Abstract
This chapter discusses the constitutive power of the master narrative of human trafficking when social movement actors mobilise the problem of trafficking locally through particular framing processes and amongst local actors. Drawing on recent interventions in the field of geographies of global activism, the chapter explores the constitutive power of framing processes in understanding the anti-human trafficking movement in Singapore. The staging of stories of sex-trafficked minors by Singaporean non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is illustrative of the ways a local advocacy project can endorse and reproduce a rendering of human trafficking as principally a ‘child sex’ issue in their own work, even where it is yet to be demonstrated that this interpretation approximates a country’s human trafficking landscape accurately.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
All migrant participants in this study are referred to by pseudonyms. Anti-trafficking organisations and individuals within them are referred to by their real names, unless otherwise indicated.
- 2.
Batam is an island in Indonesia that forms part of the Riau Islands archipelago. Due to Batam’s proximity to Singapore and its fledgling labour-intensive manufacturing sector involving a large number of internal migrants, Batam has developed a large and multifaceted sex and nightlife entertainment industry where conditions are generally deplorable.
- 3.
A Karaoke Television (KTV) Bar is a common destination for women deployed in the sex and nightlife entertainment industry throughout Southeast and East Asia. Many women deployed in these venues undertake hostessing work in which sexual intercourse is optional.
- 4.
Activism is taken to include any activity by actors in social movements that aims to produce positive change for/by marginalised groups. Awareness-raising, research, protest, and direct advocacy would all fall within such an understanding.
- 5.
The US Department of State (DoS) ranks countries into three Tier groups each year on the basis of each country’s commitment to anti-trafficking in the three key areas of prevention of trafficking, protection of victims, and prosecution of traffickers. Each June, the Annual TIP Report is released, and countries which receive the worst rating (Tier 3) may be subject to economic sanctions imposed by the US government.
- 6.
Snow and Benford (1988) suggest that frame alignment between social movement actors is necessary for a successful movement. They consequently identify four different types of framing processes: frame bridging, framing application, frame extension, and frame transformation. Each of these operates in a different manner to achieve the alignment of frame projected by a movement with their participants.
- 7.
TBS also produced a larger booklet which provides a more comprehensive overview of child sex trafficking globally. The intended audience for this booklet is the NGO partners and local activist groups who can help ‘spread the word’ through the knowledge and information contained in the booklet. Despite suspect claims to authoritative information and ‘fact’ (including, e.g. to the number of victims of sex trafficking globally), the booklet is intended to serve as a resource for campaign countries to disseminate information about child sex trafficking .
References
Agustin, L. (2003). Sex, gender and migrations: Facing up to ambiguous realities. Soundings, 23, 84–98.
Ansell, N. (2010). The discursive construction of childhood and youth in AIDS interventions in Lesotho’s education sector: Beyond global-local dichotomies. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28, 791–810.
Benford, R. D., & Snow, D. A. (2000). Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 611–639.
Blowfield, M. (2005). Corporate social responsibility—The failing discipline and why it matters in international relations. International Relations, 19, 173–191. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117805052812.
Blowfield, M., & Frynas, J. C. (2005). Setting new agendas: Critical perspectives on corporate social responsibility in the developing world. International Affairs, 81, 499–513.
Bondi, L., & Laurie, N. (2005). Introduction: Working the spaces of neoliberalism: Activism, professionalisation and incorporation. Antipode, 37, 394–401.
Bosco, F. J. (2008). Hungry children and networks of aid in Argentina: Thinking about geographies of care and responsibility. In S. C. Aitkin, R. Lund, & A. T. Kjorholt (Eds.), Global childhoods: Globalisation, development and young people (pp. 55–76). Oxford: Routledge.
Brown, W. (1995). States of injury: Power and freedom in late modernity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Brown, G., & Pickerill, J. (2009). Space for emotion in the spaces of activism. Emotion, Space and Society, 2, 24–35.
Bunnell, T. (2007). Extending hospitality, offshoring protest: When the International Monetary Fund and World Bank came to Singapore. Political Geography, 26, 493–498.
Butler, J. (2006). Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. London: Verso.
Caraway, N. (2008). ‘Do no harm’: The Asian female migrant and feminist debates in the global anti-trafficking movement. In K. E. Ferguson & M. Mironesco (Eds.), Gender and globalisation in Asia and the Pacific: Method, practice, theory (pp. 253–271). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Cumbers, A., Routledge, P., & Nativel, C. (2008). The entangled geographies of global justice networks. Progress in Human Geography, 32, 183–201.
Doezema, J. (2001). Ouch! Western feminists’ ‘wounded attachment’ to the Third World prostitute. Feminist Review, 67, 16–38.
ECPAT International. (2010). Commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking of children and young people in Singapore. End Child Prostitution and Trafficking International, Bangkok.
Featherstone, D. (2003). Spatialities of transnational resistance to globalisation: The maps of grievance of the inter-continental caravan. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. New Series, 28, 404–421.
Featherstone, D. (2008). Resistance, space and political identities: The making of counter-global networks. Chichester, Sussex: John Wiley.
Foucault, M. (1975). Film and popular memory: An interview with Michel Foucault. Radical Philosophy, 11(11), 24–29.
Frederick, J. (1998). The myth of Nepal-to-India sex trafficking: Its creation, its maintenance and its influence on anti-trafficking interventions. In K. Kempadoo (Ed.), Trafficking and prostitution re-considered (Chap. 7). Routledge: London.
Gerhards, J. (1995). Framing dimensions and framing strategies: Contrasting ideal- and real-type frames. Social Science Information, 34(2), 225–248.
Grugel, J. (2004). State power and transnational activism in Asia. In N. Piper & A. Uhlin (Eds.), Transnational activism in Asia: Problems of power and democracy. New York: Routledge.
Henderson, V. L. (2008). Is there hope for anger? The politics of spatialising and reproducing emotion. Emotion, Space and Society, 1(1), 28–37.
Höijer, B. (2003). The discourse of global compassion: The audience and media reporting of human suffering. Media, Culture and Society, 26, 513–531.
Hyndman, J. (2010). The question of ‘the political’ in critical geopolitics: Querying the ‘child soldier’ in the war on terror. Political Geography, 29, 247–255.
Juris, J. (2004). Networked social movements: Global movements for global justice. In M. Castells (Ed.), The network society: A cross-cultural perspective (pp. 341–362). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Juris, J. (2005). Social forums and their margins: Networking logics and the cultural politics of autonomous space. Ephemera, 5, 253–272.
Keck, M. E., & Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders: Advocacy networks in international politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Lainez, N. (2010). Representing sex trafficking in Southeast Asia? The victim staged. In T. Zheng (Ed.), Sex trafficking, human rights and social justice (pp. 144–149). New York: Routledge.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lazcko, F. (2005). Data and research on human trafficking. International Migration, 43(1–2), 5–16.
Lidchi, H. (1999). Finding the right image: British development NGOs and the regulation of imagery. In T. Skelton & T. Allen (Eds.), Culture and global change (pp. 87–101). London: Routledge.
Long, L. D. (2004). Anthropological perspectives on the trafficking of women for sexual exploitation. International Migration, 42(1), 5–31.
Manzo, K. (2008). Imaging humanitarianism: NGO identity and the iconography of childhood. Antipode, 40, 632–657.
Montgomery, H. (2001). Modern Babylon? Prostituting children in Thailand. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Pile, S., & Keith, M. (Eds.). (1997). Geographies of resistance. London: Routledge.
Piper, N., & Uhlin, A. (2004). New perspectives on transnational activism. In N. Piper & A. Uhlin (Eds.), Transnational activism in Asia: Problems of power and democracy (pp. 1–24). New York: Routledge.
Riles, A. (2001). The network inside out. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Roddick, A. (2001). Take it personally. London: Thorsons.
Routledge, P. (2003). Convergence space: Process geographies of grassroots globalisation networks. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. New Series, 28, 333–349.
Schaeffer-Grabiel, F. (2010). Sex trafficking as the ‘new slave trade’. Sexualities, 13, 153–160.
Snow, D. (2004). Framing processes, ideology, and discursive fields. In D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule, & H. Kriesi (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to social movements. Oxford: Blackwell.
Snow, D., & Benford, R. D. (1988). Ideology, frame resonance, and participant mobilisation. International Social Movement Research, 1, 197–217.
Snow, D. A., Rochford, E. B., Worden, S. K., & Benford, R. D. (1986). Frame alignment processes, micromobilzation, and movement participation. American Sociological Review, 51, 464–481.
Snow, D., Zurcher, L. A., & Ekland-Olson, S. (1980). Social networks and social movements: A microstructural approach to differential recruitment. American Sociological Review, 45, 787–801.
Soderlund, G. (2005). Running from the rescuers: New U.S. crusades against sex trafficking and the rhetoric of abolition. NWSA Journal, 17(3), 64–87.
TBS. (2009). STOP sex trafficking of children and young people campaign booklet. The Body Shop, Singapore.
Vanderbeck, R. (2005). Anti-nomadism, institutions, and the geographies of childhood. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23, 71–94.
Williams, S., Lyons, L., & Ford, M. (2008). It’s about bang for your buck, Bro: Singaporean men’s online conversations about sex in Batam, Indonesia. Asian Studies Review, 32, 77–97.
Yea, S. (2008). Foreign women trafficked to United States military areas in South Korea: Trafficking processes and victim profiles in a differential context. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 15, 495–523.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Yea, S. (2020). Mobilising the Child Victim: The Emergence of a Trafficking Master Narrative. In: Paved with Good Intentions?. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3239-5_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3239-5_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-3238-8
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-3239-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)