Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking

Trafficking has long deserved a sharp dissection. As [Jo Doezema] points out, feminists have been among those at the forefront the push to analyze the power involved in constructing social issues. Yet, with a few exceptions, in the case of trafficking most research has been positivist, seeking to la...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Labour (Halifax) 2011, Vol.68 (68), p.242-245
Main Author: Crago, Anna-Louise
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Abolition of slavery
Abolitionists
Consent
Discourse
Doezema, Jo
Human rights
Human trafficking
Migration
Myth
Narratives
Nonfiction
Political activism
Prostitution
REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS
Sex industry
Slave trade
Social construction
Women
Workers
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Summary:Trafficking has long deserved a sharp dissection. As [Jo Doezema] points out, feminists have been among those at the forefront the push to analyze the power involved in constructing social issues. Yet, with a few exceptions, in the case of trafficking most research has been positivist, seeking to lay out the "facts" about trafficking or touching upon power only as much as it is seen as a cause of the "reality of trafficking." Doezema examines such constructions and the power dynamics between the "discourse masters" who give meaning to "trafficking in women" in research, media, law and policy, and the overlapping categories of women, migrants and sex workers who become "the object of their concern." To do so, she investigates the genealogy of trafficking narratives within the "white slavery" panic at the turn of the century in Western Europe and North America. She then puts the elements of the latter in dialogue with the narratives being constructed at the negotiations around the UN Protocol on Trafficking. Doezema has previously argued that narratives of trafficking have often coupled their arguments for women's protection with narratives that removed possibilities for women's agency. However, here Doezema goes a step farther in recognizing that not just dominant but oppositional groups have claimed a stake in constructing trafficking. Indeed, law-and-order groups on the right and anti-globalization groups on the left; anti-migration groups and migrant groups; labour activists and anti-labour corporate lobbies; and evangelical Christians and structural feminists have found common ground in holding up "trafficking" as, in Geoge W. Bush's words, "a special evil." In order to account for this complexity and to escape what Doezema terms the rather "bloodless" nature of discourse analysis, she foregrounds the multiple political conflicts at play by turning to theories of myth and ideology.
ISSN:0700-3862
1911-4842