Abstract
Responding to Human Trafficking by Julie Kaye foregrounds settler colonialism as an analytical intervention in anti-trafficking policies and practices in Canada. By adopting a critical approach to the role of the state in shaping and reproducing conditions that mark racialized and Indigenous women as “other,” Kaye unearths settler colonialism as a structure, rather than an event, positing that Indigenous bodies and those belonging to racialized women are constructed as both at risk and a risk, which makes them vulnerable to criminalization, discipline, and control. Kaye’s work is both timely and pressing, illuminating how policy makers and other representatives of the state reify the systematic marginalization of Indigenous and racialized women while simultaneously claiming alliance and solidarity with members of these communities.
Drawing on 56 one-on-one interviews, three group interviews, and two focus groups with formerly trafficked individuals, government officials, nongovernment representatives, and law enforcement in the Canadian cities of Vancouver, Calgary, and Winnipeg, Kaye argues that migrant, Indigenous, and other racialized women who participate in sexual labor become portrayed as “unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved” (p. 9). This dehumanization and objectification reproduces and reinforces the stigma and criminalization members of these communities face at the hands of Canada’s nation-building projects, which depend on the surveillance and criminalization of Indigenous and racialized women so that the state may position itself as a savior and as acting in the best interests of women who are represented as in need of rescue. This narrative is invoked to justify increased spending and state intervention in national security, immigration, and border security—initiatives that further marginalize the women they claim to empower.
Kaye problematizes the binary differentiation between international and internal trafficking, arguing that social activism efforts aimed at internal trafficking are thought to embody a heightened evolution of awareness, implying that policy makers invoke this shift to symbolize and assert their alleged responsiveness to research on trafficking. Nongovernment actors and state representatives have a stake in framing efforts aimed at human trafficking as social justice–oriented, as this framing works to further legitimize the implicit narratives of victimhood associated with migrant women, Indigenous women, and other racialized women. To capture the perspectives of frontline actors, Kaye incorporates the standpoint perspectives of sex workers and Indigenous feminist advocacy networks, who affirm that state and nongovernmental intervention is harmful to participants in various forms of sexual labor.
By positing that racialized and Indigenous women who participate in the sex trade or other forms of sex work are inherently victims of coercion, violence, and forced participation, these actors reinscribe the inherent riskiness associated with racialized bodies. By centering settler-colonialism, the victim–savior paradigm invoked by Kaye’s analysis is compounded by the legacy of colonization and Indigenous genocide. Kaye offers a refreshing approach to racialization, showing how essentialist approaches to racialization fail to capture the complex ways Indigenous and racialized women must manage their bodies and participation within sexual labor.
Kaye concludes by deconstructing the imperative that underscores feminist research in the context of trafficking, which asks how one might draw upon scholarship to combat inequality. The author imparts that there is inherent discomfort in decolonial processes, and that this discomfort is what catalyzes our desire to work toward change. Instead of operationalizing this urge to do, Kaye suggests first investing this energy in understanding what has been done.
This text is appropriate for any advanced course on race, class, gender, sexuality, and Indigenous studies.