Troubling the Victim/Trafficker Dichotomy in Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking

The Unintended Consequences of Moralizing Labor Migration

Bibliographic Data

ID5813867
AuthorsFrank A Warren (0000-0001-7326-7142, John Brown University, corresponding author), Warren Warren
Year2012
Volume19
Issue1
Pages105-105
Publication date2012-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueIndiana Journal of Global Legal Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1080-0727 • E-ISSN: 1543-0367
PublisherIndiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2979/indjglolegstu.19.1.105
OpenAlexW2024726114
LanguageEN
Citations received17

This analysis examines the violent predator/innocent victim paradigm employed by many governmental and nongovernmental organizations active in monitoring and combating transnational human trafficking. One common treatment of the issue moralizes victims as innocent women and children who have been deceived and coerced into exploitative sex work; another constructs human trafficking as modern day slavery which takes a variety of forms and requires foreign intervention to organize rescues and redemption. Both views see human trafficking, most especially sex trafficking, as an exceptional crime with distinct predators and victims and cultivate moral outrage as a strategic tool to combat coerced labor. This essay draws on my ethnographic interviews in Colombia from 2007-2011 and analyzes trial evidence from prosecutions of human traffickers inColombian courts to interrogate the polarized predator/victim discourse.In practice, many Colombian women reject the victim label for their overseas work.Court cases document alternative renderings of women's subjectivity and portray organized crime as a transnational mix of licit and illicit businesses with wider social norms and divisions of labor.In practice, Colombian legal cases reveal women accepting a variety of jobs in trafficking

Irregular migration · Unintended consequences · Sex work and related issues

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