By Kelly Prince, PhD candidate in Criminology, Research Institute for Law, Politics & Justice, Keele University
On 20th October, Nick Davies wrote an article for The Guardian which compared sex trafficking with the reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. An issue which is slowly developing a high profile in the UK, sex trafficking is just one form of human trafficking, a transnational crime which has attracted increased international attention in the last ten years. So, what can we learn from Davies’ article and the subsequent debate?
Human trafficking is defined by the United Nations Palermo Protocol, article 3 as the:
exploitation of human beings – be it for sexual exploitation, other forms of forced labour, slavery, servitude, or for the removal of human organs. Trafficking takes place by criminal means through the threat or use of force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of positions of power or abuse of positions of vulnerability. It relates to all stages of the trafficking process: recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons. Trafficking is not just a transnational crime across international borders - the definition applies to internal domestic trafficking of human beings. Department of Peacekeeping Operations, 2004.
Davies refers only to sex trafficking and restricts his definition to ‘force, fraud or deception’, a considerable narrowing of the true definition. Furthermore, he uses the word ‘trafficking’ interchangeably with ‘sex trafficking’ without giving due recognition of the fact that there are many forms of trafficking, sexual exploitation being only one.
The article also mentions a Home Office research paper by Kelly and Regan called Stopping Traffic (2000), stating that the authors themselves admit that various conclusions drawn in the study, particularly data on numbers, are “speculative”. However, a thorough reading of the paper clearly illuminates the fact that, following their extensive research, the authors strongly believe that “[T]rafficking in women is clearly an issue in the UK”. An important fact in terms of numbers, highlighted by Kelly and Regan and omitted by Davies, is that people trafficking is extremely difficult to measure. The International Organisation of Migration was given substantial funding by the EU to do just that; they concluded that it isn’t currently possible with any degree of accuracy.
Following a Guardian investigation, Davies suggests that the police operation Pentameter 2, was anything but the success claimed by the police and Home Office alike. He cites as evidence that, of the 406 arrests made, 106 were released without charge, 47 were released after being cautioned for minor offences, 73 charged with immigration offences, 76 convicted of ‘non-trafficking offences’ involving drugs or the ‘driving or management of a brothel’. Ninety-six were arrested for ‘trafficking’, of whom 67 were charged. Twenty-two were finally prosecuted and 15 convicted.
At first glance, the figures look damning. However, it is well known that from the point of arrest, there are several points at which a case may ‘drop out’ of the criminal justice system and not always because the individual is innocent. The collection of sufficient evidence to get a case safely past these ‘drop out’ stages is not easy in relation to every day crimes such as burglary and theft, but when the crime is human trafficking of any kind, it becomes extremely difficult. Witnesses are invariably victims with all the associated complex trauma and mistrust of authority. A growing body of evidence from organisations such as the UN and the IOM suggest that trafficking is not only international but organised, in the same way arms and drugs trafficking is, and with the same structures in place which are designed to facilitate evasion. With criminal activity so enveloped in secrecy, it is perhaps more understandable that only 15 cases carried enough evidence to reach court and convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt.
This ‘drop out’ or attrition, is not uncommon. Take for example, the crime of rape. According to the British Crime Survey 2004, there is an annual incidence rate of 47,000 adult (over 16 years old), female victims. Only 15% of these report the attack to the police. 80% of those do not proceed beyond the police stage, with a further 6% being discontinued by the CPS and only 14% proceeding to trial. Only 1 in 8 reported rapes result in a conviction (Home Office Report 293 – A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases, 2005). I am confident that Nick Davies wouldn’t dream of suggesting that these sorry statistics indicate that the nature and rate of rape has been exaggerated.
Davies goes on to suggest that various evangelical and feminist organisations have hijacked the issue of sex trafficking to further their own agendas; the banning of all prostitution. And to some extent, he might be right. However, to say that increased attention given to sex trafficking is a direct result of a puritanical judgement of prostitution and a wish to persecute working women who are willingly trying to earn a crust in the sex industry is a fundamentally flawed and dangerous argument.
It is flawed because, by the very definition of sex trafficking, victims of this abhorrent crime are necessarily exploited and abused. The same cannot be said of prostitution, an occupation which some women enter and work in willingly. It is no surprise then that groups advocating for prostitutes, such as the English Collective of Prostitutes, have become adversaries of the sex trafficking cause. But this is not useful and unnecessary as prostitution and anti-trafficking campaigns are not automatically at odds. Fundamentally, they are both concerned with the protection of vulnerable women.
It is a dangerous argument because one of the most important aspects of the anti-trafficking campaign is the need to make the public more aware of the phenomenon, particularly indications of its presence. Trafficked people have been found in Britain’s hotels, restaurants, take-aways, on farms and beaches, as well as private households and of course some have been found in the sex industry. Those who wish to address the problem of trafficking may come to rely on local people bringing their concerns to the attention of the authorities.
It is fair to say that Davies’ article ignited some attention grabbing debate which can be seen both in the media and on the ‘Comment is Free’ Guardian blog site. Furthermore, he also makes some good points about how data is used and abused by various people pursuant of their own agenda. However, there is some concern that inaccurate, insensitive and sensationalist newspaper articles may serve only to turn the public away from a problem which desperately needs their support.
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
What is Sociology FOR? Part 2
By Dr Dana Rosenfeld
Despite the muted grumbles of many outside of academia, sociological scholarship is relevant to a range of contemporary issues, is often readable and interesting to those within and without academia, and often has a deep impact upon how we view our own lives and social worlds. Sociologists are also private citizens engaged with social and political issues, and some mesh their academic and their political lives to good effect. A strong example is Alice S. Rossi, whose scholarship and political work deeply shaped the face of gender politics in the USA and beyond, and whose obituary appeared in the New York Times earlier this week.
Despite the muted grumbles of many outside of academia, sociological scholarship is relevant to a range of contemporary issues, is often readable and interesting to those within and without academia, and often has a deep impact upon how we view our own lives and social worlds. Sociologists are also private citizens engaged with social and political issues, and some mesh their academic and their political lives to good effect. A strong example is Alice S. Rossi, whose scholarship and political work deeply shaped the face of gender politics in the USA and beyond, and whose obituary appeared in the New York Times earlier this week.
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
The BNP, Racism, and Contemporary Europe
Mark Featherstone
On Thursday night 8 million people watched Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, appear on the BBC’s premier political debating programme, Question Time. The immediate reaction to Griffin’s appearance in the national press may have led one to believe that it was a complete failure for the racist right – on Friday 23rd October The Daily Express explained that ‘BNP Leader Nick Griffin is...A Complete Disgrace to Humanity’ while The Independent wrote that ‘The BBC gave him the oxygen of publicity. He choked’ – but my own reaction to his moment in the full media glare was not so certain.
It is true that Griffin’s appearance was marked by confusion, irrationality, and illogical statements. Even his racism was not logically worked out. That is to say that even Griffin’s abhorrent racist belief that Britain should be maintained exclusively for the benefit of some mythological British people, primarily made up of a mythological white working class, collapsed at various points. These points, when he made the effort to hide his racism behind the veil of a brand of ultra-nationalism able to tolerate minorities, but not displaced peoples seeking asylum, were telling because what they illustrate is what we all know only too well. That is that the BNP are well aware that their racism, the core value of their politics, is beyond the pale and must be hidden from view and never explicitly spoken about if they are ever to achieve any kind of mainstream support.
In my view it was this fact, the fact that BNP must engage in a politics of deception, a politics of deception that cannot possibly work, that rendered Griffin a comic figure on Question Time, a comic figure who had been pushed centre stage, and found himself in a situation he could not possibly cope with in the full glare of the mass media, primarily because he was forced to evade a truth everybody already knows.
However, I was also aware that Griffin’s comic appearance, his appearance as a fool, a clown, would appeal to a specific audience, simply because those already alienated from mainstream politics and turned on to the BNP were unlikely to be persuaded by a situation that could not help but show their man as a fool and the cynical discredited mainstream as a mocking audience, who were well aware of the truth their fool wanted to hide and therefore could not but appear to be to disdainful of their man. In this situation the mainstream parties really needed to resist the temptation to exploit the fool in order to confirm their own moral superiority, because this would, of course, only confirm their own bankruptcy rooted in recent events, such as the expenses scandal.
Unfortunately, I felt that this was a temptation that the mainstream parties could not resist. Herein, then, lay perhaps the main problem with Griffin’s appearance on Question Time and possibly the key factor behind the shocking result of a YouGov poll carried out hours after the broadcast that showed that 22% of British people would ‘seriously consider’ voting BNP in a future local, general, or European election and perhaps more worryingly that ‘more than half of those polled said they agreed...the party had a point in speaking up for the interests of "indigenous, white British people"’ (BBC News, Saturday, 24th October).
That is to say that the main problem with Griffin’s appearance was that the mainstream parties appeared to want to confirm their own superiority by moralising against Griffin, rather than defeating him through rational argumentation. From the point of view of Griffin’s politics this was, of course, totally unnecessary because he was already defeated by his need to hide the truth of his own position, which resulted in ridiculous statements pertaining to the tolerance of the Ku Klux Klan. Unfortunately, though, I believe that the mainstream parties could not resist exploiting Griffin’s comic persona in order to confirm their own moral righteousness, with the result that they only confirmed their own moral bankruptcy.
In my view this was the main result of Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. In other words, by over-playing their morality and tolerance and under-playing their arguments and policies, the mainstream parties have probably confirmed both their own moral bankruptcy and lack of political imagination in the eyes of those who were either alienated from or on the verge of being alienated from the political mainstream. But this begs the question, why would the mainstream parties adopt this approach to dealing with Griffin, the comedy fool?
I think that the answer to this question is that the mainstream parties wanted to simultaneously confirm, boost, or simulate their own tolerance, hide the bankruptcy of their own policies, and finally deflect attention away from the real nature of the political situation in Europe which, as sociologists such as Zygmunt Bauman and Slavoj Zizek teach us, is already closing in on a form of friendly fascism that cannot speak its name. The truth is that the BNP are amateurs and that they will be defeated if our mainstream parties engage them in reasonable debate over policies, rather than employing empty moralising about the ‘tolerant’ nature of British culture and British politics.
Unfortunately, this is likely to be a lot harder than it sounds, since the empty moralising of the mainstream parties over the blindingly obvious racist nature of the BNP has a very particular purpose, which is to confirm their tolerance and hide their intolerance regarding the flows of homeless, displaced, refugees, and asylum seekers created by the form of globalisation sponsored and advanced by the generation of neo-liberals, including Brown, Sarkozy, and Berlusconi, and the master builders of the immigration architecture of Sangatte and the Schengen zone.
For the social and cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek (See his ‘Berlusconi in Tehran’, London Review of Books, 23rd July, 2009), Italy, the new front line of the European battle to control immigration, is dominated by a new form of authoritarian capitalism, led by another comedy fool, Silvio Berlusconi. In Zizek’s view, the popularity of the offensive comedy fool, Berlusconi, who praised Obama for his suntan, in Italy, the front line of immigration and people trafficking in Europe, and laboratory for the new emergent form of authoritarian capitalism, is not coincidental, since what Berlusconi and the new Italy exemplify is a new form of state organisation that is more than happy to exploit the poor workers of the global south for their labour, so that consumers can have cheap training shoes, but not allow them to penetrate its borders, where they would become legally liable for the benefits their labour warrants.
It is the struggle against this situation, the struggle against exploitation based on racial and ethnic inequality, that must be understood as the real front line of anti-racism in Europe today. We know the BNP are racists. But we must recognise that they have, in many respects, already missed the boat. It is not that we are threatened by racism to come, but rather that the racist situation is already upon us. Given this reality, I think that we must resist the temptation to use the abhorrent nature of the BNP to affirm the mythology of the tolerance of contemporary globalisation and instead recognise the racist intolerance already pervading Europe and our own society. It is this situation that we must address if we are to really save our tolerant ideals, rather than simply use the comic fools of the BNP to kid ourselves that we live in a society that is free of racism.
One way to start to achieve this would be to break the popular support for the BNP by illustrating to the alienated white minority who have turned to them in times of need that the problem of contemporary society is not one relating to race and ethnicity, but rather one rooted in the new form of neo-liberal capitalism that plunges everybody, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or age, into a precarious world, where everything is uncertain. The effect of this approach would be to dismantle the mythological connection between precariousness and race that enables the BNP and other parties of the far right to scapegoat minorities, and turn popular attention towards the real problem, the form of capitalism that turns people against each other like never before.
However, this approach presents a utopian challenge. It presents a utopian challenge because such an approach would, of course, require that our political, capitalist, elite really want to do away with the BNP, that they really want to do away with the comedy fools who allow them to simulate their own tolerance and maintain the brand of authoritarian capitalism rooted in exploitation, and that they really want to found a society free of exploitation and racist intolerance.
On Thursday night 8 million people watched Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, appear on the BBC’s premier political debating programme, Question Time. The immediate reaction to Griffin’s appearance in the national press may have led one to believe that it was a complete failure for the racist right – on Friday 23rd October The Daily Express explained that ‘BNP Leader Nick Griffin is...A Complete Disgrace to Humanity’ while The Independent wrote that ‘The BBC gave him the oxygen of publicity. He choked’ – but my own reaction to his moment in the full media glare was not so certain.
It is true that Griffin’s appearance was marked by confusion, irrationality, and illogical statements. Even his racism was not logically worked out. That is to say that even Griffin’s abhorrent racist belief that Britain should be maintained exclusively for the benefit of some mythological British people, primarily made up of a mythological white working class, collapsed at various points. These points, when he made the effort to hide his racism behind the veil of a brand of ultra-nationalism able to tolerate minorities, but not displaced peoples seeking asylum, were telling because what they illustrate is what we all know only too well. That is that the BNP are well aware that their racism, the core value of their politics, is beyond the pale and must be hidden from view and never explicitly spoken about if they are ever to achieve any kind of mainstream support.
In my view it was this fact, the fact that BNP must engage in a politics of deception, a politics of deception that cannot possibly work, that rendered Griffin a comic figure on Question Time, a comic figure who had been pushed centre stage, and found himself in a situation he could not possibly cope with in the full glare of the mass media, primarily because he was forced to evade a truth everybody already knows.
However, I was also aware that Griffin’s comic appearance, his appearance as a fool, a clown, would appeal to a specific audience, simply because those already alienated from mainstream politics and turned on to the BNP were unlikely to be persuaded by a situation that could not help but show their man as a fool and the cynical discredited mainstream as a mocking audience, who were well aware of the truth their fool wanted to hide and therefore could not but appear to be to disdainful of their man. In this situation the mainstream parties really needed to resist the temptation to exploit the fool in order to confirm their own moral superiority, because this would, of course, only confirm their own bankruptcy rooted in recent events, such as the expenses scandal.
Unfortunately, I felt that this was a temptation that the mainstream parties could not resist. Herein, then, lay perhaps the main problem with Griffin’s appearance on Question Time and possibly the key factor behind the shocking result of a YouGov poll carried out hours after the broadcast that showed that 22% of British people would ‘seriously consider’ voting BNP in a future local, general, or European election and perhaps more worryingly that ‘more than half of those polled said they agreed...the party had a point in speaking up for the interests of "indigenous, white British people"’ (BBC News, Saturday, 24th October).
That is to say that the main problem with Griffin’s appearance was that the mainstream parties appeared to want to confirm their own superiority by moralising against Griffin, rather than defeating him through rational argumentation. From the point of view of Griffin’s politics this was, of course, totally unnecessary because he was already defeated by his need to hide the truth of his own position, which resulted in ridiculous statements pertaining to the tolerance of the Ku Klux Klan. Unfortunately, though, I believe that the mainstream parties could not resist exploiting Griffin’s comic persona in order to confirm their own moral righteousness, with the result that they only confirmed their own moral bankruptcy.
In my view this was the main result of Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. In other words, by over-playing their morality and tolerance and under-playing their arguments and policies, the mainstream parties have probably confirmed both their own moral bankruptcy and lack of political imagination in the eyes of those who were either alienated from or on the verge of being alienated from the political mainstream. But this begs the question, why would the mainstream parties adopt this approach to dealing with Griffin, the comedy fool?
I think that the answer to this question is that the mainstream parties wanted to simultaneously confirm, boost, or simulate their own tolerance, hide the bankruptcy of their own policies, and finally deflect attention away from the real nature of the political situation in Europe which, as sociologists such as Zygmunt Bauman and Slavoj Zizek teach us, is already closing in on a form of friendly fascism that cannot speak its name. The truth is that the BNP are amateurs and that they will be defeated if our mainstream parties engage them in reasonable debate over policies, rather than employing empty moralising about the ‘tolerant’ nature of British culture and British politics.
Unfortunately, this is likely to be a lot harder than it sounds, since the empty moralising of the mainstream parties over the blindingly obvious racist nature of the BNP has a very particular purpose, which is to confirm their tolerance and hide their intolerance regarding the flows of homeless, displaced, refugees, and asylum seekers created by the form of globalisation sponsored and advanced by the generation of neo-liberals, including Brown, Sarkozy, and Berlusconi, and the master builders of the immigration architecture of Sangatte and the Schengen zone.
For the social and cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek (See his ‘Berlusconi in Tehran’, London Review of Books, 23rd July, 2009), Italy, the new front line of the European battle to control immigration, is dominated by a new form of authoritarian capitalism, led by another comedy fool, Silvio Berlusconi. In Zizek’s view, the popularity of the offensive comedy fool, Berlusconi, who praised Obama for his suntan, in Italy, the front line of immigration and people trafficking in Europe, and laboratory for the new emergent form of authoritarian capitalism, is not coincidental, since what Berlusconi and the new Italy exemplify is a new form of state organisation that is more than happy to exploit the poor workers of the global south for their labour, so that consumers can have cheap training shoes, but not allow them to penetrate its borders, where they would become legally liable for the benefits their labour warrants.
It is the struggle against this situation, the struggle against exploitation based on racial and ethnic inequality, that must be understood as the real front line of anti-racism in Europe today. We know the BNP are racists. But we must recognise that they have, in many respects, already missed the boat. It is not that we are threatened by racism to come, but rather that the racist situation is already upon us. Given this reality, I think that we must resist the temptation to use the abhorrent nature of the BNP to affirm the mythology of the tolerance of contemporary globalisation and instead recognise the racist intolerance already pervading Europe and our own society. It is this situation that we must address if we are to really save our tolerant ideals, rather than simply use the comic fools of the BNP to kid ourselves that we live in a society that is free of racism.
One way to start to achieve this would be to break the popular support for the BNP by illustrating to the alienated white minority who have turned to them in times of need that the problem of contemporary society is not one relating to race and ethnicity, but rather one rooted in the new form of neo-liberal capitalism that plunges everybody, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or age, into a precarious world, where everything is uncertain. The effect of this approach would be to dismantle the mythological connection between precariousness and race that enables the BNP and other parties of the far right to scapegoat minorities, and turn popular attention towards the real problem, the form of capitalism that turns people against each other like never before.
However, this approach presents a utopian challenge. It presents a utopian challenge because such an approach would, of course, require that our political, capitalist, elite really want to do away with the BNP, that they really want to do away with the comedy fools who allow them to simulate their own tolerance and maintain the brand of authoritarian capitalism rooted in exploitation, and that they really want to found a society free of exploitation and racist intolerance.
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
New articles from Pnina Werbner
Our distinguished professor of social anthropology, Prof Pnina Werbner, has also published some new pieces recently. You can find more about her work by following the links:
New article on the Public Sphere in a time of terror in the South Asian Diaspora journal
New article on dialogical subjectivities and ethical leadership among women in Botswana in the African Identities journal
New article on Tswana girls' puberty rituals and the problem of history in the American Ethnologist journal
New article on the Public Sphere in a time of terror in the South Asian Diaspora journal
New article on dialogical subjectivities and ethical leadership among women in Botswana in the African Identities journal
New article on Tswana girls' puberty rituals and the problem of history in the American Ethnologist journal
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