Law Commons^™

Troubling The Victim/Trafficker Dichotomy In Efforts To Combat Human Trafficking: The Unintended Consequences Of Moralizing Labor Migration, Kay Warren

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This analysis examines the violent predator/innocent victim paradigm employed by many governmental and nongovernmental organizations active in monitoring and combating transnational human trafficking. One common treatment of the issue moralizes victims as innocent women and children who have been deceived and coerced into exploitative sex work; another constructs human trafficking as modern day slavery which takes a variety of forms and requires foreign intervention to organize rescues and redemption. Both views see human trafficking, most especially sex trafficking, as an exceptional crime with distinct predators and victims and cultivate moral outrage as a strategic tool to combat coerced labor. This …