Abstract
This article explores the impact that nationality can have on a person’s experience of being identified as a victim of trafficking in the UK. Responses to individuals and disparities in rates of recognition depending on nationality are cause for great concern. The rhetoric and the response to women who have experienced trafficking varies considerably depending upon the citizenship, residency and documentation status of the individual, particularly highlighting the differential treatment of trafficking cases of British women, European Union nationals, and third-country (non UK, non EU) nationals, the majority of whom are also asylum seekers. This differential treatment is played out in multiple ways, many of which result in women’s inability to realise procedural and substantive rights. The article examines the use of official “identification” mechanisms that place women into the administrative category of “victim”, and the central role of the asylum system in all areas of UK anti-trafficking responses.
Highlights
This article explores the impact that nationality can have on a person’s experience of being identified as a victim of trafficking in the UK
The rhetoric and the response to women who have experienced trafficking varies considerably depending upon the citizenship, residency and documentation status of the individual, highlighting the differential treatment of trafficking cases of British women, European Union nationals, and third-country nationals, the majority of whom are asylum seekers
The article examines the use of official “identification” mechanisms that place women into the administrative category of “victim”, and the central role of the asylum system in all areas of UK anti-trafficking responses
Summary
Trafficking is, inter alia, an immigration crime. —Damien Green, Minister of State (Immigration), Government of the United Kingdom[14]. Trafficking is, inter alia, an immigration crime. —Damien Green, Minister of State (Immigration), Government of the United Kingdom[14]. The above quote from the UK Minister responsible for immigration, a portfolio that includes trafficking in human beings, is reflective of the tendency of UK policy and practice to reduce a complex human rights violation to a simple immigration problem. When the UK signed the United Nations Trafficking Protocol in December 2000 (though it would not be ratified until 2006), there were no substantial legislative or policy responses to trafficking in persons. The first identified UK priority was updating the criminal and immigration legislation an approach that would set the tone for UK priorities with regard to trafficking for the foreseeable future
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