‘Trafficking’ as a Modern Slave Trade? Mobility, Slavery and Escape

Abstract

‘Human trafficking’ is described as a process that reduces its victims to objects of trade — mere things or commodities to be bought, used and discarded — and it is routinely compared to the transatlantic slave trade by politicians and by the new abolitionists (Bravo, 2011). ‘Human trafficking is the modern day slave trade — the process of enslaving a person’, Free the Slaves (FTS, 2014b) tells us, and according to Ambassador John Miller, the man George W. Bush appointed to lead the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons from 2002: ‘We need to bring the same passion and commitment to this struggle that the abolitionists of this country brought to the struggle against slavery based upon color 160 years ago’ (2006: 4). Such is the US Government’s commitment to this struggle that it has donned the mantle of the world’s moral police officer, establishing a Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Office that collects and publishes in its annual TIP Report information ‘about other nation states’ efforts to combat trafficking’, ranking them in tiers according to their degree of compliance with the standards set by the US’ Trafficking Victims Protection Act (2000), and threatening ‘under-performing’ nations with sanctions (O’Brien and Wilson, 2015: 124). But how can states combat this ‘modern day slave trade’?