How Power and Narratives Maintain Sex Trafficking Networks

2021 marks 188 years since slavery was officially banned in Australia, and 156 years since it became illegal in the United States. If there is something the world can boast in unison, it is the abolition of slavery, as the United Nations “abolished” slavery with the adoption of the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others on 2 December 1949. However, today, the International Labour Organisation reports that about 40.3 million people are victims of some form of modern slavery, ranging from forced labour to sex slavery ("Forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking”, 2017), with about 15,000 of these cases in Australia as of 2016. Sociologists have attempted, at length, to explain the circumstances that lead to human trafficking and its results (forced sex trade and slavery). What has emerged clearly, regardless of the theory being fronted, is that the sex trade and modern slavery industries rely heavily on power and networks to flourish. What is less clear, but is emerging as the spotlight turns on the industry, is how the narratives surrounding sex work contribute to the silencing and further exploitation of victims, and to increasing the power of the exploitation networks.

Robert K. Merton posits, in his anomie theory of deviance, that individuals and groups, when blocked from achieving the cultural goals of “success”, turn to deviant behaviour as a means of coping with the pressures of perceived failure (Thio 1975). This theory presents the most common lens through which sex trafficking is viewed: the poor are economically and socially vulnerable, and as such, are easier to coerce into sex trade than the rich. This is just one paradigm of the power that enables the sex trafficking industry: the vulnerable are preyed upon, usually by those with greater social, political or economic power, and includes other forms of oppression that create a dominant vs oppressed duality, including gender, age, nationality, community support and abuse history. If the social inequalities that made the victim get caught in sex trafficking are not addressed, then rescue efforts will never be enough.

Another power dynamic that is often overlooked, is that between the victim and their law enforcement rescuers. Aside from the reports of violence during anti-trafficking raids (this will be discussed in greater detail further on), the manner in which these raids are conducted immediately creates an imbalance of power, where the victim is almost entirely at the mercy of law enforcement. There are numerous reports of unethical rescuing, including corruption and some victims wind up being retrafficked (Preble and Black, 2020). For victims who contemplate escaping on their own, there is always the risk of the attempt failing, then compounding their debts, as the power their traffickers have over them is always a threat, since many are put through constant surveillance and isolated from networks that could offer support (Magar, 2012).

Ending sex trafficking is further complicated by sex work and prostitution, and the narratives surrounding them: the reality is not always what it seems. The anti-trafficking movement in the United States, which has since expanded its efforts through international collaboration with other governments (trans-border sex trafficking is a booming industry), often utilises raids on sex trafficking rings to rescue the victims for rehabilitation. As prostitution is still illegal in most North American States, prostitution rings and sex trafficking rings are often conflated under illegal activities that need to be stopped. Recent studies have shown that this conflation could result in severe unintended consequences, and law enforcement may inadvertently wind up hurting the very victims they were trying to rescue. Ditmore and Thukral (2012) conducted interviews with women who had been picked up during anti-trafficking raids. The expectation would be that all of them would have been victims of force or coercion. However, at the time of the raid, ten out of the fifteen study participants did not identify as having been trafficked, and instead believed they were voluntarily in sex work. None of the women reported having been interviewed by the law enforcement agents to determine whether they were trafficked, and one was jailed on a prostitution charge before it came to light that she was trafficked. We see here that conflating voluntary sex work and sex trafficking can lead to victims being jailed, or to willing sex workers being unintentionally “rescued”.

Another example of these unintended consequences is presented by Ahmed and Seshu (2012) in their study on anti-trafficking in India. In their paper, they present the Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP) collective, an organisation leading in the sex worker’s movement in India. Founded at a time when HIV cases were on the rise among sex workers, the organisation prioritises the rights and health of sex workers, providing them with contraceptives and sexual healthcare. In an anti-trafficking raid on a brothel owned by one of the leaders of the organisation, a sex worker was arrested and “rehabilitated”. Such incidents are unfortunately not rare. The problem is that adult prostitution is legal in India. When willing sex workers are arrested for “rehabilitation”, they are often separated from the resources that VAMP has availed to them, including protection and healthcare.

To further complicate the issue, there have been reports that anti-trafficking raids are often traumatic for the victims. In both papers discussed above, the victims report that they were unaware of who was conducting the raid, and they were handled roughly, with Ahmed and Seshu reporting one of their respondents to have been dragged out by her hair (2012). The raids have long-lasting traumatic effects on the people they are supposed to be saving. There are cultural templates by which laws and public perception are aligned, and unfortunately these create narratives that do not allow us to fully see the true victims of sex trafficking. De Angelis (2017) shows how sex trafficking is often considered secondary to either illegal immigration or prostitution rather than a standalone crime, and that both of these perspectives are harmful. Treating it as an unintended consequence of illegal immigration invokes the penalty for the latter, including detention and deportation, which perpetuates the cycle by putting the victims back in the vulnerable situations from which they were first recruited. Conflating sex work and sex slavery could also mean that rescue efforts cease out of respect for sex work, and the victims are lost. This, in fact, is a narrative that sparks debate in feminist discourse regarding the legalisation of sex work (Ing Eur Nimmons, 2020).

While sex trafficking may seem like a straightforward problem with a straightforward solution, there is need to recognise the complexities in its resolution. Dismantling sex trafficking networks requires more than just enthusiastic neo-abolitionist efforts in the form of anti-trafficking raids. Though many government agencies (particularly in countries where sex work is illegal) are hesitant to separate sex slavery from sex work, it is necessary to do so, if rescue efforts are to benefit those for whom they are intended. True social, political and financial empowerment of vulnerable groups must also run concurrently if any real lasting results are to be realised.

References

Ahmed, A., & Seshu, M. (2012). We have the right not to be ‘rescued’…”: When anti-trafficking programmes undermine the health and well-being of sex workers. Anti-Trafficking Review, 1(103), 149-168, link.

De Angelis, M. (2017). Narratives of Human Trafficking: Ways of Seeing and Not Seeing the Real Survivors and Stories. Narrative Works, 7(1), 44-63, link.

Ditmore, M., & Thukral, J. (2012). Accountability and the use of raids to fight trafficking. Anti-Trafficking Review, (1), link.

Forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking. International Labour Organization. (2017). Retrieved 16 September 2021, from link.

Ing, Eur Nimmons, S., & FRSA, F. C. F. C. (2020). Sex Work and Sex Trafficking through Critical Eyes, available at link.

Magar, V. (2012). Rescue and rehabilitation: A critical analysis of sex workers’ antitrafficking response in India. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 37(3), 619-644, link.

Preble, K. M., & Black, B. M. (2020). Influence of survivors’ entrapment factors and traffickers’ characteristics on perceptions of interpersonal social power during exit. Violence against women, 26(1), 110-133, link.

Thio, A. (1975). A critical look at Merton's anomie theory. Pacific Sociological Review, 18(2), 139-158, link.