Opportunity from Crisis? Organisational Responses to Human Trafficking in the UK

Abstract

This article analyses the effects on key organisations responsible for immigration control and law enforcement of the UK's signing in March 2007 and ratification in December 2008 of the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings. It shows how opportunities for organisational change and innovation arose from the 2006 crisis in the UK immigration system and also looks at how narrative constructions of the issue of human trafficking, of migration control and of public management more generally provided important frameworks for interpretation of ostensibly new and challenging issues. We show how the 2006 crisis in the immigration system caused by the ‘foreign prisoners’ scandal’ created opportunities for adaptation of existing organisational roles and narratives and for the development of new ways of working which, in turn, prompted some innovation and change in UK responses to human trafficking.