Lors des mobilisations associatives et des débats parlementaires en France, la victime de la traite apparaît sous une forme idéale : jeune femme, étrangère, naïve, innocente et vulnérable, elle nécessite protection au nom de la défense des droits de l’homme. Cette victime idéale devient suspecte dès que son statut légal ou son activité sont appréhendés. L’idéalité de la victime est dissoute dans les priorités nationales qui conduisent à se protéger des « indésirables ». La tension entre les priorités du national (...) et les principes universels produit une victime impossible, caractérisée par son absence. L’objet de cet article est d’analyser la production sociale de l’absence de la victime de la traite. La dernière partie de la présente contribution s’attache ainsi à montrer qu’au-delà d’une tension entre l’universel et le national, l’absence de la victime est aussi le résultat d’une relation sociale et des contraintes dans lesquelles sont pris les acteurs dans l’exercice de leur activité.During the mobilization by associations and the debates in the French parliament about the status of victims of trafficking in human beings, an ideal victim was presented. As a young woman – a naive, innocent, vulnerable foreigner – she needs to be protected in the name of human rights. However this victim becomes a suspect once attention shifts to her legal status or economic activity, and the ideal vanishes behind national priorities for protecting the country from « undesirables ». The tension between these priorities and universal principles produces an « impossible » victim, characterized by its absence. How has this absence of the « victim » of human trafficking been socially produced? Besides the foregoing tension, it also results from a social relation and from restrictions on the activities of the police, judges and associations. (shrink)

In this article, I interrogate how the UK government constructs and manipulates the idiom of the vulnerable female, trafficked migrant. Specifically, I analyse how the government aligns aspects of its anti-trafficking plans with plans to enhance extraterritorial immigration and border control. In order to do this, I focus on the discursive strategies that revolve around the UK’s anti-trafficking initiatives. I argue that discourses of human trafficking as prostitution, modern-day slavery and organised crime do important work. Primarily, they provide the government (...) with a moral platform from which it can develop its regulatory capacity overseas. It is not my intention to suggest that the government’s anti-trafficking plans are superficial, and that extraterritoriality is the sole driver. On the contrary, I argue that complex interrelationships exist and while the government’s interest in protecting vulnerable women from sexual exploitation may seem to be paramount, I assert that in fact it intersects with other agendas at key points. I consider how government action to protect vulnerable women in trafficking ‘source’ and ‘transit’ countries such as development aid and repatriation schemes relate to broader legal and political concerns about protecting the UK from unwanted ‘Others’. (shrink)

This article provides a critical analysis of the manner in which prostitution and trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation was ‘framed’ by official discourses in order to support the reforms in England and Wales contained within the Policing and Crime Act 2009. Drawing upon the recent work of Judith Butler, emphasis will be placed on how the schema of the vulnerable prostitute was fundamental to invoking emotional affects, which justified certain political effects, especially the move towards criminalising the purchase (...) of sexual services. However, on closer analysis the article will uncover an agenda influenced by law and order/morality, immigration and a ‘fear of the enemy’. Furthermore, it will be argued that New Labour’s framing of the problematic enabled the State to avoid dealing with the more difficult, but more urgent, issues of the differential distribution of wealth, precarity and the engendering of an ethical and global responsibility for the other. (shrink)

Sex work’s governance throughout the Commonwealth has historically been animated by the objective of rendering the sale of sex, and those who engage in such transactions, invisible. To achieve this end, lawmakers have characterized public, viewable sex work as a nuisance meriting criminalization. Although prohibition results in unequivocal perils for sex workers, governance strategies in this domain remain centred on criminalization. A new law in Canada, Bill C-36: the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, exemplifies this point. While Bill (...) C-36 purports to shift criminal law’s focus from sex workers to their clients and profiteers, it continues to expose sex workers who work in public view to criminal prosecution. It thereby preserves sex work’s characterization as a nuisance, offensive to a community’s senses and deserving of proscription. Although Bill C-36 proclaims to promote dignity and equality rights, it prioritizes the interests of communities over those of sex workers. In the result, this new law will revoke sex workers’ social and political citizenship and thwart their personal security. (shrink)