Abstract
Human trafficking is doubtless a major crime – jointly with terrorism and child abuse. It is estimated that more than two billion people are missing in the world each year. These numbers associate to human trafficking as an illegal act—known as well as slavery—where the victims not only are deprived of their liberty but also forced to be enslaved or sexually exploited. Trafficking victims include women, men, and children of all ages and social classes. In the field of tourism, human trafficking leads to sexual activities. Human trafficking is certainly based on a much deeper process where the victim is under-humanised, which the victim lacks any basic right or legal protection during its captivity. This under-valorisation process centres on what specialists dubbed “desensitization dynamic.” The captor feels little empathy for the hosted victim or feels he or she should not be considered a human being. This process has been widely studied by clinical psychology, but little is known about the desensitization process in the fields of tourism and hospitality.
TopBackground: The Subhumanization Process
Psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists have widely studied the sub-humanization process in the threshold of time (Bhandari, 2003; Wilson, 2017). Just after WWII ended, social scientists interrogated furtherly on the ethical dilemmas of Nazism. The systematic assassination of innocent victims was based on a sub-humanization process that dispossessed from some minorities the category of human beings (Arendt 1968; Manning, 2004). Of course, this was not the only genocide where the state or some ethnic groups claim certain supremacy or the right to exterminate others (Graham, 1976; Kiernan 2008). From the conquest of the Americas to the bloody genocides that traversed the former century, without mentioning torture or the crimes of nation-state during the Juntas in Latin America, the sub-humanisation process corresponds with a gradual stage of desensitization where victims are degraded as sub-humans and subsequently deprived of all human (basic) rights (Lemkin, 1946; Pagden 1995; Doti 1996; Feierstein, 2014).
Key Terms in this Chapter
HBO Saga Westworld: This is an HBO saga that brings some reflection on themes associated to hospitality, robots, artificial intelligence and freedom. The plot is situated in a dystopian world where hosts are brutalised and killed by rich tourists who pay to liberate their sadist instincts.
Sex Tourism: It denotes a practice oriented to stimulate sex consumption in different places or countries where the consumer lives. Sex tourism and child sex tourism may be interlinked. While the former is allowed in some countries, the latter is seriously punished in the western countries.
Dehumanization Process: It is a process mainly marked by the act of thinking any person inferior to others. Some voices have alerted this technique was originally used by Nazi Germany to perpetrate genocide.
Hospitality: It is a relational process where hosts and guest meet. Guest often pays for the hospitality they receive in the modern world.
Human Trafficking: It is defined as the illegal trade of humans disposed forcefully for labour, sexual slavery, or any type of illegal exploitation.