Anti-Trafficking Review
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Trafficking of Women for Sexual Exploitation in Europe: Prosecution, trials and their impact
Get PDFThe importance of criminal proceedings against traffickers in the fight against human trafficking is clear. However, this paper illustrates that investigations, prosecutions and trials are often extremely long with mixed influences on the victims themselves. The study draws on fieldwork conducted in five European countries: Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Serbia and the Netherlands. A total of 40 interviews were conducted—with 7 trafficked persons and 33 service providers who are in direct contact with victims. Based on these interviews, some general themes were identified for analysis: (1) length of the criminal justice process, (2) secondary victimisation, (3) need for specialist training and interviewing skills for all individuals in contact with trafficked persons, (4) information and trust, (5) protection from intimidation, (6) not just conviction but financial compensation, and finally, (7) the label ‘victim’ and the wish to testify. Each theme is discussed in detail
Captured ‘Realities’ of Human Trafficking: Analysis of photographs illustrating stories on trafficking into the sex industry in Serbian media
Get PDFPast research has looked at how the media frames human trafficking, but has seldom included analysis of visual representations. To bridge this gap, this paper scrutinises stereotypical representations of persons trafficked into the sex industry in photographs published in Serbian online media from 2011 to 2014. To uncover characteristics of dominant tropes in this sample, a method of semiotic analysis is applied. The analysis argues that images are dominated by portrayals of trafficked persons that fit into one of two frames: powerless victim or unworthy prostitute. Male figures are rarely presented in these photographs, but when present, they are shown to hurt or control the women depicted alongside them. Chains, padlocks, barcodes, whip marks, and other symbols associated with slavery are present to a lesser extent. However, they testify to the tendency to link human trafficking to slavery and to use the moral potential of the anti-slavery rhetoric. Photographs are too easily seen as authentic, factual transcripts of reality. This paper suggests that these images tell us more about societal fear of insecurity, ideas about gender, erotic obsessions and morality than about human trafficking itself. It also argues that the meaning of trafficking is shaped by the deeply embedded codes of patriarchy and hidden misogyny present in Serbian society
The Art of the Possible: Making films on sex work migration and human trafficking
Get PDFFiction films and documentaries increasingly bring the themes of sex work migration and human trafficking to the big screen. The films often focus on women who have experienced a range of abusive conditions within the sex industry, experiences which in the films typically are all labelled ‘trafficking’ and narrated through the capture of innocents and their rescue. Images of ‘sex slaves’ have thus entered the film scene as iconic figures of pain and suffering, and ‘traffickers’ have emerged as icons of human evil. Building upon the substantial scholarly critique of such films and representations, this article discusses the possibilities of making films about migrant sex workers (some of whom may be trafficked) that do not fall into misleading and sensationalised representations. I draw upon two films about women migrant sex workers that I have worked on as an anthropologist and filmmaker—Trafficking (2010) and Becky’s Journey (2014). The point of departure is that there are a range of other aspects that can influence the filmmaking process rather than merely a one-dimensional perspective on sex work and trafficking. While analysing the making of these two films I look at the reasons—both theoretical and practical—for certain production decisions and the ways in which films in the context of multiple challenges are often the result of the art of the possible
Editorial: The Problems and Prospects of Trafficking Prosecutions: Ending impunity and securing justice
Get PDFHaving been guest editor of the very first issue of the Anti-Trafficking Review, it was with great pleasure that I accepted the invitation of the editorial board to oversee the production of its sixth issue. Back in 2012 I identified the emergence of the Anti-Trafficking Review, thefirst specialist journal on human trafficking, as a watershed moment, signalling the transformation of‘trafficking’ from a niche (perhaps even a fringe) academic sub-discipline into a legitimate, substantial and discrete area of study. The past four years since its launch have vindicated that assessment. New specialist journals on trafficking and its variants have been launched, and the range and depth of research being undertaken in this field has significantly expanded. While law, sociology and human rights continue to be the dominant lenses through which trafficking is studied, analysed and explained, there is no denying the expanding and enriching influence of other disciplines: from geography to anthropology; from health sciences to migration studies. These changes in research and writing around trafficking have brought tangible benefits: helping improve our understanding of what is happening and why, as well as strengthening the evidence base on which credible, effective responses can be built
Innocent Traffickers, Guilty Victims: The case for prosecuting so-called ‘bottom girls’ in the United States
Get PDFResponse to ATR Debate Proposition: ‘Prosecuting trafficking deflects attention from much more important responses and is anyway a waste of time and money
Prioritising Prosecutions is the Wrong Approach
Get PDFResponse to ATR Debate Proposition: ‘Prosecuting trafficking deflects attention from much more important responses and is anyway a waste of time and money
Palermo’s Promise: Victims’ rights and human trafficking
Get PDFResponse to ATR Debate Proposition: ‘Prosecuting trafficking deflects attention from much more important responses and is anyway a waste of time and money
Looking Beyond ‘White Slavery’: Trafficking, the Jewish Association, and the dangerous politics of migration control in England, 1890-1910
Get PDFThis article seeks to revise Jo Doezema’s suggestion that ‘the white slave’ was the only dominant representation of ‘the trafficked woman’ used by early anti-trafficking advocates in Europe and the United States, and that discourses based on this figure of injured innocence are the only historical discourses that are able to shine light on contemporary anti-trafficking rhetoric. ‘The trafficked woman’ was a figure painted using many shades of grey in the past, with a number of injurious consequences, not only for trafficked persons but also for female labour migrants and migrant populations at large. In England, dominant organisational portrayals of ‘the trafficked woman’ had acquired these shades by the 1890s, when trafficking started to proliferate amid mass migration from Continental Europe, and when controversy began to mount over the migration of various groups of working-class foreigners to the country.This article demonstrates these points by exploring the way in which the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women (JAPGW), one of the pillars of England’s early anti-trafficking movement, represented the female Jewish migrants it deemed at risk of being trafficked into sex work between 1890 and 1910. It argues that the JAPGW stigmatised these women, placing most of the blame for trafficking upon them and positioning them to a greater or a lesser extent as ‘undesirable and undeserving working-class foreigners’ who could never become respectable English women. It also contends that the JAPGW, in outlining what was wrong with certain female migrants, drew a line between ‘the migrant’ and respectable English society at large, and paradoxically endorsed the extension of the very ‘anti-alienist’ and Antisemitic prejudices that it strove to dispel
Debate - The Trafficking Protocol and the Anti-Trafficking Framework: Insufficient to address exploitation
No full textThe Trafficking Protocol[1] has shaped and advanced a global movement against human trafficking; notably through establishing a global definition and creating criminal justice remedies befitting an international crime.[2] Borne out of and including the Protocol, a global anti-trafficking framework has emerged. This framework reflects these two central tenets at international, regional and national levels and includes initiatives by States not party to the Protocol, such as Singapore. However, the emphasis on these tenets, which comprise only part of a robust anti-trafficking strategy, has rendered the existing framework insufficient to address exploitation.[1] In full: Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children[2] K H Heinrich, ‘Ten Years After the Palermo Protocol: Where are Protections for Human Trafficking?’, Human Rights Brief 18, no.1, 2010, retrieved 5 January 2015, http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1145&context=hrbrief ; K E Hyland, The Impact of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Human Rights Brief 8, no. 2, 2001, retrieved 5 January 2015, http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1492&context=hrbrie
Policy and Practice: Claiming Space for Labour Rights within the United Kingdom Modern Slavery Crusade
No full textThe focus of this article is on advocacy opportunities provided by the anti-trafficking framework in a new political climate. Through the case study of the United Kingdom (UK) Modern Slavery Act 2015 deliberations the article explores opportunities to use political interest in human trafficking to advocate labour rights and protections for vulnerable workers. The article explores how, largely cynical, political motivations for the debate on ‘modern slavery’ in the UK, provided an opportunity to reframe the anti-trafficking discourse in this context. Whilst migration control and labour market deregulation are key priorities for the UK government, the Modern Slavery Act process enabled advocates to highlight the impact of such measures on vulnerable, predominantly migrant, workers. It also ultimately served to persuade decision makers to make a connection between widespread labour abuses and severe labour exploitation. Through this case study the article argues for engagement with anti-trafficking frameworks to both highlight and harness the political rhetoric, and maximise the space provided for promoting the rights of vulnerable workers