Abstract
In Panics Without Borders, Gregory Mitchell demonstrates how global sporting events serve as sites of conflict, contestation, and even stark dissonance and hypocrisy when it comes to interventions in human trafficking. Mitchell’s main field site is Rio de Janeiro, and Mitchell uses two particular global sporting events—the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games—as the focus of the book’s analysis. The author details how global dramatized concern over human trafficking inspires local governments to prioritize the appearance of combating human trafficking over the lived experiences and actual needs of those involved in the commercial sex trade. However, this book is not just about two isolated events. Mitchell’s stated purpose is to follow the discourse of anti-sex-trafficking advocacy across and through international borders in a comprehensive look at how international and national discourse intersect to influence specific and time-bound global sporting events. Thus, readers will find Mitchell following the course of anti-trafficking discourse much farther afield than Brazil. Mitchell recounts historical events and his own observations from field visits to similar events in Russia, Japan, and South Africa—even the Dallas Superbowl. The penultimate chapter examines World Cup preparations in Qatar, which makes this book particularly timely. As I type this review, the 2022 Qatari World Cup is underway and making international headlines.
While global in perspective, Mitchell generally succeeds in weaving together an analysis that is not only comprehensible but also compelling out of these disparate pieces. This is in large part due to a reliance on an extensive well of research experience, observation, and dialogue with other scholars of anti-trafficking and sexual politics (not to mention an engaging writing style). Most chapters discuss a specific theme or topic related to anti-trafficking discourse. Before embarking on a globalized view of the role of the “spectacle” of sex trafficking or the role gender plays in its visibility, Mitchell begins each chapter with a richly detailed anecdote of on-the-ground observations from his ethnographic work. He takes readers through quiet nights watching putas deftly manage new and clueless gringo clients, as well as their struggles dealing with increased police harassment and low client turnout during sporting events. Some of the most sobering experiences he recounts are from observing the treatment of male migrant workers in Qatar.
The crux of Mitchell’s argument is that the high-profile nature of global sporting events incentivizes governments to appear to fight human trafficking as the international community expects them too. This is a problem because sex trafficking often does not exist as international feminist, religious, and governmental groups imagine it. Exploitation in actuality looks quite different, according to Mitchell. The result is errors from the humorous to the tragic, such as UN Gift Boxes intended to raise awareness being used as a convenient place to take a nap and police officers raiding brothels when TV cameras are present but directing visitors to them once the cameras are gone. In one of the most convincing parts of the book, he demonstrates the power of myth over reality by following the unsubstantiated yet ubiquitous claim that 40,000 people are likely to be sex-trafficked at large sporting events—asking us to consider how such a preposterous number becomes an accepted fact. Given that Mitchell (like many before) places the blame for mythical and harmful anti-trafficking discourse on carceral partnerships between a disparate coalition of social actors, I was left with many questions about the mechanisms by which these partnerships operated to bring about the effects Mitchell observed. To his credit, Mitchell does not ignore this gap but rather frames it as a call to further research—ending his final chapter with the assertion “we must turn our academic gaze toward the rescue industry itself” (p. 226).
The mythology of human trafficking and sport has become a staple of anti-trafficking discourse, and I believe this work is an entertaining and relevant contribution to scholarly work for a wide contingent of readers. At times, I felt as if we spent a little too much time dwelling on historical anti-trafficking analysis and dialogue given that Mitchell’s own field work and analysis were so engaging. However, this commitment to tying in the overall global discourse of anti-trafficking work means that this book is accessible even for readers who are new to the scholarship of anti-trafficking discourse. Mitchell largely succeeded in convincing me that these field trips were ultimately useful. For those already versed in this literature, he brings a new contribution—tracing for us how the myths surrounding human trafficking and globalized sport come to exist and the consequences they bring.
