TENDENCIAS ESTÉTICAS EN EL OBJETO DE USO

Aradau (2004:262) observes that the distinguishing mark of a trafficked woman is her “raw physical suffering”. This is fixed in physical imagery depicting the trafficked woman as the “body in pain: pierced, bleeding and defenceless”.

This imagery is widely perpetuated via the media in such films as Taken (2008) and Lilya 4-ever (2002), through television mini-series as in Human Trafficking

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(2005), and in celebrity expos, for example, Emma Thompson’s ‘Journey’ (2007) 2. All are featured below in the order stated above.

2 _{The ‘Journey’ is Elena’s story of sexual exploitation. ‘I am a sex slave’ (first aired on Channel 4} on 30th August, 2010) dramatised the less sensationalist victim narrative of Maria’s domestic exploitation.

Image 2: Internet image Lilya 4-ever (2002)

Image 1: Internet image Taken (2008)

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Feminist scholars maintain that such a tragic victim embodiment further distinguishes trafficked women not only from men (typically viewed as agentic within global movements), but also from other migratory females, by naturalising trafficked women in a state of victimhood. As Aradau (2004:262) observes

“Where their trajectory might have coincided with that of a migrant or prostitute, suffering is redeeming. Trafficked women are disidentified from categories of migrants, criminals or prostitutes by the emphasis on raw physical suffering”.

Whilst Aradau critiques this imagery through the lens of pity, and women’s worthiness of human compassion, Doezema (1998; 2000a) challenges the consequences of this powerless, broken and defeated portrayal of the trafficked

Image 3: Internet image Human Trafficking (2005)

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woman, for its binary construction of the VOT as some-one singularly ‘pure’ and ‘deserving’ of help, as compared to the exploited but universally ‘guilty’ and ‘undeserving’ sex worker (see also O’Connell Davidson, 2005) 3

. In tandem with Doezema and O’Connell Davidson, other scholars and watch groups have expressed their own concerns with how professionals apply these constructs of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ victims to the process of identifying trafficked women (Kelly, 2002; 2005); in particular, their usage in vetting immigration status (Aronowitz, 2003; ATMG report, 2010). For Skeldon (2000), this gendered embodiment carries a further hidden consequence of negating any place for men in the trafficking discourse, since men are imagined as less susceptible than women to exploitation, and trafficking exploitations are routinely portrayed as the prostitution, sexual exploitation, and slavery-like practices in women and children 4. This gendered lack of a male presence in trafficking is additionally fixed by men’s reluctance to disclose instances of sexual assault within sex work (Connell and Hart, 2003) or to express their vulnerability within forced marriage (Samad, 2010).

The continued power and popularity of such imagery can be explained as residing in its clarity and ability to connect with unconditional public sympathy. These victims of trafficking are Christie’s (1986) ‘ideal’ victims - women so vulnerable, blameless, unambiguous and uncomplicated as to embody their victim status. This ideal and abstract construction has been widely appropriated by anti-trafficking professionals and their respective organisations precisely for its grass roots profitability. Below are 2 exemplars of NGO advertising and awareness raising encountered on my visits to agencies. The first, widely circulated amongst health professionals, reproduces the populist perception of trafficking in adults - that of the female victim of sexual exploitation.

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The issue of purity is revisited within the broader discussion of whiteness, at the end of this section.

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For further discussion of the gendered nature of vulnerability and agency under a Human Trafficking framework, see also Berman (2003) and Agustin (2005a).

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The second was widely favoured by NGOs, for its fit with their sense of purpose in anti-trafficking work as a ‘rescue industry’ providing victim protection and assistance (Harrington, 2005; Agustin, 2007a). Agustin provides critique of this victim saving and rescue agenda because it homogenises migrant sex workers with trafficked women, and conflates sex work with involuntary prostitution. For Agustin (2003a; 2007a), not all movements involving sex are related to trafficking and can be traced to a combination of demand for sexual services and women’s supply of services. A woman’s involvement and response towards sex services is, in some measure, dependent upon her personal and sexual identity.

Image 5: Internet poster Look Beneath the Surface (2005)

Image 6: Internet poster Stop the Traffik. Stop the Traffik poster campaign artist Alex Jenkins (2009)

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In terms of understanding the significance of such imagery and its professional appropriation for the women subjects of trafficking, scholars also point to the loss of self actualisation inherent within the term ‘victim’. Variously and ideally imagined as weak, defenceless, blameless and innocent, a victim identity personifies the victim in qualities and characteristics which are intrinsically unagentic or action-less. In this respect, the VOT construct and maintenance as an ‘ideal’ victim - someone to be protected and saved from unscrupulous traffickers - has become a valuable commodity essential for maintaining the trafficking consensus but, also, beneficial for the gift-giving and sponsorship of agencies involved in rescuing VOTs.

Perhaps, more significantly for the UK discourse in trafficking, a criminal justice lens on what Miers (1978:15) describes as the historical and simple “doer - sufferer model of criminal interaction” has encouraged a parallel systemic preoccupation with the ‘right sort of victim’ (Jewkes, 2004). Within a trafficking frame of reference, these remain as innocent children and women lacking any knowledge, consent and agency in their own illegal movement and exploitation. However, in this criminal justice construction, agency is imagined as negative and, given the trafficking consensus over the ideal victim, resides wholly within the criminal actions of the traffickers. The police led Competent Authority sponsorship of the ‘Blue Blindfold’ anti-trafficking campaign, within a Crime Stoppers agenda, shows this passive victim / criminally agentic trafficker to good effect. The ‘Don’t Close Your Eyes to Human Trafficking’ poster features a member of the public wearing a blue blindfold, symbolising her obliviousness to the crime of human trafficking. The poster delivers a message that the Police require members of the public to work with them in rescuing victims, who may be “reluctant” or too “frightened” to come forward themselves.

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However, by encouraging the public to report their suspicions over trafficked women living in their communities to the authorities, the Criminal Justice System serves to identify and label women’s knowledge and consent at any stage within the trafficking process as criminal. This reduction of women’s varied trajectories within global movements (especially within the sex industry), to a singular narrative of victimisation, effectively reifies them further as passive victims and drives women’s agency underground. As Mai (2009: n.p) argues,

“tackling demand as solely criminal creates a hostile environment for the trafficked, as well as the traffickers”.

Systemic preoccupations with notions of purity, deservedness and the right sort of victim also reinforce an oppressive discourse of whiteness – reflected in the dominant white skin colour of the images featured above. Doezema (2000a) traces the significance of this whiteness to the moral discourse of human trafficking, as the white slave trade in naive and virginal white women. McDowell (2009: 28) observes similar associations for innocence within the post war management of labour migration.

“Whiteness represents purity, spirit rather than body / embodiment and, as Dyer (1988: 45) has argued, white people are ‘socialised to believe the

fantasy that whiteness represents goodness and all that is benign and non- threatening’ in comparison to the dark skin of ‘others’ ”.

Image 7: ‘Don’t Close Your Eyes’ Internet poster Blue Blindfold cafe poster (2007)

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In consequence, whiteness is constructed not only as non-threatening, but also as a medium of colonial superiority. Doezema, (2005: 83) voices this as rescuing trafficked women from trafficking “foreigners with stereotyped racial characteristics”, and McDowell as championing poor and vulnerable European women, for post war domestic labour in the UK. Referring to the Baltic Cygnet scheme of 1946, McDowell (2009: 25) writes:

“It is interesting to contemplate the image that the recruiters assumed would be associated with this name - perhaps a vision of vulnerable yet attractive young swans, redolent of purity, sailing across the water to the UK and emerging from their drab protective colouring as cygnets into the full beauty of an adult swan under the guidance of the British state or public?”

On a final note, raising trafficking awareness through the medium of cartoons and celebrity promos, at comedy events such as the Edinburgh Fringe festival (Ferguson, 2010), has served to reinforce rather than dismantle such prejudicial and disadvantageous imagery. Introduced within human trafficking with the intention of extending identifications of trafficking to wider and younger audiences, the use of ‘artistic visuals’ is now a recognised and established tool for engaging with the hidden and complex nature of ‘difficult to tell’ narratives within sex work, asylum and refugee migrations and diasporas. See the work of Maggie O’ Neill with new arrivals in the East Midlands as a prime example of this (Guardian, 2009a; Whitworth Art Gallery, 2009; Arts, Migration and Diaspora Regional Network, 2009). In contrast to such works, the trafficking iconography sustains a discourse of disempowerment, through the way it portrays human dignity as loss, and self actualisation as absent, from the actions and decisions of the VOT. These disempowering narratives can be seen in the violence and total exploitation portrayed in the two cartoon extracts featured below. Circulated by the Council of Europe, as part of its ‘You’re not for sale’ campaign, they depict the stories of Talina and two sisters named Anna and Sofia. Stills, shown below, document two of the four ‘You’re not for sale’ trafficking cartoons featured in a campaign booklet commissioned by the Council of Europe to promote the 2005 Anti-Trafficking Convention. Amongst her observations of the cartoon imagery, Aradau (2010) critiques the new genre for reproducing old and risky ideologies of trafficking. Following the reductive

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principle of pity observed by Aradau in trafficking as ‘raw physical suffering’, these cartoons are similarly reducible, in the stories of Talina, Anna and Sofia, to easy notions of sex slavery and violent organised crime. In this respect, Aradau suggests trafficking cartoons perpetuate a legacy of removing the possibility of agency from the actions of sex workers and other female migrants, thereby sustaining the trafficking victim narrative. The story of Talina is featured first, followed by narrative cartoon stills of the two sisters, Anna and Sofia (Council of Europe, n.d). All are trafficked for sexual exploitation 5.

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The solitary cartoon featuring a female of colour (Fabia) deals with domestic exploitation, reinforcing the stereotype of whiteness and sexual innocence.

Image 8: Internet cartoon You’re Not for Sale – Talina (n.d)

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Against this media and campaign backdrop of the ‘ideal’ and ‘right sort’ of passive trafficking victim, how did my women participants identify themselves?

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4.4 Researching what trafficked women say about identity: Privileging