On challenges, dilemmas, and opportunities in studying trafficked children

Anthropological Quarterly, Fall, 2008 by Elzbieta M. Gozdziak

On Generalizability

As already mentioned, our research project was based on a relatively small sample of child survivors of human trafficking. The size of the sample calls for caution in making sweeping generalizations and discussing the "typical" child survivor or typical responses to the experiences of trafficking. The small sample notwithstanding, two cultural phenomena--child fostering and child labor--appear to be the main risk factors significantly contributing to children's vulnerability for trafficking. At the same time, the commonality and cultural acceptance of child fostering and child labor provide insights into the ways trafficked children conceptualize their trafficking experiences. The cultural acceptance of child labor also affects the emancipated survivors' attitudes toward rehabilitation services and treatment modalities offered to them.

On Child Fostering

The Pied Piper who leads the children away with their parents' blessing ... is the key to this modern slavery. Often one of the child's own relatives, he is commissioned to take full advantage of the extended family, and of the poor man's assumption that anywhere is better than here (Astill 2001:3 in Manzo 2005).

Middle-class Eurocentric ideals often assume that, apart from exceptional cases, children live in nuclear families, experience childhood together with their siblings and have access to resources provided by both biological parents. (2) Research contradicts this assumption and documents a wide range of living arrangements experienced by children in resource-poor countries (Lloyd and Desai 1992). A number of researchers assert that "the root of modern-day trafficking is the custom of child fostering, in which parents may send their children to live with relations and friends for economic or moral reasons" (Bass 2004: 153). Parents do not see these Pied Piper figures as "slave traders" or their children's departure as "enslavement" but rather as "a valuable heritage and traditional way of educating a child" (Robson 2005: 70).

Indeed, child fostering or child circulation is a long-standing cultural practice in many regions (Fonesca 1986), including West Africa (see Bledsoe 1990; Goody 1982; Renne 2003; Schildkraut 1973); Latin America (Leinaweaver 2007 Weismantel 1995); and the Pacific (Brady 1996; Caroll 1970a; Donner 1999; Modell 1998). According to Demographic and Health Surveys, covering 10 African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal), the percentage of foster children ranges between 10 and 20 percent in the six to nine age bracket, and between 13 and 25 percent in the 10 to 14 age group. In the overwhelming majority of cases, both parents are alive but do not live with their children (Pilon 2003). Few studies provide findings on the profiles of households hosting these children. A secondary analysis of the general population census data from 1996 in Burkina Faso indicates that, in the capital, the higher the household head's educational level, the greater the presence of girls other than the daughters of the household head. It is highest in the households of the most economically privileged professionals (Pilon 2003). Another study based on Togo's 1981 census revealed that female-headed households were more likely to host children, 'with the proportion of foster children nearly twice as high as that observed in male-headed households (29.5% and 15.8%). It is precisely those urban female household heads who host the most girls: 40% of the children are foster girls. The ratio of foster girls to boys is 273:1!' (Pilon 1995: 713).