Who decides how we define our identities? How can we respect individual experiences while communicating effectively about grave issues like human trafficking? In our latest episode, we engage in a thought-provoking dialogue about language and identity with our esteemed guests, Mr. Jared Davis and Dr. Glenn Miles. We navigate the intricate web of language used in human trafficking research, stressing the importance of neutrality and respect. Our discourse covers the experiences of human trafficking victims including boys, young men, and transgender individuals, highlighting the need for their voices and identities to be acknowledged.
We then pivot to dig into the profound influence that societal constructs of gender have on survivor services. We underscore the necessity for inclusive and individually tailored responses, giving survivors a platform to voice their experiences. We further expose the overlooked issue of labor trafficking, arguing that it deserves as much attention as sex trafficking. The power of individual experiences and identities in shaping a survivor's response to exploitation is examined, underscoring our conviction that experiences should take center stage over labels.
Lastly, we transport you to Kenya, spotlighting the innovative, youth-led efforts against child sex trafficking. Discover how music and performing arts have become powerful tools in the hands of teenagers, using them as a language to advocate against exploitation. We wrap up the episode underlining the importance of using art and music as conduits to communicate about these issues effectively. Tune in to this compelling dialogue that goes beyond scholarly discussion, urging you to take the best course of action and join the fight for progress.
Who decides how we define our identities? How can we respect individual experiences while communicating effectively about grave issues like human trafficking? In our latest episode, we engage in a thought-provoking dialogue about language and identity with our esteemed guests, Mr. Jared Davis and Dr. Glenn Miles. We navigate the intricate web of language used in human trafficking research, stressing the importance of neutrality and respect. Our discourse covers the experiences of human trafficking victims including boys, young men, and transgender individuals, highlighting the need for their voices and identities to be acknowledged.
We then pivot to dig into the profound influence that societal constructs of gender have on survivor services. We underscore the necessity for inclusive and individually tailored responses, giving survivors a platform to voice their experiences. We further expose the overlooked issue of labor trafficking, arguing that it deserves as much attention as sex trafficking. The power of individual experiences and identities in shaping a survivor's response to exploitation is examined, underscoring our conviction that experiences should take center stage over labels.
Lastly, we transport you to Kenya, spotlighting the innovative, youth-led efforts against child sex trafficking. Discover how music and performing arts have become powerful tools in the hands of teenagers, using them as a language to advocate against exploitation. We wrap up the episode underlining the importance of using art and music as conduits to communicate about these issues effectively. Tune in to this compelling dialogue that goes beyond scholarly discussion, urging you to take the best course of action and join the fight for progress.
You know the why human trafficking work is needed To fight for the freedom of modern day slaves. But love, passion, commitment isn't all you need to be an effective and successful anti-trafficking advocate. Learn the how. I'm Dr Celia Williamson, director of the Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute at the University of Toledo. Welcome to the Emancipation Nation podcast, where I'll provide you with the latest and best methods, policy and practice discussed by experienced experts in the field, so that you can cut through the noise, save time and be about the work of saving lives. Welcome to the Emancipation Nation episode 203.
Speaker 1:I'm Dr Celia Williamson and today I wanted to give you sort of a glimpse of an important discussion going on around the world. Today we have the Global Association of Human Trafficking Scholars. These are researchers from around the world and we are engaged in a discussion about language and the importance of language and how people identify themselves and how they identify their experiences. And you know, we tend to think we might know how people identify themselves in terms of sex trafficking or labor trafficking or being in the sex trade not even trafficking and we might profess to know their experience because we've been to several workshops or we've listened to perhaps all these podcasts and what the researchers, what the scholars, the people who build knowledge, say is that we don't necessarily know. We have to allow people to describe their experiences based on their own histories, and they have to identify themselves accordingly. So listen to the discussion. I think it's going to be a good one. The discussion is being led by Jared Davis and Dr Glenn Miles, and Jared briefly. I then describes his experience. Dr Glenn doesn't really talk about his experience as a researcher, so I want to give you a little bit of a better idea about who these two guys are.
Speaker 1:Jared Davis has 15 years experience designing and conducting evidence-based research and also programming for children and vulnerable people that have experienced sexual exploitation and violence. So he's been involved in special projects on harmful sexual behavior among children in Cambodia, streetworking children in the Philippines, cambodia, thailand, and children and young people who trade sex in a range of nations. So most of his work has developed in post-colonial settings, often at the intersection of race, class, gender and sexuality. So he really tries to look at all sides, not just one dimensional. He also has expertise in exploitation and violence involving boys and young men. So critical to that because we don't have a lot of discussion and a lot of research in that area. He also involves himself in a lot of participatory research children's participation in research, some informed research, participant action research that sort of getting the subjects of the research also participating in designing and carrying out the research.
Speaker 1:So Dr Glenn Miles he's a research associate at Oxford Center on Mission Studies and he's a senior researcher with UP International. He has 30 years experience focused on child abuse and exploitation in Southeast Asia. He's a pioneer and has led several international NGOs and projects in Cambodia and he's facilitated a series of research projects listening to survivors of sexual exploitation, both prostituted men, women, boys, girls and transgenders. Also sex buyers who are males. He's an academic and again that level of expertise with the sexual exploitation of boys and transgenders. Also LBGT youth, children who are trafficked across borders, longitudinal research, research over long periods of time, addressing demand, pornography and youth. So these two guys are well qualified to lead this discussion about language, about how people identify and about the unique experiences that should be defined by them, and they should be empowered to do so and to be involved in the discussion, in the knowledge making. So, without further ado, here is the discussion.
Speaker 2:Okay, so for this month's dialogue we are focusing on neutrality and language and terminology in research. So we have two of our GATS senior research scholars, Jared Davis and Glenn Miles, who are joining us today to help lead the conversations, give their thoughts and kind of provide some questions for us all to think about and get the conversations going. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Jared too, if he wants to introduce himself a little bit more and maybe introduce the topic. So again, thank you all for being here. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Hi everybody. I know I think probably maybe half of you. For those of you I haven't met, welcome For those of you that are first time. Good to have you here. I'm Jared Davis. I'm a social researcher consultant. I work with Glenn for a lot of my career, but usually with a network of child protection organizations, mostly in Asia. Glenn and I have worked together in developing a number of series of studies on children in uniquely vulnerable contexts, so particularly boys, young men, streetworking children, children in trade, sex and so on.
Speaker 4:But that's me and Glenn, yeah, you said it, jared. I think that's fine.
Speaker 3:So, anyway, we really wanted to kind of as you see on the screen here, we've kind of wanted to open this up so that we can talk a little bit more on what you all are specifically working with. But we kind of wanted to open up this discussion. One thing that really popped into my mind was in talking about neutrality, and terminology is sort of this tension between neutrality and political correctness. So and this is something that's talked about a lot we have a lot of talk in the media about language usage. There's a lot of people that get canceled, there's a lot of all of this stuff. But I wanted to talk because how do you specifically navigate that tension between using neutral language, language that doesn't judge or condemn or stigmatize in any way, but also language that appropriately describes a reality in a way that is neutral but is yeah, that is neutral but that also respects people? So we kind of wanted to play with some of those tensions. Yeah, where did we want to start, glenn?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Well, any before we go any further, is there any issues that people are burning to talk about during this session or are we just going to see how it flows? Anybody got anything they want to say particularly yeah, thank you and I'll see you in a minute? Okay, we'll take that as a no yeah. So one of the things that we talked a little bit about Jar and I was just you know some of the language that we use when we're talking about survivors.
Speaker 4:It may be appropriate in some context and not appropriate in others, and actually asking survivors themselves what they prefer the terms to be used is actually really important. So, for example, some people might prefer to use be known as survivors, others as victims. Some might prefer to be called prostitutes, others prefer to be called a prostituted person. Tell us about the things in your context where where terms have been a different and may feel uncomfortable to one group, but actually it's something which people are used to being called. Another one I'm thinking of is we is in Southeast Asia. People don't often didn't like us using the word, the term lady boy, but actually it was the term that they themselves use. So it's another one of those examples where it's different, but it's like yeah, the important thing is what people themselves want. So, and people think of other examples of where that's been in their context.
Speaker 3:One of the tricky things with us that the thing that Glenn started to mention there with the in Bangkok and in Cambodia is that one of the big pushbacks that we got was that we weren't using at the time it was the operating term was transgender male or transgender female, non binary? There were some of those terms were still being thrown around, but what we had found was that that that this, this was a subgroup. It really a subgroup that had its own identity and people that identified and saw themselves and as lady boys and protected that lady boy identity. And it wasn't it wasn't a trans man or a trans woman or a Western concept of non binary, but it was something else that was defined within the culture and in order to talk about some of the unique vulnerabilities that that group experiences, we have to define that as a group, using their language and respecting that as an identity. So that's kind of where we kind of came from in ours, that that kind of helps a little bit.
Speaker 2:I saw that john and William did unmute to either. John, did you have something that you wanted to share in regards to that?
Speaker 5:I was just thinking about the work that we're doing and mostly the way we get our information. As we work with, we have a survivors council. That's how they chose to name themselves, but some of them name themselves as lived experience experts, and so it's. You know the challenges if you're doing working with these groups, at least from where I sit.
Speaker 5:My work is all right now within the United States, although we're starting to deal with stuff that's coming into the United States, and groups have come in the United States and we're going to find unlike it's not unlikely that we will find groups that identify differently.
Speaker 5:And how do we deal with that? And I don't have an answer. I just know that the way I'm trying to address it is working with individuals who have lived that experience and what is the language they want to use. And so in our research we're going out and reaching out to organizations that may be interacting with them, like transit agencies or airports or that sort of stuff, and what is it that they're going to try to? How are they going to be identifying these individuals who may be trafficked and may wish to find an alternative ways to live or may not? And so we identify the traffickers and so we're looking at in this, in one instance, one project at the technologies that might be used and how can those technologies be used to help people who are potentially out there, to help individuals who not, who do not want to be in that position, and how can they help them and help them out If they want out, and I think that.
Speaker 5:So I don't have an answer. All I know is that it's a challenging issue, and so the way we try to address it is working with people who had, who identify themselves, where they want to be called a survivor, they want to be called a lived lived experience expert or living experience expert, and so we're not going to be called victims anymore and do they want to be called someone who's moving out and becoming. I mean, I even hear people talking about being thrivers, and so what does thriving mean? I mean, I mean I think that's an interesting term. It is Because not everybody in this society who's never been a victim considers himself a thriver either. So it's. I think there are interesting challenges here.
Speaker 3:Are any of us thriving?
Speaker 5:Yeah, or any of us thriving. That's really open.
Speaker 3:Have we set ourselves up with a society that can ensure that people thrive Because they're right? Yeah, yeah, can't remember where I was going with that. Yeah, but continue, anyone else?
Speaker 6:I wanted to mention that and another word that I just commented on when the discussion started on this is sex industry.
Speaker 6:The thin line between a crime and, you know, when we talk about an industry, something that people do to earn money or maybe do some business and that kind of a thing.
Speaker 6:And then two things right now in my mind about when we are talking about these terms victims, sex industry or whatever term people may use prostitutes, the whole idea of human dignity and also context, and I think those are two critical things that kind of just I feel like it's good to think about that when we kind of talking about these terms and just when we talk about human dignity, it's kind of recognizing that people are human before they are anything else, before they are victims or whatever those are the terms that we use God kind of just know that they are human.
Speaker 6:And I remember I come from Kenya and when I remember when AIDS was killing people in back in the days, people were being termed as victims and but that improved with time and it became people living with HIV and AIDS and well, I thought that was a little bit of a kind of a little bit of a neutral term because we recognize that dignity, we recognize that they are human first, and then they have this kind of a problem, they are affected by this kind of a problem. So yeah, yeah, yeah, Thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I think that conversation comes back to. It can be applied very well to sexuality, to gender, to a lot of this. We especially we've just finished this research in Minnesota looking at the experiences of boys and young men who are seeking services for sexual abuse and exploitation, and we find that that a lot of most responses, most offices, whether it be government, nonprofit, despite them having attempts to be inclusive and maybe that they use language, like you know, for all children, or things like that but we find that that in reality it's that we have a child protection system that is sort of you have the boy package and you have the girl package, and those are sort of it's like you have two, you have two options basically, and both options are built on a presumed construct of what a boy needs and what a girl needs and and those are the two options. Now, in the way it's usually set up, the what the boy needs, that is usually very, very underfunded and there's hardly anything there, very, not connected very much. And then you also often have a lot of survivor services that are, you know lots of things, often reduplicated services over here that might be trying to meet a perceived need of what a girl as defined by the funders or donors, what they need.
Speaker 3:But what we find is that we're starting with gender. We're starting with those considerations rather than starting with a child or a young person, or a young adult or a vulnerable person who has had experiences and then realizing that their gender and how they've been packaged by their society and by the definitions that have been assigned to them, that's a part of their experiences too, you know. So, like, like, I mean, that's just kind of it's a conversation that we've been having that it seems that a lot of our systems start with, well, is it A or B, and then we'll figure out what services you know, rather than saying, ok, it's a person who has a complex web of needs and there might be bits of different things that they need, if that's helpful, but I see that exactly applying all around this.
Speaker 4:I think it's interesting that it was as long ago as 1989 when the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was launched, and also that it was agreed to by so many countries around the world and child participation was a major part of that. Children having a voice in what they can. That are things that they I'm going to put this are things that impacted them, that they should have a voice in that and in one sense, that that's now what we're saying about survivors of all ages, that they should all have an opportunity to be involved in decisions that are being made about them. And I think when we put their voices high upon the agenda, then we're less likely to make a mistake when it comes to neutrality, because we're treating them as equal at some level. You know we're saying they have something valuable to contribute to this discussion. In fact, they have a right to have that.
Speaker 5:Well, I mean, I really liked the direction this is going. But I'm thinking about another group of people who are trafficked and they're labor. And how do we address that Labor trafficking? Yeah, because in my, one of my projects is to look at all forms of trafficking. So it's both sex, it's labor, it is people who are pressed into service in the military, who are young children, it's forced marriage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a great point because I feel like, especially within the United States, a lot of the language that we use is geared towards sex trafficking and most of the times, even when I am talking to people in the community, when they say human trafficking, they really just mean sex trafficking. So, yeah, I think like thinking about the language that we use or how our society is like, yeah, just when they say human trafficking means sex trafficking, whether that's because of media or it's a lot to do with funding and programming as well. So I think that's a great, a great point.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and they're not mutually exclusive, Right yeah.
Speaker 4:Exactly. Also, I think that there's an awareness, isn't there recently, of things like kids that are being forced to do sports in order that they have, you know, for their country, for their families, so that to the point where they don't really have any choice. So, you know, they may well be on the path to success, but at what cost and how much right do they actually have to decide what's happening? And also, again, you know, we know, from several incidents where there's a crossover there between, you know, elite sport and sexual abuse.
Speaker 3:I think one of the things that I think that I see that trips me up, trips a lot of people up, I feel, is the fact that a lot of this, so many experiences are different because so many identities are different, because so many the perception of people are different. Person A and person B can have the same exact experiences but have completely opposite outcomes depending upon their experiences prior to that point. Right, and so we often try to find language that describes an experience of a person, but we're often missing the kind of the golden thread. For me, I think, focusing on experience Sometimes it sounds a little weird in in, in, at least when I'm writing research, I I found it just to talk about people who have experiences that are exploitive.
Speaker 3:When you talk about experiences, then you can talk about power and control you can talk about, because ultimately, in every one of these situations, really, we're talking about consent, coercion, power, control. We're talking about dynamics, and all of that is contingent upon the identities that people hold for themselves, where they place themselves against other people, whether they feel that they can respond, whether they feel that, you know, are we even using, are we even talking about this? Is this in the right way. I mean that's. I guess maybe that's the one of the questions.
Speaker 5:It can raise an interesting point, jared, because I've been working with a couple of people one who considers herself a lived experience expert and other considers herself a survivor, and some others and both of those individuals. You know it's a particular kind of situation in some senses, but both of those individuals came out of an environment in which they didn't see themselves as having options. They didn't see that there was another world in which they could be a participant, that it was the world in which they were brought up. And I can think now not of the, because I've done work with people who who been straight out criminals, who grew up in that world. That was the world in which they grew up, so that was the norm.
Speaker 5:The rest of us were stupid for working because a lot easier to go steal something and the price was not at the price. And Joe, their dad, their mother, their father, their uncle, you know whatever, that was all part of the game. It was who they were. And how do we? How do we address that? Because I'm aware of families where grandmothers were trafficked and the mothers were trafficked and the daughters are trafficked and it's all generational, and so when we talk about this, we're putting our own construct on this kind of thing in our own way, totally yeah.
Speaker 5:On the other hand, we don't have a real option if we're going to try to address the issue.
Speaker 4:And often we that. I mean that's one of the things coming back to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was it did create a common language that could be used by everybody. So then people, so then you know we would understand what each other was talking about when we talked about different types of abuse and exploitation, for example. So, and that's been refined by different like the Palermo protocol and things like that. But I, I, yeah, I think it's a really good point. One thing that I feel is I feel it would be good for us to explore a bit more, because William's here in particular is is you know where, where, where it's gets really dangerous for people to talk? William, do you want to just briefly explain your context in Kenya and what's going on there and why, why it's really important for us to be aware of it?
Speaker 6:Do you want me to talk about specifically about them? Sex, sex industry, sex sex industry or sex trafficking, sure, okay.
Speaker 4:Let me say that yeah.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I'm doing a research right now, working on a student participation in social change. So when Dr Glenn talks about child participation, that's that's my. You know, that's my area of research right now and primarily I'm looking at the role of children's agency in anti-child sex trafficking and focusing my research context is the coastal part of Kenya, mombasa. Mombasa is an island right in the, in the, in the coastal part of Kenya, and then there were several other places around there, several other counties around there Kilife, kualaian, yeah, and my, my interest in that why, why I did this was I was working as a nonprofit director dealing with a child sponsorship program. I was kind of in charge of a child sponsorship program that was in education, healthcare and socioeconomic empowerment and also faith, faith development.
Speaker 6:And I happened to be in coastal part of Kenya, where I don't really come from there, but I just went there for for work and as I was working there, there were a lot of I mean, there were a lot of stories of child sex exploitation. I I take child sex exploitation as a little bit of a kind of a bracket, because under that we've kind of just asked you know, trafficking, and now we have all these other forms of trafficking, just like like, I think, jonas, as highlighted, and all those ones are there labor, forced marriage, sex and, you know, even begging in the streets. So all those kinds of things are there, those those different forms. The stories were really hard to me, and so I. But then I witnessed something else, unique, and this was something beautiful. There were a team of young teenagers during the age of, I think, 13 to 17. And I think they also had a few other elders, some few people, who kind of were mentoring them and what they were doing was they were coming up with they're using music and, ideally, performing arts to kind of voice out the challenge of child sex trafficking. And they were, they were packaging terms and packaging music and then going out there to engage a culture, a culture which was really encouraging child sex exploitation.
Speaker 6:And I would say the culture was encouraging because it's a. It's a kind of a culture which, in that particular area, which is informed celebration of the dead, when someone dies, people come together to celebrate and also to mourn, and then they bury the dead, and that takes a while, that may take like five days, and during that time everybody stops, everything stops in the village and people just come together to the home of the deceased and their job is kind of just to mourn. But then I would say, a lot of other people, especially business people, take advantage of that and there's a lot of music which is kind of just, you know, displayed there for free and kids come because it's a communal, communal setup, people, everybody comes and in that kind of a situation now, kids are easily prayed out, either for marriage or abused or the you know there are arrangements going on there to kind of traffic them and, you know, take them away, and especially because this activity is tech, tech plus during the night. So back to the small group of young, young teenagers. So these ones, these, these ones were coming up with a kind of a different approach, I think, from a cultural anthropology point of view. I think they were bringing in what I made time as a functional substitute, whereby they bring in something into the culture using the same tools of the culture, music and performance and then they package it in a way that engages that culture, in a way to address or maybe to discourage sex exploitation for kids. And these are the kids, kids doing that. So that kind of really struck me into want to research more, what opportunities are there, what potentials are there for children to engage in anti-child sex trafficking and focaccy? And I'm digging deep into that kind of just trying to see not just music and performing art but also symbols and rituals that could also be incorporated into the work of advocacy by children to engage in anti-child sex trafficking. So that's, that's kind of the kind of just my research. I thought just sharing my research would give you kind of like what is happening in Kenya and you know what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 6:Glenn, is there something specific you want me to touch about? I know we are talking about terminologies, we are talking about language. Maybe you can mention this. I know the UN charter on child participation, issues of children rights. I know it as the definition of children as people below the age of 18. But in my context that definition doesn't seem to work in that particular context. In fact, I would say the definition of a child is more of a sociological issue in that particular context. I'm saying this because we are people who are 15, 16, 17. And they are mothers. They have about two or three kids and they are mothers and they are considered mothers in that particular society Because of course, they got married when they were young and that kind of a thing, and then they are no longer treated as children anymore, though age-wise they are still young, they are still below 18. But the society doesn't see them as kids.
Speaker 3:So they are those kind of things.
Speaker 6:Yes, so when they can stop at that, and probably, yeah, we can engage more. Glenn, did you want me to say more or do you have a question?
Speaker 4:No, I think it's really really good, but I think one of the things I wanted to say was you know, this is a group of victims who are trying to have a voice, but they actually and they understand that this is actually a really important thing to do, because children's voices are not really valued to start with, but also because there's people at different, higher levels who are going to make it very difficult for them if they expose what's going on, and so they're thinking of this creative way of using song to give themselves voices.
Speaker 3:Upset of power structure.
Speaker 4:Yes, too upset. I mean it's just a phenomenal idea. I just think I just wanted people to hear so that they could see what an impressive thing that you're trying to work with there, and I mean it almost makes this kind of look at new neutrality. It's a bit silly really, you know. I mean it's like when you get down to the real stuff. It's just, it's really, this is hard.
Speaker 5:It's struck by William's discussion of music and art, because they're languages and we're now, and it's a different kind of language. It's a visual language and an oral language and the visual language is multi-dimensional and the oral language, and what we're using here with all this stuff, is a string language and we're trying to look at how to relate to these things that are multi-dimensional. And I was just in Chicago this past week on one of my projects and I was out at the midway, which is the gateway for a lot of this stuff. Let me not recognize it, but it is, but in any event. So my colleague and I were walking through from the, from the transit operation, over to the terminal and there was art that was there and we both triggered on.
Speaker 5:There's no kids, art about exploitation, and yet how and kids do express themselves in art, about exploitation, and there's a whole area in psychology which use sand trays with kids, so kids portray things that they can't articulate. And how, how do we? How do we bring that in? I don't, I don't know. The answer is just it just triggered off this whole other door, whole other domain that we're really not talking about when we think about this stuff and ways to get at it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I really like using it as a language, john. That's great, another form of language.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I really think that being able to get down to you know, I think about this sort of an anthropologist. You know you have sort of an anthropological terms where you know you have like values and then you have beliefs and then you have like practices and you have, you know, just this, like like layer and I, I keep thinking, how, how do we? How do we describe? How do we sort of like we fight with us all the time trying to figure out how do we? How do we describe like, for instance, in a survey or in a protocol for going to be having conversations with young people, how do we describe, how do we use language that describes the phenomenon of not being able to say no and needing to do, whether it be labor or something where there is a threat, but because mom is saying to do it or because dad is saying to do it, well, it's, it's okay.
Speaker 3:You know that's commonly what we see in familial exploitation, what we see in in trafficking, in athletics. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's family members and their exploitation of, of those hierarchies that are kind of unwritten within families. How can we then describe these phenomena using words that that actually articulate that experience, rather than applying a label which requires a prior understanding of what abuse is or what exploitation is or what trafficking is, or because, ultimately, when we're looking at experiences, we're like you said it's multifaceted, it's multi dimensional and it's not something that I feel like we need to get a lot better at this, at communicating that phenomenon and beyond pre existing legal terminology of what things are. Does that, does that make sense? I don't know if I'm making sense or if I'm way too abstract.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that makes sense, Jared, and I think I don't know this. It also points to the importance of qualitative research and letting victims explain things in their own words, instead of us using terms or boxes for them to fit into but for them to describe something in their own words. But you know, the bigger abstract thing of it is do we even have those words that they can, you know, describe their experience? But yeah, with what we have, that's you know. I think that points to the importance of qualitative research and doing those interviews and letting survivors have their voice to speak about their experience.
Speaker 3:I mean honestly, that's where nuance comes from, because that's that's where we, because in many ways, I think because of how we think, we think in terms of funding, we think in terms of generalizations and what's needed for to establish policies and things like that.
Speaker 5:I mean, I think this is really interesting because at some level, we're all talking about trying to develop policy that helps us to address things and that ends up turning into statutory structures and all that sort of stuff. And yet when you get down to the, to the street level, so to speak, that's a domain that has almost other than negative, almost no meaning to people who are within that world. And finding ways to translate from that the world in which they're living and operating, in the world in which they come out of, into things which can be meaningful for them requires us to figure out how to do the translation of languages. And and so I'm just thinking now again, to go back to the good thinking about music and and art how do we, how do we take what we learn from someone's expressing themselves in music and art and turn it into something which allows us to develop policy to help them at that level? Because if you're going, if we want, if we're going to try to go to to go back up to where you were with Jared if we're talking about people who are going to make policy and decisions about how to, how to fund, how to, how to support, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 5:In some way, we have to make the translation from the language that's meaningful to the people involved in that world into a language which the people who are going to be making policy can understand and comprehend and say, yeah, that's as meaningful as not. I mean so you know the comment about qualitative work. The reality of it is is that when we get to this point where we're talking about how are we going to help people make decisions, they're not looking at it qualitatively, because the only metric that they have is money, thank you, and benefit. And how do you calculate the benefit stream? And so how do you calculate the values of those stakeholders who are different, very different places in this world?
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 5:And so you know we're trying to do that in a project that I'm on right now, which we're looking at a whole new analytical model to be able to capture the values of different stakeholders.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's great.
Speaker 5:And so we're trying to raise the values of those people who are at the bottom of the food chain, so to speak, such that we understand what that value to them is, if we can do a better job of addressing the problems that they are confronting Exactly, and what that value is to society. I don't know the answer, but I mean it's a struggle to try to figure this out. Now, everything we do is in the string language. Yeah, again, high level of distraction here, because that's where I tend to play in the but it's.
Speaker 3:I mean it's great though, because it's, I mean I think we, I think we need to be well versed in it and to be able to talk in this and to translate it into into something that makes sense. So I think because it is abstract, but I think it is, it's needed.
Speaker 4:I think one of the things I think that we, we can make assumptions on what we think is more difficult or more painful or more or harder for people without actually listening to them and asking them what they think is. So we, you know, we I mean we've mentioned this, that you know we think that sexual exploitation is a big thing, but actually, if you're, if you're somebody in extreme poverty, in a very difficult context, what are the, what are the real problems for people you know we're focusing on? We may be focusing all our energy on, on sexual exploitation, when actually it may be something else that we should be focusing on In order to survive.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly. And for them that's and, and I also, I think you know, like it, even with I mean, in that research we did in Poi Pet Jarrett, where you had the, you know, the way that the boys interpreted their experience of exploitation was very different than what the way the girls experienced, the way the girls described it. What is the?
Speaker 3:key. What is the key danger for boys who cross the border for work and what is the key danger for girls? And girls believe that the key danger was sexual it was being raped for for girls and getting hit by cars for boys. And they both believed that it was getting hit by cars for boys and getting raped for girls. So they both believe the same thing. However, boys were seven times more likely to score four or seven I can't remember which study that was but exponentially more likely to disclose experiencing sexual abuse and exploitation. And so a lot of even even even the boys who said that, yes, I've been raped, says no, it doesn't happen to boys, it does happen to girls, and boys are just at risk of physical violence, getting hit, punched, things like that. So how our preconception of our gender can make whole areas completely invisible to us, even if we've experienced it ourselves, and we found that really interesting in that study.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that speaks to you know what society tells us our experience should be, and then molding our experience into what is expected. So, yeah, what did want to open it? Just as we're getting a little bit closer to the end of time. If any of the individuals we haven't heard from yet, if you have any thoughts or questions, comments about any of this, just want to give other individuals a time to jump in, no worries.
Speaker 3:but I think it's really interesting because, like it's, none of this is rocket science, but it can look like rocket science if your perspective is from someone you know who's working with the top down right. But when you're looking at from the perspective of people with experience, this is, this, is it's couldn't be, couldn't be more simple. You know a lot because it makes sense when you have their perspective. Yeah, Sorry.
Speaker 1:And I think, like if CEOs, if people who ran programs of governmental entities just heard the discussion, that would inform you know, I don't know, this is critical information. And yeah, jared, you're right, I mean not only some of the people on the ground, but some of the people that have been doing this for years, like us. It's like mm. Hmm, like we're agreeing, but you know, we're kind of preaching to the choir. So just having, yeah, just people with influence, maybe having the access to this kind of information would be awesome. And so I get permission to air this critical discussion on the Emancipation Nation podcast, because I think, jared is right, it's not rocket science. If you are someone that sits in a position where you are continually trying to learn the other perspective, that you practice humility and that you honor other people's realities, then this discussion is quite simple. It's something that you've already been struggling with as you work with people who are different than you, maybe ethnically different, maybe their histories are different, maybe their gender is different, maybe their nationality is different. You've already grappled with this. You've been grappling with it. It is a struggle of yours and it's something you take into consideration as you work with people who are even similar to you but maybe have different histories. So if you are someone that sort of blindly has gone through life thinking well, everybody's doing fine, everybody's equal to me, I don't see color. This is going to be a very eye opening discussion to you, so, and I think it's a way of allowing you to peer in or peek in to discussions among scholars around the world. These are the things that we grapple with as we attempt to create knowledge Right. So this group, we have these dialogues monthly or so with scholars from all over the world and we do this through our Global Association of Human Trafficking Scholars. So I want to make sure you know what that is. Actually. We shorten it to GATS, g-a-h-t-s dot com, so you can go to GATS dot com and you can learn more about our international partnerships to create knowledge and to further the knowledge base. And who you've been listening to is Jared Davis and Dr Glenn Miles. So the mission of GATS is to respond to human trafficking by moving the knowledge base forward. And, of course, once you create knowledge, it trickles down to policymakers and they use it to create laws. It trickles down to practitioners and agencies social service, criminal justice, health care agencies and so on. They build practice models based on that and it can drive the paradigm. That is the way people see things. It controls the narratives in terms of how people look at the issue, how people look at survivors or people with lived experience or those types of things. So GATS is a very important organization in my mind.
Speaker 1:So if you are a researcher in this field or a journalist or a practitioner or a survivor or you're just looking to learn more about the multidisciplinary fields of anti-human trafficking work, consider joining us. You can join at the senior research scholar level. That is $120 a year and we use that information to keep GATS going. You can become a research scholar, you can become a developing scholar for $60 a year, or you can become an advocate for free and just be able to get our newsletter, be able to get access, and I think one of the amazing things that we offer is access to the Journal of Human Trafficking, and that is one of the first peer-reviewed journals where you can find research articles on human trafficking in ways that we are advancing the knowledge base.
Speaker 1:So this has been a very scholarly kind of intellectual, kind of abstract discussion, but certainly has very practical implications. So I wanted to give you a window into some of the discussions that we have, because as we move the knowledge base forward, like I said, it shapes the way people think about the issue. And the fight continues. Let's not just do something, let's do the best thing. If you like this episode of Emancipation Nation, please subscribe and I'll send you the weekly podcast. Until then, the fight continues.