Rethinking Emancipation
The Rhetorics of Slavery and Politics of Freedom in Anti-Trafficking Work in India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 18948967 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Padma Govindan (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 511-529 |
| Publication date | 2013-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Interventions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1369-801X • E-ISSN: 1469-929X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369801x.2013.849421 |
| OpenAlex | W2325762816 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 21 |
This essay considers the rhetorical and discursive logics that underpin the history, philosophy and programme strategies of International Justice Mission (IJM), a US Christian non-profit organization that has pioneered the use of ‘raid and rescue’ (partnering with law enforcement to raid places of work) as a strategy for addressing trafficking in the Global South. Emancipation from bondage is the conceptual and moral imperative that undergirds IJM's mission, along with many other anti-trafficking organizations that, like IJM, imagine themselves as ‘new abolitionists’ fighting trafficking as a modern-day form of slavery. By drawing on commonly held assumptions about the nature of slavery and freedom, IJM offers a problematic vision of what the liberated subject of rescue should look like: a non-white woman who literally moves from darkness to light because she has been rescued by IJM. This vision of emancipation enables IJM to enact a particular set of strategies and programmes that are carceral and coercive (such as indefinite holding in government remand homes) in the name of saving victims of trafficking. By way of contrast, the essay examines the programming and mission of SANGRAM-VAMP, a non-profit advocacy organization and sex workers' union in Maharashtra, India. By analysing the various conflicts members of SANGRAM-VAMP have experienced with the IJM field office in Maharashtra, this essay concludes by describing a transformation of the ground on which anti-trafficking initiatives could potentially base the project of doing justice. In placing the radically different politics of SANGRAM-VAMP and IJM in tension, the essay asks whether a counter-discourse is possible by reimagining emancipation as a project that foregrounds collaborative processes of action that are decoupled from the action of a single emancipator
Emancipation · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Law · Sex work and related issues
Of Raids and Returns
Trafficked by a Friend
Where do good girls have sex? Space, risk and respectability in Chennai
From ‘house of horrors’ to ‘sensitive’ governance
A qualitative interpretive meta-synthesis of evangelical Christian sex trafficking narratives
Carceral domesticities and the geopolitics of Love Jihad
Scooty girls are safe girls
From an Event to a Process
Slavery and human progress
The Politics of Property
On the Move for Love
Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters
Sex at the Margins
Militarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism
Running from the Rescuers
South Asian border crossings and sex work
Muckraking and stories untold
Loose women or lost women? The re-emergence of the myth of white slavery in contemporary discourses of trafficking in women
A Critique of the Global Trafficking Discourse and U.S. Policy
Masks
Searching for Justice for Body and Self in a Coercive Environment
"The Sexual Politics of the "New Abolitionism
Thinking Trafficking, Thinking Sex
Trafficking, Migration, and the Law
The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,14 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2025 (7) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |