with Millikin students and the community. Panelists: Matthew Fuller Human Trafficking Training Specialist, Center for Prevention of Ab