Trafficking Policy, Meaning Making and State Violence

Abstract

This article reviews critical literature on sex trafficking policy through a cultural studies lens. It argues that the conflation of ‘trafficking’ and prostitution that pervades anti-trafficking policy makes trafficking victims out of sex workers. On another register, anti-trafficking policy creates ‘victims’ through curtailments on mobility and work eligibility that make workers more dependent on third party managers and less able to secure assistance when these parties abuse the power that the state has effectively granted them. The article calls upon policy makers to undertake the policy making process with sex workers’ continued experiences of the state as a primary source of violence and exploitation in view.