In September of 2013, I traveled to TrollhĂ€ttan, Sweden to deliver a talk on human trafficking scholarship at the University West Center for Studies of Diversity, Equality, and Integration.1 I had planned to speak primarily about intra-feminist debates surrounding human trafficking, and how questions surrounding prostitution, or sex work, had led feminist activists down strikingly different advocacy paths. The question-and-answer period afterwards, however, didnât get that far. Instead, I was bemused to hear, the Swedes insisted I return to my opening remarks concerning the US governmentâs definition of human trafficking. Could it really be true, they asked, that the US definition didnât privilege movement and migration? That movement was not even required?
Yes. In striking contrast to Europe, where movement and migration are considered an essential component of the meaning of human trafficking, a person in the United States can be considered a victim of trafficking without ever leaving the street on which they live.2 While there are a number of reasons for this difference, in this book, I suggest that the primary explanation has to do with the political environment. In contrast to Europe, where the issue of human trafficking arose in the context of European integration and concerns about economic migration from the East,3 trafficking gained a place on the US political agenda by virtue of feminist and faith-based activism. For these self-described âabolitionists,â human trafficking is, first and foremost, about the prostitution of women and children. From this abolitionist perspective, migration might very well be a risk factor, but domestic prostitutes are no less victimized.
I open with this story to suggest that, United Nations protocols and regional agreements notwithstanding, conceptualizations of human trafficking are less clear-cut and universally accepted than commonly believed. All too often, discussions of trafficking occur in which participants rely on different, or even incompatible, definitions of the issue, but fail to recognize that they are talking about very different things. The result is poor research, poor policies, and poor outcomes for people who are abused and exploited.
In this chapter, I establish that human trafficking is a contested conceptâthat its meaning is neither straightforward nor unproblematic, and that constructions of trafficking reflect constellations of competing interests and values. The chapter ties the poor quality of quantitative data on human trafficking to its conceptual fluidity and contentious politics, and then goes on to explain why there is no technical or apolitical solution to this problem. Next, it provides an overview of the bookâs aims and arguments, and a justification for the US case. Finally, the chapter introduces my methodology and research design, and concludes with a preview of the plan for the book.
Constructing the Problems of âHuman Traffickingâ
Few today would dare question the existence of a global human trafficking problem.4 Over the past two decades, human trafficking has come to be seen as a growing threat to increasingly vulnerable state borders and marginalized populations. Speaking before the UN General Assembly in 2003, US President George W. Bush called attention to a humanitarian crisis in which âEach year an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 human beings are bought, sold or forced across the worldâs borders.â5 Bush continued,
Those who create these victims and profit from their suffering must be severely punished. Those who patronize this industry debase themselves and deepen the misery of others. And governments that tolerate this trade are tolerating a form of slavery.6
The presidentâs words echoed the position that the UN itself had taken three years prior when it approved the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime.7 Likewise, there are at least 15 other major intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) with significant counter-trafficking efforts, including the International Labor Organization (ILO), the International Organization on Migration (IOM), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the European Union (EU), the Organization of American States (OAS), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the World Bank.8 As human trafficking âgained policy recognition and financial resources were mobilized, many more players entered the increasingly competitive field of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) activity.â9 Indeed, millions of dollars have been routed through civil society by individual states and IGOs to support the â3Pâ framework of prevention, protection, and prosecution first articulated in 1998 by US President Bill Clinton.
Yet, despite the tremendous amount of resources that have been devoted to anti-trafficking, the very meaning of âhuman traffickingâ remains heatedly contested. Anti-trafficking discourses link disparate practices and persons in often inconsistent or contradictory ways, and widespread disagreement remains as to the ârealâ nature of trafficking and how it differs from other forms of irregular migration, commercial sexual activity, exploitative labor, and slavery.10 Given the consensus that the problem of human trafficking is significant and compels counter-trafficking action, but that there is sharp disagreement about the nature of the problem (what trafficking is as a problem), it is crucial that we ask how and to what effect âhuman traffickingâ is constructed through competing anti-trafficking discourses.
Disputes over meaning are highly significant: they set the terms for how scholars, activists, legislators, and citizens conceive of the problem and its victims, perpetrators, causes, and solutions. Within the United Statesâa country with enormous yet under-recognized influence on counter-trafficking interventions pursued worldwideâhuman trafficking has largely been conceptualized in abolitionist terms. From an abolitionist perspective, terms such as âhuman traffickingâ and âtrafficking in personsâ are euphemisms, almost offensive in their failure to convey the true problem at hand: the evil of slavery. Committed to a fight against âmodern-day slavery,â the neo-abolitionists represent a powerful, if unexpected, political alliance between radical feminists and evangelical Christians that has been highly successful in shaping counter-trafficking policy and practice at home and abroad. How did this alliance come to be? What made agreement between what are otherwise staunch opponents possible? What are the implications for how trafficking is conceived and acted upon, in the United States and abroad? These are the central questions of this book.
As the twenty-first century waned, âthere was no comprehensive international definition of trafficking whose basic elements were acceptable to State parties and key stakeholders.â11 In the words of Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UNâs Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women:
At present there is no internati...