Abstract
Labor trafficking occurs when individuals are forced to work by force, fraud, or coercion. In the United States, agricultural labor trafficking is both widespread and underreported. It is often carried out by farm labor subcontractors, who conduct the labor trafficking on behalf of U.S. companies. Labor trafficking in U.S. agriculture continues year after year, as trafficked immigrant workers fear being further punished if they attempt to redress their workplace grievances. The H-2A visa system is designed to protect workers from labor trafficking abuses, but the system is ineffective and in need of reform. To learn more about agricultural labor trafficking and its relation to the H-2A visa system, our research team examined all the criminal and civil federal labor trafficking cases that took place from 2017 to 2021 as part of a year-and-a-half-long research project funded by the Department of Homeland Security in conjunction with the Criminal Investigative and Network Analysis (CINA) Center at George Mason University. After collecting data from legal documents associated with each case, we conducted a qualitative analysis to reconstruct the labor trafficking process in each case. We then applied exchange network theory to analyze the labor trafficking processes we found. We closed by critically evaluating the H-2A visa system and suggesting reforms to decrease the amount of labor trafficking each year based on the exchange network analysis we conducted. Given the lack of research on agricultural labor trafficking, our research was exploratory. It was also descriptive, in that we described how labor trafficking is carried out in the U.S, and it was explanatory, in that we closed with a theoretical explanation for labor trafficking.
Recommended Citation
Gary J. Kowaluk,
Agricultural Labor Trafficking in the U.S.: An Exchange Network Analysis,
27
Rich. Pub. Int. L. Rev.
29
().
Available at:
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/pilr/vol27/iss3/4