Re-politicising Anti-Trafficking:Migration, labour, and the war in Ukraine

Drawing on multi-method research, this article demonstrates that the risks of large-scale trafficking due to the war in Ukraine were mitigated by granting Ukrainians more extensive rights than typically afforded to refugees. This shows the advantages of rights-based approaches to migration and labour exploitation. We draw on Bakhtin’s and Zizek’s work on the carnivalesque to argue that mainstream anti-trafficking initiatives – which are depoliticised and able to win support and funding from across the political spectrum – often serve merely as theatrical and distracting sideshows diverting attention from more impactful activities and the normalised exploitation within capitalism. However, avoiding trafficking is insufficient if Ukrainian citizens and residents still endure exploitative conditions. A weakened legal framework for workers’ rights within Ukraine alongside inadequate labour protections across Europe have facilitated such exploitation. In contrast to the depoliticised stance of the anti-trafficking industry, this article concludes that more explicitly political actions supporting migrants' rights, workers' rights, and access to welfare and public services will not only more effectively challenge trafficking but also prevent other exploitation of migrants

Politics without principle:potential borders and the ethics of anti-trafficking online

Anti-trafficking has been spreading in a novel way, with moral certitude (where human trafficking is deemed uniquely wrong, and this wrongness is taken as a founding principle for anti-trafficking action) accompanied by little or no accountability. This moral certitude drives anti-trafficking networks to spread across borders, just as it is assumed that trafficking will. The paper critiques this certitude and spread of anti-trafficking by developing ideas around borders, potential, and ethics. Massumi (2007) analyses the move to a potential politics, which prioritises what “[c]ould have, would have” happened and acts against this potential as if it is a ground for certitude. After Massumi, this paper argues that online anti-trafficking practice relies on potential borders: borders between legal and illegal, and the borders between states, are increasingly blurred by action against what might potentially be trafficking. Following Campbell (1993: 3-4) we critique the claims to “moral certitude” and principle in anti-trafficking and argue for deeper ethical engagement with the needs of others. Against the spread of anti-trafficking through potential borders, we argue that exploitation should be challenged through an ethical response to those marginalised by capitalism today. Against the unprincipled politics of the anti-trafficking industry, we advance a politics without principle that foregrounds our ethical obligation to respond to others

Re-politicising Anti-Trafficking:Migration, labour, and the war in Ukraine

Drawing on multi-method research, this article demonstrates that the risks of large-scale trafficking due to the war in Ukraine were mitigated by granting Ukrainians more extensive rights than typically afforded to refugees. This shows the advantages of rights-based approaches to migration and labour exploitation. We draw on Bakhtin’s and Zizek’s work on the carnivalesque to argue that mainstream anti-trafficking initiatives – which are depoliticised and able to win support and funding from across the political spectrum – often serve merely as theatrical and distracting sideshows diverting attention from more impactful activities and the normalised exploitation within capitalism. However, avoiding trafficking is insufficient if Ukrainian citizens and residents still endure exploitative conditions. A weakened legal framework for workers’ rights within Ukraine alongside inadequate labour protections across Europe have facilitated such exploitation. In contrast to the depoliticised stance of the anti-trafficking industry, this article concludes that more explicitly political actions supporting migrants' rights, workers' rights, and access to welfare and public services will not only more effectively challenge trafficking but also prevent other exploitation of migrants

Giving us the ‘Biggest Bang for the Buck’ (or Not): Anti-trafficking government funding in Ukraine and the United Kingdom

The focus of this paper is on government anti-trafficking policies and funding allocations in two case-study countries, Ukraine and the United Kingdom (UK). The paper discusses specific ways, or ‘vectors’, in which human trafficking has been discursively constructed by national policies and the solutions that have been offered to counteract it. It relies on publicly available information and information obtained via Freedom of Information requests from public authorities in these countries to explore the extent to which anti-trafficking funding allocated by national governments supports or unsettles such representations. A broader definition of human trafficking has been encoded into anti-trafficking policies in Ukraine, implicating migratory pressures and violation of irregular migrants’ human rights as the root causes of trafficking. However, the ability of the government to act upon this definition is limited by the ongoing socio-economic and political crises in Ukraine. This is in comparison to the politicised construction of trafficking by the UK government as a threat from international organised crime and ‘illegal’ immigration. The paper concludes that governments in both countries put their anti-trafficking money where ‘their mouths are’: crime, immigration and victim care in the UK, and awareness raising, victim care and training of ‘frontline professionals’ in Ukrain

Fact Sheet: Trafficking in human beings and public opinion in Great Britain

No abstract available

Fact Sheet: Trafficking in human beings and public opinion in Ukraine

No abstract available

Fact Sheet: Trafficking in Human Beings and Public Opinion in Hungary

No abstract available

Understanding Public Knowledge and Attitudes towards TrafÞcking in Human Beings, Part I

No abstract available