Contrary to widespread belief, sex trafficking also targets LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) communities. Contemporary social and political constructions of victimhood lie at the heart of regulatory policies on sex trafficking. Led by the US Department of State, knowledge on LGBT victims of trafficking constitutes the newest frontier in the expansion of criminalization measures. These measures represent a crucial shift. From a burgeoning range of pre-emptive measures enacted to protect an amorphous class of 'all potential victims', now policies are heavily premised on the risk posed by traffickers to 'victims of special interest'. These constructed identities, however, are at odds with established structures. Drawing on a range of literatures, the core task of this article is to confront some of the complexities and tensions surrounding constructions of LGBT trafficking victims. Specifically, the article argues that discourses of 'exceptional vulnerability' and the polarized notions of 'innocence' and 'guilt' inform hierarchies of victimhood. Based on these insights, the article argues for the need to move beyond monolithic understandings of victims, by reframing the politics of harm accordingly.

No abstract

Drawing on the concept of utopia to reflect upon the emerging field of queer criminology and José Esteban Muñoz’s account of queer theory as essentially utopian, we draw two conclusions. First, we suggest that queer criminology is currently limited by tinkering at the edges with piecemeal reforms instead of focussing on radical, wholesale changes, and second, that queer theory contains within it the potential for a more holistic reimagining of the social world. In doing so, we question rigid cis/trans binaries and reject accounts of trans/gender that ignore the role of structural harm. We draw on Ernst Bloch’s concepts of ‘abstract’ and ‘concrete’ utopia to suggest that while queer criminology has succeeded in producing largely ‘abstract’ utopias, it struggles in translating these into ‘concrete’ ones. By introducing examples of trans literary utopias as potential transformative cultural forms, however, we consider the potential of queer theory for realising ‘concrete’ utopia through a more radical rethinking of the social world.

The antithesis between a criminalization and a human rights approach in the context of transnational trafficking in women has been a highly contested issue. On the one hand, it is argued that a criminalization approach would be better because security and border control measures will be fortified. On the other hand, it is maintained that a human rights approach would bring more effective results, as this will mobilize a more holistic solution, bringing together prevention, prosecution, protection of victims and partnerships for delivering gendered victims' services. In the field of victims' services, galloping US-influenced developments have mobilized victimspecific strategies and institutionalized a "victim industry" vocabulary: "reflection period", "screening process", "cooperation in exchange for protection", "happy trafficking", "renew boutique" etc. Underlying the construction of this vocabulary is the evolving notion of a phantom threat posed by organized crime (Hobbs 2013, p.226; Van Duyne 1996). This chapter re-animates Dick Hobbs' (2013, p.231) suggestion that, in post-industrial societies, market forces overwhelmingly shape agency. Extending this to "sex trafficking", mediated through market engagement, this emerging victim industry is an exemplary case of domain expansion (Hobbs 2002; Best 1997; Hobbs 2013; Back 2014). Revisiting the claims made under the initial antithesis between criminalization and human rights, the recent metamorphosis of gendered victims' services due to financialization, neoliberalization and debtgovernance is explored.

In 2015, queer theorist Heather Love called for her fellow queer scholars to recognise the centrality of the study of norms and deviance to 'the intellectual genealogy' of queer studies. She argued that queer approaches and understandings, with their 'embrace of a politics of stigma' and 'reliance on a general category of social marginality', were 'borrowed' from mid-20th century social science studies of deviance (Love, 2015: 75). For most criminologists, it is axiomatic that this tradition is equally central to our own genealogy, and our concerns with deviance, normativity, social control and the production of power and marginalisation. Despite this shared set of concerns, queer theory and criminology have little contemporary crossover. We share Love's concern around this state of affairs, but where she is primarily concerned about the stakes for queer studies, the focus of our Special Issue is on what criminologists can gain from greater engagement with the analytic and conceptual tools of queer theory.