Full Report

OUR LATEST REPORT: HOMELESSNESS AND TRAFFICKING in the U.S. and Canada

In partnership with Covenant House International, MSRP interview over 640 homeless youth to better understand the prevalence of trafficking among that population and the common factors in their lives that foster vulnerability. The report provides critical recommendations for service providers and legislators for how to improve youth resilience and provide better protections for our most vulnerable populations. Read the full report here. 

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New Orleans

At home: one city asks survivors about exploitation and how to help.

Ninety-nine homeless youth at Covenant House New Orleans spoke with MSRP researchers to discuss their experiences of labor exploitation. The report focuses on the particular risks associated with homelessness in New Orleans and on recommendations provided by the youth for how the community can improve their response to trafficking. The study provided the evidence the community needed to win a federal grant that led to the formation of the Greater New Orleans Human Trafficking Task Force. 

Data is Key

Media reports suggest that practically every community in the U.S. is a "hub for human trafficking." But the truth is that we have very little evidence-based knowledge about trafficking in any particular city or state. This report was a first attempt to survey the state of knowledge regarding the forms, prevalence, and sources of trafficking in the state of Louisiana. It is only when we have a basic sense of what is happening that we can effectively address trafficking.

And Abroad: Survivor voices lead the movement to end slavery.

Survivors of Slavery: Modern-Day Slave Narratives offers close to forty survivor narratives from Cambodia, Ghana, Lebanon, Macedonia, Mexico, Russia, Thailand, Ukraine, and the United States, detailing the horrors of a system that forces people to work without pay and against their will, under the threat of violence, with little or no means of escape. Representing a variety of circumstances in diverse contexts, these survivors are the Frederick Douglasses, Sojourner Truths, and Olaudah Equianos of our time, testifying to the widespread existence of a human rights tragedy and the urgent need to address it.

““Survivors of Slavery invites the reader not only to consider the actual words on the page, but also to question context, voice, and what is not being said.””
— Sandra Morgan, Director, Global Center for Women and Justice at Vanguard University

Organized around such issues as the need for work, the punishment of defiance, and the move toward activism, the collection isolates the causes, mechanisms, and responses to slavery that allow the phenomenon to endure. Enhancing scholarship in women's studies, sociology, criminology, law, social work, and literary studies, the text establishes a common trajectory of vulnerability, enslavement, captivity, escape, and recovery, creating an invaluable resource for activists, scholars, legislators, and service providers.