‘Traffickers and their victims’: anti-trafficking policy in the United Kingdom
Authors
Sharapov, KirilAffiliation
University of BedfordshireIssue Date
2015-08-20Subjects
political economybiopolitics
ignorance
neoliberalism
trafficking in human beings
exploitation
government policy
Subject Categories::L410 UK Social Policy
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This paper relies upon the ‘what’s the problem represented to be?’ approach to policy analysis to interrogate key representations of human trafficking implicit in the UK government’s anti-trafficking policy. It identifies six policy vectors, or representations, of human trafficking embedded within the policy, including organized crime, ‘illegal’ immigration, and victim assistance as three primary vectors; sexual exploitation/prostitution, poverty in countries of victims’ origin, and isolated instances of labour law infringements as three secondary vectors. In addition, a series of assumptions, which underlie the current interpretation of trafficking, are also identified. By exploring what the problem of human trafficking is represented to be, the paper also provides an insight into what remains obscured within the context of the dominant policy frameworks. In doing so, it highlights the role of state-capital entanglements in normalizing exploitation of trafficked, smuggled and ‘offshored’ labour, and critiques the UK’s anti-trafficking policy for manufacturing doubt as to the structural causes of human trafficking within the context of neoliberalism.Citation
Sharapov K (2017) '‘Traffickers and their victims’: anti-trafficking policy in the United Kingdom', Critical Sociology, 43 (1), pp.91-111.Publisher
SAGE Publications LtdJournal
Critical SociologyAdditional Links
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0896920515598562Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
0896-9205ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1177/0896920515598562
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