Since pushing heavily for the creation of the legal category of “human trafficking” in the early 2000s, the U.S. has self-described as a “hero” within the anti-trafficking movement. The U.S. has used this status to justify grading other countries on their anti-human trafficking efforts and threatening changes to trade and aid agreements if certain policy metrics are not met. What are the political, economic, and institutional factors that explain why the U.S. has chosen the anti-trafficking policy recommendations it pushes on other countries? This project conducts a comparative analysis of the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report and the Department of Labor’s Worst Forms of Child Labor (TDA) Report. The researcher compiled and coded a dataset of more than 50,000 formal policy recommendations on human trafficking and forced labor made by the United States to more than 125 countries to chart differences between federal departments and presidential administrations, track changes over time, and examine differences between regions and countries. This analysis is rooted in feminist analysis of state coercion and informed by international relations and comparative politics theory of policy creation. The presenter concludes that the policy recommendations the U.S. makes to other countries force boundaries on what policies become acceptable for the U.S. to accept domestically, as the government risks reputational damage to repeal harmful policy models after the fact. This research concludes with an exploration of internationally coordinated, grassroots efforts to combat exploitation as an alternative to coercive state policy models.
Tatiana Rothchild is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on human trafficking at national and international levels, particularly in areas of problem framing, state coercion, workers’ rights, human rights audit culture, and international policy models.