Bringing the problem home: The anti-slavery and anti-trafficking rhetoric of UK non-government organisations

Nick Turnbull,Rose Broad

doi:10.1177/0263395720962402

Abstract

Rhetoric is a way to explain policy problem framing by recognising the practical necessity to persuade audiences in contextual situations. Modern slavery and human trafficking is a complex and emotive problem, simplified through rhetorical demands to motivate an audience of supporters. This article analyses rhetoric by 212 UK anti-trafficking and anti-slavery non-government organisations (NGOs) to uncover rhetorical practices and their effects on policy framing, supplemented by archival research to compare past and present anti-slavery oratory. Our data show NGOs use rhetoric to motivate supporters and promote a humanitarian problem frame, in opposition to a state-driven security frame. Findings confirm other research in identifying an emphasis on female victims and on sexual over labour exploitation. Past and present rhetoric are equivalent in terms of liberal, Christian values (ethos) and appeals to pathos through sympathy for victims. Historical rhetoric is distinctive in arguing for the equal human status of slaves, whereas contemporary activists argue victims are denied agency. Contemporary rhetoric represses the question of migration, whereas past rhetoric is more deliberative. Rhetoric varies with the requirements of persuasion related to contextual distance, between unlike humans in the past, but in regard to geographical distance today.

Highlights

The framing of policy problems is a key theme in public policy scholarship, with a variety of approaches proposed to explain it
Rhetoric is a productive way to think about the framing of problems, because it integrates the analysis of ideational framing with the practical imperative for orators and writers to persuade audiences
We argue that rhetoric is an appropriate dimension of political practice, intersecting the framing of problems and relational political dynamics in regard to them

Summary

Introduction

The framing of policy problems is a key theme in public policy scholarship, with a variety of approaches proposed to explain it (see 6, 2018). In this case, reduced distance prompts state policy responses to address criminal activity across borders and sets up a framing conflict in terms of security (minimise threat and exclude violators) versus humanitarianism (protect exploited victims) These contextual factors point towards contemporary anti-slavery policy and activism differing from the past. Rhetoric is used in defining slavery either as a crime or humanitarian problem, in making arguments about labour exploitation, and in persuading audiences to take an interest in, and be active about, a problem because it is close to them Thereby, it helps to structure the policy problem (Finlayson, 2006; Hoppe, 2010), including the relative distance between alternative answers (what constitutes fair work) and the distance between policy actors’ value positions. We shall see that an explicit concern for distance is one of the main distinctions between past and present anti-slavery rhetoric

Method

Conclusion