Ideology and the Fight Against Human Trafficking

Reyhan Atasü-Topcuoğlu

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317638193
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Human trafficking has become one of the most spoken-of problems of our day, and fighting it has grown into a multi-million-dollar project sector. This book is about how we all come to name various exploitative migratory experiences "human trafficking" and how we build a consensus on how to counter it. This book investigates counter-trafficking as a transnational field and tries to show how connected stances against a "global social problem" are produced internationally in general, and nationally in particular within the example of three countries which are defined with different positions according to the phenomenon: Ukraine as a "source country, " Turkey as a "transit and destination country, " Germany as a "destination country." The book examines how power relations limit the language to propose and solve social problems in the example of human trafficking. It shows the limits of scientific studies on the issue and the chasm between counter-trafficking and its primary target group, the trafficked people.

1 Introduction

Counter-Trafficking: The Fight Against Human Trafficking

Counter-trafficking, which is sometimes called the fight against human trafficking, has become one of the important issues on the international agenda since the fall of the Soviet bloc. Human trafficking has been recognised as a major component of transnational organised crime and of illegal and irregular migration. It became a widely recognised subject in the relevant world literature during the last decade. Many studies acknowledge it as a violation of numerous international agreements and human rights protocols, “conducted by criminals who are often members of well-organised crime networks. The traffickers transport victims within their own countries and, most frequently, across international borders; the victims are then stripped of their basic freedoms, sold as chattel, and forced to work as sex slaves or other labourers” (IOM, 2006). The International Organisation of Migration (IOM) states that “the victims are routinely raped, tortured and brutalised” (IOM, 2006). However, this is a very orthodox definition of human trafficking, which requires additional dimensions such as transnational migration, the informal sector, and gender.

Numerous organisations, which all aim to fight human trafficking, provide various definitions of the subject. The most widely accepted definition is in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children Supplementary to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (Palermo Protocol), to which Germany (15 November 2000), Turkey (13 December 2000), and Ukraine (15 November 2001) are all signatories. The protocol names human trafficking as ‘trafficking in persons’ and defines it as follows:

1. ‘Trafficking in persons’ shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power, or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude, or the removal of organs.
2. The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) have been used.
3. The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered ‘trafficking in persons’ even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article.

‘Child’ shall mean any person below 18 years of age.

By autumn 2009, 117 countries had signed and ratified the Palermo Protocol, which had entered into force in 2002 (UN, n.d.). The entire protocol including the definition above constitutes the essence of the 117 signatory governments’ conceptualisation of human trafficking and of their approach to counter-trafficking.

The number of signatories to the Palermo Protocol shows the high level of attention directed to counter-trafficking. Numerous conferences have been held, and special units for counter-trafficking such as the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UNGIFT), the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking under the jurisdiction of the US State Department, and various forms of interagency task forces to monitor and combat trafficking have been established in different countries. Along with the rapid institutionalisation of counter-trafficking during the last decade, the amounts spent on the issue also attest to the weight of meaning attributed to counter-trafficking. In 2005, for example, the US granted approximately $95 million to 266 programs in 101 countries for counter-trafficking; in 2004 this budget was approximately $82 million. Additionally, the same year the US spent $25 million on 92 different domestic counter-trafficking projects (US Department of State, 2006a, 2006b). Another example is the European Union’s (EU) efforts on the issue, such as the €9.98 million border assistance project at the Moldova-Ukraine border for providing on-the-job training and advice to Moldovan and Ukrainian officials (EUBAM, 2008). High levels of economic capital have been invested in counter-trafficking. Besides, many experts have been hired by different institutions in order to create knowledge about the issue, to develop training programmes, and to train a wide range of officers, varying from police to judiciary personnel, from health personnel to social workers. Therefore, a specific body of knowledge concerning human trafficking and methods of countertrafficking have been produced. This means that large amounts of cultural capital (in terms of Bourdieu) and labour have also been invested in the field. Counter- trafficking has thus become a complex transnational field with numerous stakeholders of different institutional types such as governments, supranational and international agencies, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) interacting with each other via policies, projects, and joint actions.

AIM of this Study

When reviewing the literature on human trafficking, one observes that all of it has been written by people and institutions that fight human trafficking, who are, in other words, counter-traffickers. In other words, human trafficking, as first internationally recognised in 1904, has always been defined and redefined by institutions. There is no denying the fact that there are people, most of whom are migrants, who find themselves in various degrees and forms of exploitation. It is important to recognise that various migratory and exploitative practices are classified by actors other than the migrants themselves and that these actors define, make, and implement social policies and politics which restrict and regulate the selected and delineated group of practices and affect the everyday rules of migration processes. Although at first sight human trafficking appears to be the origin of counter- trafficking, as it is generally recognised, in practice counter-traffickers name and set the rules of the phenomenon. Institutional actors such as states and supranational and international civil society organisations come together to define some migratory and labour practices as human trafficking and develop institutions, policies, and methods to fight it. Therefore, the actors involved, the way they are connected to each other, and the power relations among these actors construct the conditions of defining human trafficking and hence have a direct effect on the definition and on the construction and implementation of policies to fight it. This very process will be analysed in this study, using Bourdieu’s concepts, as the transnational field of countertrafficking (TFCT). This study investigates counter-trafficking as a transnational field and tries to show how connected stances against a ‘global social problem’—transnational policies—are produced internationally in general and nationally in particular with the example of three countries defined with different positions according to the phenomenon: Ukraine as a ‘source country’, Turkey as a ‘transit and destination country’, and Germany as a ‘destination country’. In short, this study investigates the relation between the structure of the field and the produced discourses and policies within the construction of counter-trafficking and proposes the concept of ideological closure. Ideological closure is defined as the readable part of doxa, as the group of common definitions and practical logics shared by all actors in the field. To reveal ideological closure in the transnational field of countertrafficking is to reveal the power relations in the field and the blind spots in counter-trafficking policies at the same time.

An Overview of this Study

The next chapter (Chapter 2) situates this study among other studies on counter-trafficking, then presents the analytical tools of Pierre Bourdieu, namely field, capital, and doxa, in relation to counter-trafficking and introduces the concept of ideological closure. Chapter 3 investigates how human trafficking is constructed as a scientific object and analyses how countertrafficking is constructed through mainstream and critical scientific studies. Chapter 4 analyses the construction of the transnational counter-trafficking field at the international level and the ideological closure through the merging of the discourses of migration/crime control (mainstream) and human rights (criticism). Chapter 5 describes the methodological views of Bourdieu that have enlightened this study and provides information on the field research conducted in three countries as well as the methods used. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 analyse the construction of the transnational counter-trafficking field in Ukraine, Turkey, and Germany, respectively. Lastly, Chapter 9 provides a general evaluation of this study and situates ideological closure as a tool for explaining the evolution of the field vis-à-vis other approaches classifying resemblance of policies among different states such as institutional isomorphism and convergence theory.

2 Analysing Counter-trafficking in Terms of Field

Discussions on Counter-Trafficking

Counter-trafficking, which is sometimes called anti-trafficking, means all efforts, policies, studies, and civil and governmental actions against human trafficking. In the literature, counter-trafficking is discussed under three main approaches: policy analysis, norm development and implementation (counter-trafficking as a norm), and best practice studies.

The policy analysis approach (Morehouse, 2009) examines policy parameters (such as age, gender, ethnicity, etc.) and the inclusion of different parameters in time, suggests a general evaluation of these parameters, and provides statistics which are considered to be closely correlated with the unknown actual instances of human trafficking.

Studies that investigate counter-trafficking as a norm try to show how it has developed. Locher (2007, pp. 84–87) states that counter-trafficking was very quickly accepted as a norm internationally because it is based on some other well-established norms, such as human rights, women’s rights, antiviolence, gender equality, and anti-slavery. In parallel to Locher’s argument, Hauksdottir (2010) suggests that norm entrepreneur states such as Sweden developed the norm of counter-trafficking and convinced the other states, whereby she underlines the importance of the role of Nordic states.

Best practice studies on counter-trafficking projects (UN Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC], 2007a, 2007b) and law enforcement (Gallagher & Holmes, 2008; Wilson & Dalton, 2008) generally describe successful counter-trafficking projects.

Both the policy analysis and the norm development approach rely on rational choice theory and concentrate on standards evolving in time. These studies model the world of diplomacy and of transnational spaces as comprising states which are rational actors making choices according to their interests. They suggest that standards are created at the international level and then are diffused into the national level. Hence, according to these studies, norms are set through top-down processes.

On the other hand, the ‘anti-trafficking norm’ (Locher, 2007) or the very concept of human trafficking includes both problematisations and problem-solving logics. Not only the norm parameters but also internationally accepted perceptions (comprehensions, concepts, and discourses) change as time goes by. These discourses include common assumptions, classifications, and principles.

Different practices of irregular migration and various types of intensive exploitation of irregular migrants are facts in many countries. Eventually these facts become the same problem, namely human trafficking, when described at a certain level of abstraction. At the level of practice, in every region, in every country, people experience different types of trafficking and are affected differently from various sides of the issue. In actual life, one may come across complex cases such as a Dutch police officer investigating a mafia group forcing Nigerian women into prostitution by using some religious rituals; an anti-trafficking activist working with the problems of Thai women in Germany, trying to shield them from exploitation as cleaning ladies under spoiled contracts, etc. What kind of social magic allows these people from different cultures and diverse professions, witnessing different problems (as various as the phenomena of illicit trade in young children used in camel races, organ trafficking, adoption, and exploitation of migrant workers in farming or the sex trade), to produce similar understandings and compatible approaches in dealing with these problems?

Despite the variety of experience, the field of counter-trafficking produces common ground for the understanding of the issue as a social problem and disseminates norms of fighting it. In order to understand the process of the construction of counter-trafficking, one needs a sociological perspective that captures the interactive functioning of actors (as people and as institutions), social structures, and the production of mainstream understanding, which will be problematised in this study as ideological closure of fields. This necessity leads one to use a Bourdieusian perspective and paves the way to a sociological perspective on the process defined as ‘development and implementation of the counter-trafficking norm’ or development and implementation of antitrafficking policy parameters. This study will concentrate on the production of mainstream understanding of the issue at the transnational level and on the construction of counter-trafficking fields at the national level using the examples of Ukraine, a source country, Turkey, a transit country, and Germany, a destination country. It investigates the structure of the countertrafficking fields, the connection between the structure of the fields and internalised perceptions of the subject—ideological closure. In other words, it investigates links between field and doxa.

Political Tensions of Counter-Trafficking

One of the challenging aspects of making a sociological inquiry on counter-trafficking is the fact that it has become a popular subject both in the media and in the academic world. Moreover, the concept of human trafficking implies phenomena such as prostitution, slavery, and violence, which everyone already has an opinion about. Bourdieu (Bourdieu, Dauncey, & Hare, 1998, p. 15) quotes Durkheim that “the main difficulty in making sociology was caused by the fact that everyone feels they have an innate understanding of it” and continues: “Social objects are hidden behind a screen of pre- constructed discourses which present the worst barrier to scientific investigation, and countless sociologists believe that they are talking about the object of study when they are merely relying on the discourse which, in sport as elsewhere, the object produces about itself, whether through its officials, supporters or journalists” (Bourdieu et al., 1998, p. 15). Bourdieu (Wacquant, 1989, p. 33) stresses the principle of breaking with common representations in order to construct a truly scientific object and to ensure that one does not take one of the representations as the object of the study (in order to realise this, the ‘objectification of the subject of objectification’, or reflexivity, is necessary, as stated in Homo Academicus [Bourdieu, 1988]). On the other hand, representations of the subject have to be taken seriously in order to identify problems—especially political problems— related to it (Bourdieu, 1988; Bourdieu & Waquant, 1992).

More specifically this means that the problem of the recognition of human trafficking and the construction of counter-trafficking cannot be isolated from political problems such as migration, expansion of migrant labour markets, informal production, service industries, and prostitution, as well as the intersections of class, gender, race, and ethnicity. And neither human trafficking nor the institutionalisation of counter- trafficking can be taken for granted as isolated phenomena. They must be considered within the political and historical context—including domination relations within the social space of international relations—in which they emerge.

While considering the recent developments in counter-trafficking, one inevitably sees the promotion of (or the trend of) neoliberal regulation of the commercialisation of sex—in other words, the extension of rules of neoliberal economics to commercial sex markets—which goes hand in hand with the expansion of the ‘entertainment sector’ (meaning sex tourism, massage clubs with sexual services, the pornographic media industry, brothels, etc.), as well as the trend towards neoliberal imposition of international minimum work standards for non-nationals, which goes hand in hand with the crises of capitalism and the increase in labour mobility, along with the simultaneous emergence of secondary or third-level labour markets based on ethnicity and gender. These two trends affect all national and transnational fields of counter-trafficking. Moreover, both trends stand in close relation to the political problems surrounding human trafficking, such as migratory rights, the rights of working migrants, gender equality, and racism. Therefore, one has to objectify the field of counter-trafficking without omitting the political tensions, historicity, and power relations within and among different fields of counter-trafficking.

Construction of Counter-Trafficking in Terms of Field

This section will briefly explain ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Analysing Counter-trafficking in Terms of Field
• 3 Construction of Human Trafficking as a Scientific Object
• 4 Construction of the Transnational Field of Counter-trafficking
• 5 Methodology
• 6 Ukraine
• 7 Turkey
• 8 Germany
• 9 Ideological Closure of the Transnational Field of Counter-trafficking
• References
• Index