The Memory Map Pattern of Trafficked Children and Its Influencing Elements: Evidence from Successful Cases of Seeking Relatives

Abstract

Child trafficking has been repeatedly criminalized and has become a timely and important issue of concern to society and academia. Most existing studies focus on macro-analyses and lack a memory-space discussion based on typical trafficking cases. Based on case data extracted from the "Baobeihuijia" public service platform, this study explores the memory space/map pattern and its influencing elements in the process of seeking for relatives of trafficked children. Text analysis, cognitive map analysis, and case studies were used. The results show the following: (1) The memory space of trafficked children is composed of local, family, and individual knowledge. Local knowledge includes the natural physical environment and social and cultural environment factors; family knowledge includes family member information, kinship, and other elements; and individual knowledge includes factors such as self-identification characteristics and the clothing they were wearing. (2) The memory space of trafficked children is formed in their daily activity space, which is the memory of the objective characteristics of their hometown and a combination of geographical space and humanistic emotion. With an increase in children's age and changes over time, the elements of their memory space will change accordingly, enabling them to form unique individual memories in different stages and times. Changes in children's living environments make it easy to shape complex memory spaces. (3) The memory map of trafficked children has three modes: a multifactor mixed memory map, spatial layout memory map, and single-element dominant memory map. The multifactor mixed memory map relies on a variety of sensory cognitions to form complex memory content. The multifactor positioning of the hometown area promotes the success of seeking relatives. The spatial layout memory map is mainly based on a hand-drawn complete map, which is spatial and to scale, and plays a two-way perception function to help native families and volunteers identify information and promote the success of seeking relatives. The single-element dominant memory map uses landmarks and place names as key elements to accurately locate the geographical location of trafficked children's families. However, these elements are not easily remembered, and the process of seeking relatives depends mainly on other elements. (4) Children leave a deep impression of places of frequent contact in their daily activities; uniquely shaped road and surface waters are more likely to form memory and become important promoting factors in the process of seeking relatives; the combination of place names, dialects, customs, and place names and landmarks have become key elements in the success of seeking relatives. This study draws on memory space-related research methods with case studies as the core from an individual perspective, selects trafficked children as research objects, and explores the influence of trafficked children's memory space and memory maps on the search process from the perspective of geographical memory space. This study enriches the research on memory space and is a positive attempt to expand the related literature.

Keywords

• trafficked child
• memory space
• memory map
• successful case
• child trafficking crime