Organizing the Exploitation of Vulnerable People: A Qualitative Assessment of Human Trafficking

Focusing on the organizing practices by which vulnerable individuals are exploited for their labor, we build a model that depicts how human traffickers systematically target impoverished girls and women transform autonomous objection into unquestioned compliance. Drawing from qualitative interviews with forced labor in sex industry, traffickers, brothel managers, other sources (e.g., doctors, nongovernment organizations, police officers fighting trafficking), inductively theorize of exploitation involves four interrelated practices—(1) deceptive recruiting vulnerable, (2) entrapping through isolation, (3) extinguishing alternatives building barriers, (4) converting exploiters—that together erode eventually eliminate workers’ autonomy. We conclude discussing implications our research theory—specifically, literature loss worker agency.