Driving Question: How are the systems of human trafficking parallel to the systems of slavery?
Process Pictures
Reflection #1
Throughout the exploration of my topic, something new and interesting that I learned while researching through my articles are the different types of labor that the people that were being trafficked endured. Men were mostly needed to do manual labor. A high percentage of the traffickers are males. Women have the highest percentage of being trafficked. Women are usually forced to perform sexual deeds rather than do labor. As we kept exploring the topic, we changed our topic a few times. At first our topic was about only human trafficking and the ethics of it. Later on we realized how human trafficking is similar to slavery but we still wanted to keep in the ethics of human trafficking. After talking to one of our mentors we converted our topic to “Ethics and Parallels of human trafficking to slavery.” At first we wanted our universal theme to be power but the generalizations didn’t fit our topic so we changed it to systems which went better with our topic. We changed these aspects of our project because made more sense about the idea of what we wanted our project to be about. We also thought that changing those factors of our project would appeal more to the audience because of the peculiar twist we added which is the morality of human trafficking and how it could be moral and the other twist of how it's parallel to slavery.
Reflection #2
After my last reflection, I found out that there are a lot of parallels between Human Trafficking and Slavery. My driving question changed because it used to be “What are the details within the systems of human trafficking and how do they pose parallels to slavery?” and then we changed it to “How are the systems of human trafficking parallel to the systems of slavery?” We decided to change our driving question because we were already giving details about the systems of human trafficking and of slavery so including details in the question would be ridicule. For my student-led research, I'm doing interview because we can’t do an experiment or observation on someone and we can’t do a survey since many people don't know about Human Trafficking. My group and I have sent out two emails, one to a woman who has been through human trafficking who started an organization (Virginia Isaias, Foundation for Survivors of Human Trafficking) and one to an organization that was made to help women that went through human trafficking (iSanctuary.) ISanctuary has responded to our email and they gave us information and they helped us with our questions. This whole process has been easy but the ISD is difficult because we still need more articles to help us with our research. My group and I need to find at least 5 more articles that go with the the system we made for our project. My group collaborates well with each other we haven’t fought about something specific and we haven't hit any bumps while working on this project.
Reflection #3
Since last time I wrote about my research I learned about the prices set on different types of girls from different parts of the world. As I worked on the project with my teammates, I learned that I work better under pressure because it gives me motivation to finish. Working with teammates shows me that everyone's opinion matters and that combining or listening to each other's idea could cause a great product. Since my group's project is about slavery and human trafficking and how they’re parallel, we wanted to make two parallel human chains one with people that are dark skinned and the other with people with multiple skin tones to show how slavery has evolved and how society deemed to call it something different. My group is going to do an interactive element for our supplemental piece. We are planing to do a maze shaped like a thumbprint to show that no matter what identity you have or who you are, you could still be trafficked. We planned to make it a maze and have people move a little person in the maze to liberate them from being trafficked. My group has started on the supplemental piece. We got a piece of a trifold and we drew the outline of our thumbprint for the maze. We’re going to use black cardstock to build up the walls of the maze to make it 3-D. The collaboration between my group is great. All of us are getting along great and we haven’t had a horrendous fight about the project. We also haven’t fought at all about the project; we all have the same ideas and we also have incorporated our ideas to make them better.
Reflection #4
My driving question was “How are the systems of human trafficking parallel to the systems of slavery?” One of the revisions that my group and I did before we turned in our project was that we painted the background of the creative piece black and we glued pieces of our creative piece together and we glued pieces that were falling off the tri-fold. Something new that I learned about my topic is that people who have been through human trafficking or slavery don’t like to talk about their experiences because they feel that their owner will come after them or their family. Through this experience, scholarly research became easier for me to do. My oral presentation skills improved through this experience because I was shy and nervous in the beginning but then I stopped getting nervous and began to enjoy presenting. I think that I became more open minded in people's opinions and suggestions. If I could’ve done anything differently I would’ve put more time into the details and make them look better. One thing that I would tell an incoming symposium student is that they should relax and take their time on it because what’s important is the content and they the visuals.
Information Synthesis Document and Student Lead Research results.
References
- Nilsson, E. (2007). Different Economic Systems.
- Farrell, A. ; Fahy, S. (2009) The problem of human trafficking in the U.S.: Public frames and policy responses
- Federal Bureau of Investigation, (Date unknown) Human Trafficking/ Involuntary Servitude
- Bureau of Public Affairs, (Date unknown) What is Modern Slavery?
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, (Date unknown) Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center
- National Human Trafficking Hotline (Date unknown) Human Trafficking
- Human Trafficking Prices (2015) Havocscope
- Marty, R. (2017) Human Trafficking CNN
- Latonero, M. (2011) Executive Summary USC
- Boston, N. (2004) Living Conditions PBS
- Hallam, J. (2004) Men, Women, And Gender PBS
- Linda Alchin (2017) Child Labor American Historama
- Copass, C. ; Bruce, H (2015) A Nation Built On The Back Of Slavery And Racism
- Henson J. (1877) An Overseer Attempts to Molest His Mother Digital History
- Ramos, R. (2015) Human trafficking survivor: I was raped 43,200 times CNN
- Sam Houston State University (2013) Slave Law in Colonial Virginia: A Timeline
- ABC NEWS (2009) Teen Girls' Stories of Sex Trafficking in U.S.
- Polaris Project (Date Unknown) Current Federal Laws
- PBS (2004) Slavery and the Making of America
Link: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/timeline/1793.html