Theorising human trafficking through slow violence

Human trafficking is predominantly framed as a criminal justice issue with sensationalised, highly visible violence. Stereotypical figures of young women in danger, passively poised to be rescued by figures of the state or vigilante justice, animate public discourse and policy. Yet the reality of trafficking is often far more complex than the linear narratives presented in the mainstream. In this article, I argue that human trafficking is more readily accessible as slow violence, the accumulation and accretion of the consequences of systematic oppression over time. I use Nixon's Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor to articulate a stance against the flash of trafficking's ‘master narratives’. Slow violence offers three key elements for theorising human trafficking, i.e. that the harms are so gradual or delayed they: become imperceptible; compound over protracted durations of time; and may be so mundane and unspectacular to not even register as ‘violence’ in our vernacular. Aligned with a critical trafficking studies approach that draws attention to power dynamics and imbalances, slow violence focuses on the forms of exploitation and precarity that are taken for granted or assumed to be static. I use a collection of artifacts and examples from dominant anti-trafficking organisations and media to demonstrate the urgency required to both rethink trafficking against these flattening overgeneralisations and recommit to a transformative practice that makes more lives liveable. In the tradition of feminist anti-violence scholarship, I conclude by shifting from the micro-level examples of trafficking that fuel misinformation campaigns to the systems that perpetuate violence, exploitation and extraction – and must be eradicated if we are committed to ending human trafficking locally and globally.

Borders of Salt and Rock

On the Pacific Coast, the transition from boundary survey to day-to-day control took half a century. Canadian and American dependence on Indigenous labor limited the restrictions they could implement. By the mid-1880s, the immigration of hundreds of thousands of settlers shifted the balance of power. Both governments drove the Coast Salish out of the work force and imposed a new geographic order on top of existing Indigenous ones. At the same time, Chinese immigration drove grassroots pressure to reform federal border controls. In the wake of riots, protest, and vigilante justice, the United States passed Chinese Exclusion Acts in 1882 and 1888 and Canada developed a head tax.

Die ‚patria potestas‘ in Boccaccios ‚Decameron‘

The power of fathers over their children – especially over their daughters – is a central theme of Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’. Novella V,7 situates the ‘patria potestas’ in a tension-filled position between honour and law, vigilante justice and public prosecution. The legitimation of cruelty and violence by invoking the ‘patria potestas’ is questioned through the confrontation with poetic justice.

Customary law and the mediation of witchcraft accusations in Eastern Nicaragua

This article focuses on efforts to overcome the divide between state legality and local practices. It explores a pragmatic effort to deal with witchcraft accusations and occult-related violence in customary courts among the Miskitu people in Eastern Nicaragua, taking into account both indigenous notions of justice and cosmology, and the laws of the state. In this model, a community court (elected by the community inhabitants and supported by a council of elders), watchmen known as ‘voluntary police’ and a ‘judicial facilitator’ play intermediary roles. Witchcraft is understood and addressed in relation to Miskitu cultural perceptions and notions of illness afflictions, and disputes are settled through negotiations involving divination, healing, signing a legally binding ‘peace’ contract, a fine, and giving protection to alleged witches. This decreases tensions and the risk of vigilante justice is reduced. The focus is on settling disputes, conciliation and recreating harmony instead of retribution.