Human Trafficking: A Scientometric Review of the Knowledge Domain

Human trafficking represents a significant public health threat and continues to feed global criminal enterprises. As a result, the research domain for human trafficking continues to grow with contributions from numerous disciplines, including Family Studies and Geography to Operations Research. Each of these disciplines approaches human trafficking research from slightly different perspectives, but collectively, provides substantial insight into deleterious social and health outcomes of victims, the risk factors for recruitment, approaches for identification and intervention, and the operational and geographic characteristics of the trafficking networks. This paper aims to provide a succinct yet comprehensive overview of the most important subdomains actively contributing to this corpus of knowledge using scientometric approaches. The results suggest that while efforts to understand the physical and psychological effects of trafficking on victims remain important, the literature is rapidly diversifying to include work on precursors to trafficking, including vulnerability, recruitment techniques, and global government-driven initiatives to reduce trafficking. This scientometric review addresses UN Sustainability Goal 5.2: eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other forms of exploitation, and has implications for practice, policy, and continued research.