Human Trafficking: Challenges and Innovative Approaches for Research, Policy and Practice

This special issue represents such an attempt by bringing together the most cutting-edge research on human trafficking from multiple disciplines—legal studies, criminology, sociology, social work and practitioner scholarship—offering a range of methodological approaches in assessing current anti-trafficking interventions, while advocating promising practices from the field. To broaden our perspectives, this volume brings together researchers from both the Global North and the Global South, ensuring that the voices of human trafficking survivors and practitioners working on the frontlines are heard. Collectively, these articles examine current counter-trafficking responses, interrogate dominant narratives in research, policy and practice, and identify pathways for more equitable, evidence-based and contextually grounded scholarship. One overarching aim of the issue is to invite international scholars to pause and reconsider how trafficking research is framed, how interventions are conducted and how measurement standards are applied. Authors in this volume challenge the status quo in the framing of the trafficking problem and question so-called ‘standard’ research methods or implementation protocols, so that alternative perspectives can be brought to the fore and unconventional approaches can be explored.