Trafficked Enough? Missing Bodies, Migrant Labour Exploitation, and the Classification of Trafficking Victims in Singapore

Abstract

Critical geographical research has recently drawn attention to representations of vulnerable or exploited groups that articulate racist or neo-colonial imaginations, including where these geographical imaginations are implicated in the classification and characterisation of groups for legal purposes. In the case of vulnerable groups of migrants such practices can be invoked to create distinctions that justify the socio-spatial exclusion or containment, thus oftentimes having profound implications for real people who must manoeuvre the consequences of classification. The paper builds on this strand of inquiry by exploring the imaginaries surrounding trafficking victimhood and the implications of classification for temporary labour migrants in Singapore into trafficked and non-trafficked categories. I argue that in the Singaporean context government interest in maintaining the current labour/migration regime is equally as significant as racist and neo-colonial imaginations and intersect with the latter in productive ways to sort vulnerable migrants into categories of trafficked and non-trafficked. Keywords: Human trafficking Language: en