The Sexual Politics of Anti-Trafficking Discourse | 21st Annual Edwards Memorial Lecture

The 21st Annual Edwards Memorial Lecture, "The Sexual Politics of Anti-Trafficking Discourse," was delivered by Professor Prabha Kotiswaran (King’s College London) at the Canadiana Gallery, University of Toronto on November 28, 2019.
Professor Audrey Macklin, CrimSL Director, opened the lecture with a welcome and gave brief introductory remarks before inviting Kotiswaran up to the podium.
04:55 Professor Prabha Kotiswaran, "The Sexual Politics of Anti-Trafficking Discourse"
Abstract
Almost twenty years since the negotiation of the Palermo Protocol on Trafficking, anti-trafficking law and discourse continue to be in a state of flux and dynamic evolution. The anti-trafficking field has gone from an early almost exclusive, preoccupation with sex work to addressing exploitation in varied labour sectors, reflected in the mainstreaming of the term ‘modern slavery’. Correspondingly, scholars and activists are going beyond the criminal law to propose alternate forms of regulation as manifest in human rights, labour and development approaches to trafficking. These trends would suggest a reduced focus on the nature of the work performed and a greater focus on the conditions under which it is performed. We could therefore expect that all forms of extreme labour exploitation whether in sex work or fishing or cotton cultivation would attract the equal application of anti-trafficking law. This is sadly not the case as cultures of ‘sex work exceptionalism’ persist and are gaining strength around the world.
In my lecture, I ask why. I interrogate the sexual politics of anti-trafficking discourse by revisiting its contentious history. I examine what the expanded understanding of trafficking has meant for feminist theorising and mobilising on sex work and trafficking and how sex workers’ groups have responded. I explore the terrains on which feminists, sex workers, conservatives and left-progressive movements engage with each other and with the state and which alliances have been brokered successfully and which ones have failed to materialise. Importantly, I question what this has meant for long-term struggles for a politics of redistribution within the sex sector. I conclude by reflecting on how anti-trafficking campaigns play out in postcolonial contexts and what this means for retheorising the sexual politics of anti-trafficking discourse.
About Prabha Kotiswaran
Dr. Prabha Kotiswaran is Professor of Law and Social Justice at King's College London. She previously taught at SOAS. She received her undergraduate law degree in India from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore and then an LLM and SJD (doctorate) from Harvard Law School. She also practiced law at the New York law firm of Debevoise and Plimpton. Her main areas of research include criminal law, transnational criminal law, feminist legal studies and sociology of law.
About the John Ll. J. Edwards Memorial Lecture
The annual Edwards Memorial Lecture is delivered in honour of Professor John Llewellyn Jones Edwards, the founder of the U of T Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies.
This lecture was co-sponsored by Woodsworth College and the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto.
About the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at University of Toronto
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