From Rescue to Representation: A Human Rights Approach to the Contemporary Antislavery Movement

Abstract

Current efforts to end contemporary slavery represent a fourth wave of an Anglo-American abolitionist movement. Despite this historic precedent, there is little agreement on the nature of the problem. A review of current academic discourse, movement frames, and policy approaches suggests that six perspectives predominate: a prostitution approach focused on sexual exploitation of “women and girls”; a migration approach focused on the cross-border flow of migrants; a criminal justice approach focused on law and enforcement; a forced-labor approach emphasizing unfree labor; a slavery approach focused on trafficking in comparative-historical context; and a human rights approach centered on individual rights. This article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and advances an expanded version of the human rights approach.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Shareen Hertel for clear and actionable editorial guidance and to the journal's anonymous reviewers for their encouragement and insight. Thanks also to Joel Quirk, Michele Clark, Beth Dunlap, and Kirsten Foot for feedback on earlier drafts of this piece.

Funding

Partial funding for this study was provided by the National Science Foundation (Award no. 1131019), as well as the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Center for the Study of Social Movements and Social Change, both at the University of Notre Dame.

Notes

1. I am thankful to Michelle Clark for this observation.

2. I am thankful to an anonymous reviewer for helping me to clarify this point.

3. The use of the phrase “trafficking for sexual exploitation” is intentional, as it avoids the sensationalist reification found in alternate usages such as “sex trafficking” and, even worse, “sex slavery.”

4. While some refer to these camps as “neoabolitionists” and “sex radicals,” I have intentionally chosen a terms that do not cede the “abolitionist” framing to one camp nor designate the other as “radical.”

5. I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for rightly pointing out that feminist abolitionists are not the simple moral purists they are characterized as.

6. It is important to reiterate here that the United States’ legislative use of the term “trafficking” to include sedentary and in situ exploitation (e.g., intergenerational bonded labor) significantly complicates the matter.

7. See Mattar (2011) for a comprehensive overview of the legal vein of the criminal justice approach.

8. Groundwork for this approach has been laid by a number of scholars, including Alison Brysk, Kevin Bales, Anne T. Gallagher, and Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick (see Bales 2012; Brysk 2005, 2011, 2012; Choi-Fitzpatrick 2012; Brysk and Choi-Fitzpatrick 2012a; Bales and Choi-Fitzpatrick 2012; Gallagher 2009, 2012; van den Anker 2012).

9. See Bernstein (2010) and Agustin (2007).