Professional and Lifelong Learning

Course description

This course surveys the nature, types, and extent of modern servitude, distinguishing broadly between servitude resulting from international trafficking such as transnational prostitution, human smuggling into bonded labor, child soldiering, and organ trafficking, and more intranational forms of servitude such as debt-bondage and the domestic exploitation of women and other vulnerable groups. We examine the conceptual and theoretical issues raised in attempts to distinguish these different modes of exploitation; the empirical difficulties of estimating the magnitude of what are inherently secretive processes; and the ideological controversies surrounding the subject. We explore ethical, socio-political, and practical issues raised by these trends.