Sex Trafficking and Modern Slavery: The Absence of Evidence

228 Pages·2017·1.046 MB·English

by  Marie Segrave, Sanja Milivojevic, Sharon Pickering

Sex Trafficking and Modern
Slavery
Human trafficking and modern slavery have captured the imagination and attention of
the international community. This book builds on the authors’ first volume, Sex Traf-
ficking: International context and response. Much has changed since the first volume was
published, not least the shift away from sex trafficking to modern slavery as the dominant
focus in policy and advocacy. Yet, as the authors argue, little has changed with regards
to how nations respond. This volume re-examines the international counter-trafficking
scholarship and policy response, to offer an analysis based on original and new data. This
book lays the ground for specific forms of research and inquiry that are necessary to better
understand and respond to the range of exploitative practices and conditions that give rise
to human trafficking.
This book offers a detailed analysis of the dominant response to human trafficking,
which is framed by the criminal justice process. Examining the identification of victims,
the investigation of cases, victim support, prosecutorial decisions and repatriation prac-
tices, the authors draw upon original research from Australia, Serbia and Thailand: three
diverse nations that, like nations across the globe, have invested heavily in criminalisa-
tion as the dominant response to counter trafficking. They argue that exploitation sits
at the nexus of global migration patterns and emphasise the importance of speaking to
those directly affected by counter-trafficking policies and those directly involved in their
implementation in order to produce empirical data to inform how we make sense of the
numbers that are produced, the outcome of the policies and how we ought to determine
success in this context.
An empirical, criminologically informed opportunity to reconsider the dominant ways
of understanding and strategies of responding to human trafficking, this multi-disciplinary
book will be of interest to those engaged in criminology, sociology, law, political science,
public policy and gender studies.
Marie Segrave is an Associate Professor in Criminology at Monash University and leads
the Trafficking and Labour Exploitation research agenda of the Border Crossing Observa-
tory. She is also an ARC DECRA Fellow researching unlawful migrant labour, exploita-
tion and regulation (2014–2018).
Sanja Milivojevic is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at La Trobe University. Her primary
research interest is migration and borders. Sanja’s latest book Sexting and Young People is
published by Palgrave (with Crofts, Lee and McGovern).
Sharon Pickering is Professor of Criminology and Dean of Arts at Monash University. She
is co-director of the Border Crossing Observatory and author of 14 books.
“In sharp contrast to the myths and sensationalism that permeate anti-sex traf-
ficking initiatives, this impressive book draws on original empirical research in
three nations to expose the complex, but all-too-ordinary, dynamics that are at
the foundation of trafficking and exploitation, including barriers to citizenship,
border fortification, and economic and political marginalization. The authors
poignantly reveal the collateral damage caused by contemporary law and order
approaches to trafficking and persuasively argue that to significantly reduce
exploitation ‘a framework of response is needed where migration and mobility are
at the forefront.’ This book is absolutely essential reading for anyone willing to
honestly examine the sources of human trafficking so that we might end it.”
—Nancy A. Wonders, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice,
Northern Arizona University, USA
“Drawing on original and recent empirical research across such diverse settings
as Australia, Thailand and Europe, Sex Trafficking and Modern Slavery offers an
insightful analysis of contemporary counter-trafficking strategies and the ‘collat-
eral damage’ that they produce. The book does a wonderful job at systematically
debunking the persistent myths and assumptions about trafficking and makes for
fascinating reading. It will be of wide interest not only to critical feminist crimi-
nologists but to academics from a range of disciplines, as well as practitioners,
activists and policy-makers.”
—Katja Franko, Professor in the Department of Criminology and
Sociology of Law, University of Oslo, Norway
Sex Trafficking and Modern
Slavery
The Absence of Evidence
The second volume of Sex Trafficking:
International context and response
Marie Segrave, Sanja Milivojevic
and Sharon Pickering
Second edition published 2018
by Routledge
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business
© 2018 Marie Segrave, Sanja Milivojevic and Sharon Pickering
The right of Marie Segrave, Sanja Milivojevic and Sharon Pickering
to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by
them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
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explanation without intent to infringe.
[First edition published by Willan 2009]
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Segrave, Marie, 1979– author. | Milivojevic, Sanja, 1972–
author. | Pickering, Sharon, 1972– author.
Title: Sex trafficking and modern slavery : the absence of evidence /
Marie Segrave, Sanja Milivojevic and Sharon Pickering.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. |
“The second volume of Sex Trafficking: International context and
response.” | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017015124 | ISBN 9781138686762 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315542560 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Human trafficking. | Human trafficking—
Government policy. | Slavery. | Slavery—Government policy.
Classification: LCC HQ281 .S449 2018 | DDC 306.3/62—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015124
ISBN: 978-1-138-68676-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-54256-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Goudy
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To our families.

Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgements x
List of abbreviations/acronyms xi
Note on terminology xiii
Presentation of data xv
1 Introduction 1
2 Search and ‘rescue’ 25
3 In pursuit of justice: identifying victims within the
criminal justice system 56
4 In the care of the state 84
5 Prosecution 115
6 Beyond the criminal justice process: the return ‘home’ 145
7 Conclusion 177
References 191
Index 207
Preface
The title of this book is a provocation. To suggest that there is an absence of
evidence on sex trafficking, human trafficking and modern slavery is not entirely
true. There is evidence that these exploitative practices occur. We do not seek
to deny that these practices occur. However, the evidence is fraught: accurate
measures of prevalence are complicated to achieve. And while efforts to chase
the best evidence base of accurate measures of the size or frequency of exploita-
tion continue apace, we are concerned with the international response, and the
absence of evidence regarding the impact or effectiveness of counter-trafficking
practices. In the absence of evidence, many practices can continue unchallenged.
We believe the bar must be set higher, and that it must begin with a commit-
ment to interrogating the current response and being open to the possibility
that to end exploitation a different approach may be necessary. This book offers
evidence to suggest that some efforts are, at best, misplaced, and at worst are
counterproductive.
The original volume of this book was published in 2009. At the time sex
trafficking was the focus of counter-trafficking efforts, and we sought to ‘recast
the problem of sex trafficking and our expectations of global mobility and con-
trol’ (Segrave et al. 2009, p. xvii). We presented a detailed interrogation of the
response to human trafficking, via our findings from two large, rigorous quali-
tative research projects across three nations: Australia, Thailand and Serbia.
At the time, this was one of the few monographs published on human traf-
ficking that was based on original research. Our primary concern was the gen-
dering of trafficking and the feminisation of victimisation, which we argued
reinforced dominant narratives around the causes of human trafficking and the
requisite responses. We were concerned that the international human traffick-
ing paradigm ensured that the state is cast as the primary provider of benevolent
(masculine) protection against external threat, that border fortification was a
central site for the ‘protection’ of women, that security was the unacknowledged
foundation of responses to sex trafficking, that women were the exclusive (and
largely elusive) victims, that the rhetoric of human trafficking as a crime was a
self-sustaining rhetoric, and that the empirical evidence was limited and often
problematic.
Preface ix
It is almost a decade since the first volume was published. The driver for this
second volume is our firm belief that despite the shifting tide of exploitation
rhetoric – from sex trafficking to labour trafficking to forced labour to modern
slavery – our underpinning critique is even more pertinent. While there has been
a plethora of books, journal articles and commentary on the perils of human
trafficking and modern slavery, there remains a very limited evidence base, par-
ticularly in relation to holding efforts to address exploitation to account. We offer
this book not as a second edition, but a second volume: it includes data from our
previous volume, but it also includes more recently collected data from a number
of research projects we have been pursuing in the intervening years.
This volume has three key aims:
First, to connect the research to what is now a burgeoning field of crimmigra-
tion and the critical criminological scholarship of borders that interrogates con-
cerns raised in the original volume: that exploitation sits at the nexus of global
migration patterns, that increasingly restrictive components of border regulation
target specific populations reflecting the collateral damage of being defined as
a global non-citizen (as opposed to the celebration of the global citizen within
the context of the wonders of globalisation), and that individual motivation
to migrate for labour and survival is intimately connected to entrepreneurship
related to overcoming migration and labour restrictions. Our underpinning con-
cern is that this remains largely silenced, unacknowledged and unaddressed.
Second, that the inclusion of those directly affected by counter-trafficking pol-
icies and those directly involved in their implementation is essential. It enables
empirical data to be produced that can and should inform how we make sense of
the numbers that are produced, the outcome and impact of policies, and how we
ought to determine success in this context.
Third, this updated volume also contributes to the critical feminist crimino-
logical scholarship that has offered a detailed interrogation of, at times, devastat-
ing victim support mechanisms (see works of Bumiller, Andrijasevic, Goodey,
Weitzer and others). In contributing to this work, this book lays a foundation
for interrogating the politicisation of human trafficking and recognises that the
consequences of such politicisation have resulted in a significant body of rheto-
ric regarding human exploitation that does not translate to the experiences of
exploitation that many are experiencing. Importantly, we need to focus on the
harm such an approach can cause to men and women seeking to migrate (regu-
larly or irregularly) for work in low- and unskilled labour.
Human trafficking, forced labour, unlawful migration and slavery remain
politically loaded, empirically obtuse and ambiguous terms that fail to impact
on creating better livelihoods. The original volume argued that greater specific-
ity of the harms and the exploitation that is occurring, and addressing these in
turn, might arguably produce better outcomes. This new volume seeks to offer a
comprehensive review of many shortcomings, 15 years post the introduction of
the Trafficking Protocol, of national and international efforts to recognise the
interconnected nature of exploitation and regulation.