From Human Trafficking to Human Rights: Reframing Contemporary Slavery

5. The Sexual Politics of U.S. Inter/National Security

C h a p t e r 5 The Sexual Politics of U.S. Inter/National Security Laura Hebert Introduction Once an invisible issue, the problem of human trafficking has captured public and political attention over the past decade, as evidenced by the many books, films, and college courses that today speak to the subject, as well as the myriad anti-trafficking laws and policies that are now in place at the national and international levels. This is a development welcomed by activists around the world who have struggled to bring international visibility to exploitative labor conditions associated with globalization. But, as Alison Brysk observes, the implementation of anti-trafficking efforts has also become a “relatively easy way [for states] to enact modern norms and burnish humanitarian credentials, without undertaking structural political or economic reform” (Brysk 2009, 14). Political leaders today commonly articulate trafficking as a human rights violation that requires the adoption of a victim-centered approach. The U.S. government, in particular, has characterized its enactment of the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) and its institutionalized monitoring of trafficking initiatives internationally as indicative of its leadership role in promoting international human rights standards. The TVPA explicitly identifies trafficking as a form of modern-day slavery, the continuation of which is deemed contrary to the country’s founding principles The Sexual Politics of U.S. Inter/National Security 87 that uphold the “inherent dignity and worth of all people” (U.S. Senate 2000, 1468). But a review of core provisions of the TVPA raises questions of the extent to which the Act represents a progressive departure from the more typical security-oriented response to trafficking, and thus whether it is capable of targeting the broader social structures of gender, ethnicity, class, and global North/South relations that have made possible the enslavement and involuntary servitude of humans in both the past and the present. Moreover, with the support of antiprostitution abolitionists, the U.S. government has used its platform in the trafficking arena to export its moral opposition to prostitution through prohibiting the appropriation of anti-trafficking funds for organizations that do not explicitly condemn the practice (U.S. Senate 2003, 12), serving to perpetuate a “trafficked victim” archetype that acknowledges only those totally deceived or subject to extreme forms of violence as “innocent” and worthy of assistance. The U.S. case illustrates that although the framing of trafficking as a human rights issue may positively signal the legitimization of human rights norms in domestic and international political relations, the concept of human rights is also vulnerable to cooptation for purposes that may be contrary to international human rights principles. In the United States, the language of “human rights” and “human rights violations” is usually reserved for discussions of other states. In this essay, I turn the critical lens inward. I begin by engaging the question of what it means to adopt a human rights approach to trafficking, before turning to an examination of whether U.S. policies and practices fulfill international human rights standards. Building on an analysis of the consequences of restrictive immigration policies for trafficking survivors in this country, I argue that the government’s construction of trafficking as externally driven and experienced ignores how the physical and psychological integrity of international “Others” has too often been sacrificed in the name of U.S. security. Probing the constitutive relationship between gender and U.S. inter/national security reveals the self-interested impulses behind the TVPA, while also exposing the lack of self-reflexivity among U.S. leaders regarding the human rights implications of their domestic and foreign policy decisions. I conclude the essay by arguing that it is precisely through revealing how the privileging of state security over the welfare of trafficked persons has proven counterproductive to the goal of eradication that spaces are opened for reenvisioning anti-trafficking 88 Laura Hebert policies as instruments for the advancement of human rights norms and practices. The Conceptual Framing of Human Trafficking Although “trafficking” has entered mainstream political conversation over the past decade, the term remains highly contested. It is not uncommon for policy makers, academics, and activists to be working with different definitions of trafficking even when studying the same cases, which invariably influences who is considered to be a “victim,” how cases of trafficking are handled by state and nonstate actors, and what recommendations are made with prevention in mind. The closest...