Human slavery, forced labour and the public social responsibility.

Human slavery in the early 21^st century has been well documented now and the general public understands that such a terrible social phenomenon still exists. Yet there may be hesitation over what to do – how would you know if slavery was occurring in your local district? It goes without saying that human slavery/trafficking/forced labour is hard to track. When each story breaches in the media the decent locals all say the same thing: “I can’t believe this sort of thing was happening in our nice neighbourhood”. It would seem much of this oppressive slavery is hidden in plain sight. What can you do? Where would you report to? Are there signs that we should be able to pick up on?

In Wales the November 2012 BAWSO conference did an exceptional job of bringing together many organisations dealing with their own areas of stopping human slavery and increasing co-ordination and co-operation between all these groups, researchers, charities, police and Government.

In 2013 this was followed by Ben Cooley’s Hope for Justice conference where videos, papers, presentations were all contributed in the hope of raising awareness and co-ordinating efforts to reduce the terror of human slavery. The 2014conference will be held in Leicester.

As these groups are all brought together, information is shared; networks to beat these crimes are developed. Everyday people can develop knowledge and skills on how to beat the slavery issue. Academic research from groups such as Joseph Rowntree Foundation have contributed work on trafficking/forced labour to the public. Some very brave journalist have gone undercover to investigate this emerging social phenomenon.

Men , women and children may all be in danger – it is not just ethnic minorities that are sold as sex worker slaves – yet men and children used in similar terrible ordeals; or used as forced labour on farms, nail shops, domestic servants, or any other establishments which we could not predict slavery may be occurring within.

These networks, charities and government agencies who are combatting the slavery issue are dealing primarily with the ‘end-of-pipe’ event where victims are picked up by the police. As further investigation continues the sources (international trafficking rings) are being investigated which hopefully will lead to arrests.

As awareness is raised we all become increasingly vigil (or paranoid?) yet one should not investigate themselves – rather raise your concerns with the appropriate charities or tell your local police station. As more concerned citizens contribute information the greater the problems can be solved by the authorities.

Step up – report what you suspect is going on. If enough people do it a national network of informational reporting will evolve – the authorities will build up complex models and tackle the problems. Human slavery can be tackled … together we can understand our world and make it a better place.

Skirting around the issue of Children and Pornography at home, schools and wider society.

One of the classic examples of denial is when parents blame the locality or the schools for their children learning their first curse words and foul language. If this was not least of our problems we’d be a better social world. Yet bad language aside – pornography is still far too much a taboo subject, and as such has been allowed to permeate all levels of society.

As a parent are you still in denial of this?

Granted pornography has been creeping into society for a very long time, with the advent of the Internet, faster download speeds, 3G in 2000’s, 4G in 2010’s, 5G in 2020’s: it is virtually ubiquitous AND easily accessible. It is having a deeper impact upon our younger (and always impressionable) generation now and the next one to come.

Parents may be more vigil due to young vulnerable girls being sex-trafficked around the UK, yet most of these girls came from decent families with a good upbringing and therefore it was impossible to tell who would be caught and manipulated into these sick abusive trafficking events.

Pornography is not such far cry from this. Access is so easy at such young innocent ages – it permeates their minds, hormones will react, excitement and interest will be peaked … desire to find more of it becomes an awkward addiction that many do not know how to treat.

The negative social impacts of being brought up on a staple input of pornography will cause the user a deleterious effect upon their lives. Many will sexually objectify the opposite sex, or whichever gender they may desire. Making Love will be replaced with a colder approach of basic sex and sexual gratification. The possibility of becoming perverted on many sexual levels is an avenue that many pornography users may find themselves inextricably drawn to …. For all these reasons – the users (particularly the young) need some guidance to a normal and healthy, loving approach to normality and intimacy in relationships and not the cold dark side that pornography may possibly inflict.

An upcoming report from The Social Researcher will deal with tackling school pupils from challenging schools with the issue of pornography and highlight why children and teenagers are so desperate for guidance yet do not know who to turn to for fear of revulsion from their parents, being labelled a pervert by their peers or being reported to the local youth worker if their teacher found out the young individual was accessing pornography.

Thankfully a demand from higher management in schools has publicly been received that head teachers believe that pornography should be discussed in schools, be it as part of a sex education format or child sexualisation debate. In any case – the issue is forced now … so lets us all deal with this together.

You must all believe that this young generation today (the so called ‘lost generation’, or ‘entitlement generation’ – which is actually a more empowered generation that many elders would have acknowledged or feared to have acknowledged!) can deal with the burden of pornography.

It is not time to say who is to blame; parent’s groups may be established to revile pornography, councils and governments may be pressured to deal with pornographic grip on society etc. yet now it is here – we should just deal with it. By allowing our younger generation to be harnessed with the knowledge that the beast does exist; you may be well surprised how well children and teenagers can deal appropriately with pornography and not allow it to consume them (which thousands of adults suffer now from baseline pornography in the mid to late 20^Th century).

The responsibilities put upon our civil servants in education, social welfare, community safety and other area’s is constantly getting larger. Perhaps each county or district will need to set up a new position of child sexuality consultant who will go into schools, community centres, support centres, help workshops etc. to talk to young impressionable children and teenagers – open a dialogue and allow the younger people to have a balanced view rather than an ‘access and misinterpretation’ stance/viewpoint.

One thing is for certain – we may be entering an increasingly transparent society of information, location, updates etc. yet we must be vigil. Your children want to come to you and discuss what they have ‘found’ …. Will you react appropriately to your child, your pupil, your young neighbour finding pornography?

Publish and be damned for it .....

Publishing ones research is a contentious field. Many veteran academics have openly spoken of once they have published with good intent - it has rocked the proverbial boat higher up the hierarchy; often met with real disapproval. Many times the publishers are punished and scapegoated for the outcome, too many times the research owners/funders pre-empt what the public reaction may be and attempt to distance themselves from the research outcome by blaming the researchers for the way the publication was portrayed. There are parables here to [subjective] journalist who will be scapegoated by news/media businesses they work for ... So - should we publish independently then?

There is no final word; although there is a line we should all tow of academic guidelines of ethics, report structure, referencing etc; which is then all handed over to the main avenues of communication (the news) one must consider or rather have faith that the general public who receive your research will make the appropriate independent decisions based on the correct information you have provided in your research.

Yet how can one make a statement like the above when deep down academics and industry recognise that all research outcomes have a planned agenda or biased ending based on the funding party’s desired conclusion. It is a complex area with complex outcomes.

In this era of an untrusting public who have no faith in the Government, we have all become continually more questioning and objective about the information we come into contact. Are we really as manipulated by the news or advertising as some industries would believe us to be? Many of us will complain that all media news is bad news, yet objectively and realistically we would all rather know than not know about current events. We still get on with our everyday lives and adapt accordingly.

Your social research may be critical in our national and global social development. You may have great angst about producing your publication as was executed on a really complex or contentious social phenomenon such as gangs, fraud in companies, informal economy, drug culture, black market etc. yet your research is important as it may encourage others to publish their work as they approached your subject matter from a different angle. The more research undertaken into many social phenomenon will support gain a more rounded insight into how said social phenomenon affects our society for the better or worse; if it is the latter what can we do to improve the situation through practice and policy?

Obviously issues of media portrayal of your research may be subjective and not objective –or there may be some miscommunication in the ranks and your work (or your career!) ends up getting setback along the way. It is a risk that may hold back some incredible research that may benefit us all .... so if you are feeling brave; go ahead and publish and be damned for what you truly believe in!