Maintaining the Carceral Echo Chamber: Tensions Within the Anti-Trafficking Movement in Canada
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica64120221071Keywords:
human trafficking, sex work, human rights, non-governmental organizations, CanadaAbstract
The anti-trafficking movement in Canada has grown rapidly since the
late 2000s, branding itself as a feminist human rights-based effort to eliminate
human trafficking and taken up by the Government of Canada to position itself
as a benevolent leader on the international stage. Focusing on the membership
of an anti-trafficking coalition in Toronto, Canada, this article explores how the
movement creates moral spaces that validate a wide range of anti-trafficking
efforts. In unpacking how tensions between members are navigated through
the suppression of direct conflict and an ethos of collaboration, it demonstrates
how carceral feminist approaches to imagining and eliminating human
trafficking continue to remain dominant despite a growth in the efforts of
individual members to promote harm reduction and reduce the criminalization
of marginalized communities.
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