Not in My “Backyard Abolitionism”

Abstract

In 2008, the San Francisco-based antitrafficking nonprofit organization Not for Sale launched a campaign advocating "backyard abolitionism," training American citizens to seek out and identify victims of human trafficking as part of their everyday activities. Based on two years of ethnographic participant observation with two evangelical Christian human trafficking outreach projects in Southern California, this article examines the processes of what I term vigilante rescue in human trafficking. The enthusiasm around this brand of civilian vigilantism mirrors contemporary trends in urban governance, including community policing and civilian neighborhood patrol as modes of law enforcement engagement that operate outside the formal dictates of "state control." The nonstate actors discussed in this paper are empowered not through professional skills or legal authority, but rather through merging American concern with human trafficking with moral panics concerning race, class, and migration as markers of sex trafficking. Situating new trends in human trafficking vigilante rescue within the extant literatures on neoliberal governance globally, this article argues that vigilante rescue enforces state goals of surveillance and policing of working-class immigrant women in Los Angeles. These activities further racial, gender, and class divides that extend sexual state politics and privilege criminal justice rather than social welfare solutions to human trafficking.

Client care strategies, stressors, and solutions in frontline anti‐trafficking work

“…So, I had this girl, she's living with me right now actually, and she's like, "What about this?" And so, I'm like, "We'll just drive Though her efforts of taking on more work might feel antithetical to her duties as a foster care administrator, these practices are in line with anti-trafficking interventions that encourage concerned citizens to conduct outreach and surveillance (Shih, 2016). As well, there is something about her description here that feels edgy or extreme.…”

“…Soderlund (2013) describes the historical and current terminology of human trafficking as "preloaded with dynamic chains of signification" (p. 180). Human trafficking signifies a specific kind of "dirt," as well as a specifically extreme response that can veer into vigilantism (Shih, 2016) -ignoring the role these conditions play in broader anti-trafficking service provision ignores the complex ways frontline workers may react under redefined workplace conditions.…”

“…As well, in addition to being emotionally fraught, anti-trafficking efforts are heavily raced and gendered, stemming from the historical import of the "White Slave Panics" at the turn of the 20 th century (Doezema, 1999; SCHWARZ -541 Donovan, 2005) and stemming further into current interventions that veer into racial profiling (Kempadoo, 2015;Shih, 2016). Future research, including my own, must include the interplay between the demographics of service providers and the trafficked clients they serve, which has the potential to add another layer of emotional dirt to frontline work.…”

Social construction and the diffusion of anti‐trafficking laws in the U.S.

“…Turning to the former, the “victim” narrative has always featured prominently in discussions of human trafficking. Arguably, a key reason that the issue resonates with the public and policymakers is the ease with which it can be framed in emotionally compelling terms, specifically “the criminal victimization of vulnerable girls…who are held captive by nefarious predators and forced into commercial sex” (Bouchè et al, 2018, p. 1284; for criticisms see Gulati, 2011; Shih, 2016). While trafficking victims certainly elicit sympathy there is no reason to expect that they wield a great degree of political power—like other dependent groups such as domestic abuse survivors or children (Chanley & Alozie, 2001), victims generally have few resources, which places them at a decided disadvantage in terms of political mobilization.…”

Transnational feminist perspectives on human trafficking: Centering structures, institutions, and subjects.

“…Following in the traditions of critiques such as Mohanty's (1988), as well as feminist literature on rape and sexual violence, feminist criticisms of human trafficking often begin by unpacking the "victim label" and asking how such labels are made, experienced, and policed (see Haynes, 2007;Hill, 2016;Jackson, 2016;Murray, 1998;Shih, 2016;Showden & Majic, 2014). The binarism of the worthy trafficking victim posed against the (criminal) illegal or smuggled alien (Bernstein & Schaffner, 2004;Kempadoo & Doezema, 1998;Kempadoo, Sanghera, & Pattanaik, 2012;Sharma, 2003) is one that informs the different positioning of many human trafficking interventions, especially on the level of nation-states attempting to balance the human rights impulse (of protecting people from violence) against the desire to police borders.…”