Ninth Annual Panel Discussion on Labor Trafficking

Last night we hosted our Ninth Annual Human Trafficking Prevention Month panel discussion on Labor Trafficking at Millikin! We had a great discussion from a variety of perspectives on an understudied aspect of human trafficking. Our local expert panel comprised of Jane Flanagan (Director, Illinois Department of Labor, attorney), Romina Hendrzak (Regional Coordinator, Anti I-Trafficking Services U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants), Katrina Quillen (Supervising Attorney, Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Family Services), and Salem Starr (Human Trafficking Survivor Advocate) were an amazing group. 

We discussed how labor trafficking manifests in our region. While most of the victims and survivors of labor trafficking in the United States are foreign born victims trafficked to the United States from other countries. However, we also do increasingly see intersections with sex and labor trafficking where people are exploited in various ways including forced criminality where traffickers force their victims to commit crimes. The main industries of exploitation in the United States are agriculture, landscaping, construction, hospitality, manufacturing, domestic work, restaurants, and beauty industry.

Compounding the crime of labor trafficking is the exploitation in the supply chains of manufacturing and farming many of the products that we use every day. The U.S. Department of Labor has identified 148 goods from 76 countries made by forced and child labor. There are elements of trafficking in cotton used in the clothes we wear, batteries in our cellphones and computers, sugar, palm oil, sea salt products, aluminum and seafood. All of these elements make it difficult to combat so it was interesting to end the discussion on what we could do in our lives to help combat trafficking. 

Many of our panelists traveled a long way to speak on the panel and I am so thankful to be able to bring different experts together for these vital discussions over the past nine years at Millikin!





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Human Trafficking Awareness Month Panel Discussion on Education

Image
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 ...
Read more

About the Lab

Image
The Human Trafficking Research Lab (HTRL) at Millikin University was established in 2018 to transform undergraduate performance learning projects into cutting edge human trafficking research. The HTRL team at Millikin University conducts policy relevant research on human trafficking within the United States and internationally. We are the only undergraduate research lab focused on human trafficking in the state of Illinois and one of a handful in the entire United States, making this applied research experience truly unique for Millikin students. Through the  Human Trafficking Research Lab,  we formulate human trafficking research at Millikin by training students to collect, analyze, and write up data results and disseminate these findings to the academic and local community. At Millikin University, our mission is to prepare students for professional success, democratic citizenship in a global environment, and a personal life of meaning and value and the HTRL@Millikin bu...
Read more

Community Assessment for the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force

Image
The Community Assessment for the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force is completed and available to read here .   The Human Trafficking Research Lab at Millikin would like to thank all the Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force members who took time to fill out this survey and provide a valuable evaluation for the future of the task force. We would especially like to thank Sara Sefried and Matt Fuller and other Steering Committee members who provided valuable feedback in the pretest versions of the community assessment survey. The survey was administered in Qualtrics and we would like to thank Linda Collinsworth and the Behavioral Sciences Department at Millikin University for their assistance gaining access to this software. The statistical analyses were performed in Stata12, the network analysis was constructed with NodeXL, the maps were formulated in Tableau 2018, and the frequency analysis and qualitative coding were constructed MAXQDA 2020. Respondent...
Read more