A thread on anti-human trafficking responses -- Throughout my PhD research, I have challenged the defining of #humantrafficking as an issue of criminal justice. In the early 2000s, human trafficking was predominantly seen as an international social problem. (1/9)

This social problem was largely focused on women’s rights, but the definition has evolved over time to be defined as a crime problem to be addressed through restrictive immigration policies. (2/9)

Social problems that do not have straightforward solutions, i.e. issues related to the effects of structural violence, are less likely to garner public support. Criminalising social problems provides a highly simplified and narrow solution of perpetrator v. victim. (3/9)

This provides a distraction from the enabling social conditions such as inequality or racism that are more difficult to solve. Yet, arguments of morality in defence of the criminal justice response to human trafficking have not disappeared. (4/9)

The more I have immersed myself in the anti-human trafficking world over the years, the more I have witnessed how the defining of what constitutes trafficking and freedom (and what does not) have resonated with early White Slavery campaigns. (5/9)

I could not ignore that these differing understandings of freedom and risk –at many times, well-intentioned – bore a significant, negative impact. (6/9)

Anti-human trafficking has become a tool to propagate an immigration agenda that harms the very people that activists and policy makers claim to protect. Women are merely powerless and vulnerable; refugees, migrants, and victims of labour exploitation are criminals. (7/9)

There are a lot of wonderful, compassionate people in this space, I do not deny that. But, we must stop allowing our moral agendas to address human trafficking as an issue of criminality. It harms ALL migrants. (8/9)

I’m still learning, and I certainly don’t always get it right, but I know we can do better to achieve structural reform – starting with protecting migrants’ rights. (9/9)