Refuge
Volume 21, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 53-65

Travel agency: A critique of anti-trafficking campaigns (Review)

Sharma N.*
  • a Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Windsor, Ont., Canada

Abstract

This paper offers a critical evaluation of anti-trafficking campaigns spearheaded by some in the feminist movement in an attempt to deal with the issues of unsafe migrations and labour exploitation. I discuss how calls to "end trafficking, especially in women and children" are influenced by - and go on to legitimate - governmental practices to criminalize the self-willed migration of people moving without official permission. I discuss how the ideological frame of anti-trafficking works to reinforce restrictive immigration practices, shore up a nationalized consciousness of space and home, and criminalize those rendered illegal within national territories. Anti-trafficking campaigns also fail to take into account migrants' limited agency in the migration process. I provide alternative routes to anti-trafficking campaigns by arguing for an analytical framework in which the related worldwide crises of displacement and migration are fore-grounded. I argue that by centering the standpoint of undocumented migrants a more transformative politics emerges, one that demands that people be able to "stay" and to "move" in a self-determined manner.

Author Keywords

[No Keywords available]

Index Keywords

migrant worker

Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-11144266996&partnerID=40&md5=8a5642dec3a48fdeafaea91597e49c1c

ISSN: 02295113
Cited by: 61
Original Language: English