The essentializing and exceptionalising of trafficking allows for racist and sexist narratives, pushing the rest to the periphery.

The anti-trafficking movement in the United States has long relied on a narrative of exceptionalism and individualism. The modern movement began with a push to establish a coherent legal framework to address forced labour and allow its victims to seek justice. A few high-profile and egregious cases were the impetus for this advocacy, giving advocates salient stories to tell of individuals harmed by trafficking. The resulting law treats human trafficking as a crime meriting extraordinary punishment and extraordinary remedies. This narrative has proven incredibly powerful and continues to be used to garner attention and concern for the cause. It raises funds and opens hearts. It has created a ‘bubble’ of protection and access for survivors who can convince the state of their victimhood. But it also effectively silences critique. Who, after all, wants to question the number of dollars spent or the possibility of harmful side effects when people are being trafficked and enslaved? 1 Would we not want any and all action to be taken, no matter the cost, if it happened to us or our loved ones? News coverage of human trafficking amplifies this approach. A 2016 review of trafficking-related articles published by US news media found that journalists simplify the issue by focusing on the worst cases.2 They may do so out of a desire to tell an ‘unambiguous’ story, to provoke action and sympathy, but they leave out the complexity needed for real solutions.3 This problem is not confined to the US: a 2019 review of UK print media by the NGO Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) found that the majority of trafficking-related media articles focus on the criminal prosecution of perpetrators. Very little coverage explored structural drivers like labour market issues, racism, immigration policy, and regulation.4 Yet these are precisely the drivers of trafficking that need to be addressed in order to make progress in the fight against it.5 However well intentioned, focusing exclusively on exceptional stories of trauma and redemption can actually harm survivors and those at risk of trafficking. The 2016 news analysis found that journalists employ a ‘hierarchy of victimhood’ where the ideal victim is ‘weak, vulnerable, and trafficked by a shadowy, dangerous offender.’6 By focusing on the worst cases and telling stories of powerless victims, news stories obscure the complexities of victims’ lives and make it difficult for those who fall short of this standard to come forward. These stories re-affirm a government approach which requires survivors to convince the state that their trauma is extreme enough to merit support and care. This narrative props up vigilante groups who showily ‘rescue’ victims only to later abandon them to fend for themselves.7 If survivors of trafficking are constantly exceptionalised, it can be hard for them to unite with those similarly situated to build power. And there are those who intentionally use these narratives to advance carceral, nationalist, and misogynist policies. Grantees of NEO Philanthropy report that the bubble of protection has burst under the current administration of President Donald Trump, and survivors who are not US citizens now can rarely obtain the remedies to which the law entitles them. Meanwhile, the Trump administration proudly claims to be fighting human trafficking, painting pictures of women being brought captive over our borders by ‘bad hombres’, while restricting abortion access and tearing families apart. The anti-trafficking field has recoiled and pointed out the blatant racism and cynicism in Trump’s policies, yet the public still responds to these images. They lock into a deeply held idea that trafficking is about individual victims suffering exceptional crimes, rather than unjust socio-economic and political systems. And we, as anti-trafficking advocates, are partially responsible for that idea being so deeply held. The individualist narrative in anti-trafficking work is especially ironic in the United States, with our history of chattel slavery. Chattel slavery cannot be understood unless one thinks in terms of systems—economic, legal, racial, and cultural—and their effects. A failure to reckon with the legacies of transatlantic enslavement has produced contemporary inequalities that are evident in patterns of unemployment, poverty, and homelessness amongst Black people. It is also reflected in inequalities in the prison system, and in the way policing, courts, and post-release surveillance play out depending on race. Recognising this has produced a contemporary prison abolitionist movement that refers to incarceration as ‘modern slavery’, not just because today’s prisoners are economically exploited, but because the forms of anti-Blackness found in plantations and prisons are affectively and historically linked. Chattel slavery also spawned scientific racism: the categorising of ethnic groups as biologically inferior, which has affected even non-Black people of colour. For these reasons, when US anti-trafficking activists, some of whom call themselves ‘modern day abolitionists’, push for prosecutors to send more people to prison and fail to acknowledge the role of systems in creating exploitation, they expose their ignorance of the wider dynamics and history of their own field.