SURVIVAL AMID HUMAN TRAFFICKING: INSIGHTS FROM GOAT DAYS AND ELEVEN MINUTES

Abstract

There have been numerous migrations around the world. Migrations and mass movements can be political, economic, environmental, forced, and cultural. These can also happen through human trafficking, causing forced migration, which is a crime around the world. This paper attempts to discover another type of human trafficking where the person being trafficked becomes part of the agreement to be migrated. This is called Consensual Trafficking. Goat Days by Benyamin and Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho are two works selected for this juxtaposition and unearth the contours of tragedy in the lives of Najeeb and Maria. They are trafficked by choice and face the same exploitation with constant attempts to liberate themselves. This cargo culture has reduced humans to commodities. Benyamin and Coelho, sitting far from each other and writing in different decades, seem to give the loudest call to warn. This paper aims to look deeper into the portrayal of protagonists, their socioeconomic choices, responses and the poignant, unending struggle against time. The journey from India to the Gulf (Najeeb) on one side and Brazil to Switzerland (Maria) on the other unfolds the identical crisis, despair, isolation, absurdity and anxiety faced by the millions from and in the Global South.