Spectrums of Exploitation and Violence: “Trafficking” and the

Invisible Hand of the State

Julia O’Connell Davidson

University of Nottingham

Think “Trafficking”• A business worth 5 billion

US$ annually• Tens of thousands of

migrants separated from loved ones, terrorized, forcibly confined and dehumanised

• Often held in appalling conditions, charged exhorbitant fees for basic necessities, many reported deaths from lack of access to health care

• http://www.mycuentame.org/immigrantsforsale

"I believed they would kill my family… I wanted to escape but everything was locked. We were locked up all the time. I was told I need to go with clients... I felt very bad. The first time I wasn't able to talk afterwards."

Dominant Discourse on Trafficking

• Human trafficking is taking place everywhere on a vast scale – a $7 billion a year industry

• “Let’s call it what it is: modern slavery” Costas, 2008

Not Like TransAtlantic Slavery

• African victims of transAtlantic slavery had no prior desire to move to the Americas;

• Those who were transported from Africa to the Americas were moved into societies where ‘slavery’ was one of the established and recognised statuses used to define employment relations.

• A ‘slave’ existed in the sense that s/he was legally defined as such, and it is therefore possible to speak of, count, and study slaves in the Americas from the 15th to 19th centuries as a specific, bounded group.

• ‘Victim of Trafficking’ does exist as an administrative category, but only a small number of persons are assigned this status. E.g., between 2000 and 2007 just 1,362 persons recognised as victims of human trafficking in the United States (despite estimates of over 50,000 a year).

• ‘Trafficked persons’ do not exist as a prior, objective or legal category of persons that can form the object of research or policy. (One of many reasons to take all statistics on the problem with a HUGE pinch of salt)

• The question of who counts as a VoT and on what basis is hugely contentious.

Migration, Coercion, Exploitation and Sex Work

• Practices of 3rd party organisers of prostitution span spectrum from brutish thuggery through to highly ethical and principled

• Leads to continuum of experience, not either/or dichotomy

• At what point on the continuum is abuse and/or deception so serious and exploitation so extreme that it should be deemed ‘trafficking’?

Debt Financed Irregular Migration and ‘Sex Trafficking’

• Violence and close surveillance, but not universal or consistent, and ‘the woman who has regularly paid down the debt for a time is granted more freedom’ (Cole and Booth 2007).

• All control and restriction ends when debt is paid off

• Violence and control used primarily as a mechanism to enforce rapid debt repayment, not to construct a chattel slavery-like relationship

• “The madam charges us too much money… 80 million lira (E40,000). All of them charge you a lot of money. But it’s good that they brought us here. They helped us in a way. They are second to Jesus Christ.” (Testai, 2008: 73)

Trafficking/Smuggling Distinction Unworkable and Irrelevant from a Human Rights

Perspective• ‘Ironically, the strength of the Nigerian trafficking

networks lies in the element of reciprocity between traffickers and victims… The victims' commitment to the pact makes it particularly difficult to combat this form of trafficking’ (Carling, 2005).

• If there is any reciprocity, how can this be ‘trafficking’/slavery?

• But if it is ‘smuggling’, then smuggled persons can be subject to exploitation just as violent and brutal as that which is normally deemed to be the fate of ‘Victims of Trafficking’

From Victim of Trafficking to Illegal Immigrant

• 2003 – of the 295 irregular migrants picked up in raids on London brothels, 290 immediately deported

What gets framed out by dominant discourse on trafficking?

• The large numbers of migrant workers who find themselves exploited and abused having moved to a foreign country through perfectly legally channels.

• The vulnerability to abuse and exploitation that is created by ‘illegality’ and deportability

Immigration policy driven deaths in Europe 1993-2011: documented 15,551 Border deaths US/Mexico 1994-2009: estimated between 3860 and 5600

Reporting ‘Trafficking’• Investigate and explain context for migration, and the

relationship between immigration policies and vulnerability to abuse and exploitation

• Investigate state-sponsored (not just criminal) violence, coercion and confinement

• Follow through on stories – “rescue” may not be the fairy tale ending

• Write stories that reflect the diversity of sex work, not only about ‘trafficking’

• Ask people who actually sell sexual services what rights and protections they feel they lack, and how anti-trafficking measures are affecting them

• http://www.mycuentame.org/immigrantsforsale

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuCihj75ur4