Human Trafficking As A New Insecurity Threat PDF Download

This dissertation identifies the dominant risks facing vulnerable minor populations in the U.S. to human trafficking. It calibrates predictive statistical models specifically for foreign national and U.S. citizen populations respectively, and uses these models to externally validate the expert input of direct service provider survey responses from across the country and empirically demonstrate the appropriateness of human security theory for these assessments. These models address questions of victim prevalence in the United States by constructing an index of the predictive factors contributing to this vulnerability based on human security theory. Importantly, this study focuses on human trafficking prevalence in the United States as a model of developed countries. This project employs a bottom-up approach to forecasting risk and vulnerability of minors in the United States by informing its risk indexes for each population from direct service provider input via over anonymous online surveys. It is also the first academic analysis of the 60,000+ cases of reported human trafficking and related crimes to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center of the Polaris Project from 2008-2013. Ultimately, this project uncovers the measurable components of human insecurity and vulnerability to human trafficking in the United States for Foreign National and U.S. Citizen minors and empirically justifies utilizing human security to conceptualize risk of minors to human trafficking. This risk assessment model for minors in the United States in labor and sex trafficking industries is the first dynamic human trafficking risk and prevalence assessment and predictive model of its kind and provides an empirical foundation for future studies and replication.