Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
Volume 31, Issue 6, 2013, Pages 988-1003

Mobilising the child victim: The localisation of human trafficking in singapore through global activism (Article)

Yea S.*
  • a Humanities and Social Science Education, National Institute for Education, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616, Singapore

Abstract

In this paper I examine the local mobilisation of the dominant global framing of the problem of human trafficking through 'the female child victim' in child sex trafficking advocacy campaigns. The child victim is a symbolic and emotive frame embodied in the Third World female child and enacted through her helplessness and experiences of extreme violence and (sexual) abuse in trafficking situations across diverse contexts globally. I use The Body Shop's (TBS's) 2009-12 global campaign against child sex trafficking as my site for discussion of the way frames in global human rights activism move into local contexts, often coming to define the ways contemporary human rights problems are understood and reproduced locally. I draw on ethnographic research on human trafficking in Singapore to explore the ways in which the child victim frame is mobilised in a specific locale through the involvement of a local nongovernmental organisation and university student actors as part of TBS's campaign strategy. Although recent geographical scholarship on social movements has embraced a networked approach, I argue for heightened attention to the geographies of scaled (re)iteration, or local mobilisation that occurs as transnational activism connects with particular places. The role of framing in embedding global human rights issues locally in transnational activism is central to this process.

Author Keywords

activism framing Children Singapore Local mobilisation Human trafficking

Index Keywords

violence Singapore [Southeast Asia] Child Welfare human rights trafficking

Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84889576441&doi=10.1068%2fd15411&partnerID=40&md5=ffaabd31e00f52818e86e2e9a1274fb5

DOI: 10.1068/d15411
ISSN: 02637758
Cited by: 14
Original Language: English