International counter-trafficking: A zero-sum game?—Introduction to the special issue

Abstract

“Human trafficking” is widely described as a matter of concern. An ever-present issue on national and international political and social agendas, its condemnation has nevertheless favoured the consolidation of counter-trafficking norms and initiatives in many countries, with a singular mobilization of human and financial resources (Dottridge 2014). In the last twenty years, research on the topic has also suggested that human trafficking is a polysemic and fluid concept, whose mobilization often presents itself as inherently problematic (Clemente 2023; Piscitelli 2012). One of the reasons as to why this is the case relates to the objectives and priorities that have motivated the call-to-action and intervention of many counter-trafficking agencies, states, and non-governmental organizations. In particular, an ever-growing convergence of securitarian, moralistic, and neoliberal concerns have opened up and strengthened the power of business opportunities for these agents and their coalitions (Bernstein 2018; Musto 2010). However, the few benefits brought to trafficked persons and the violence they often face within counter-trafficking result in counter-trafficking efforts recurrently appearing to have become a zero-sum game, in which gains made by many of those who populate counter-trafficking apparatuses rarely trickle down to the “victims of (counter-)trafficking” (Clemente 2022).