Domestic Sex Trafficking of Aboriginal Girls in Canada: Issues and Implications

The current discourses on human trafficking in Canada do not take into account domestic trafficking, especially of Aboriginal girls. Notwithstanding the alarmingly high number of missing, murdered and sexually exploited Aboriginal girls, the issue continues to be portrayed more as a problem of prostitution than of sexual exploitation or domestic trafficking. The focus of this study is to examine the issues in sexual exploitation of Aboriginal girls, as identified by the grass root agencies, and to contextualize them within the trafficking framework with the purpose of distinguishing sexual exploitation from sex work. In doing so, the paper will outline root causes that make Aboriginal girls vulnerable to domestic trafficking as well as draw implications for policy analysis.

Capital Accrual and Constraints: Domestic Sex Trafficking Victims’ Negotiation of Vicarious and Feminized Capital

Domestic sex trafficking has yet to appear on the policy agenda in Aotearoa New Zealand, and yet to be met with a law enforcement response. Accordingly, we have minimal knowledge about the contexts in which sex trafficking is perpetrated and what victims’ experiences involve. This article focuses specifically on the attainment and negotiation of social capital by victims whose access to traditional capital is at least partially restricted by their social and familial contexts. Sixteen victims of domestic sex trafficking participated in semistructured interviews. The data were analyzed using an adapted version of Clanindin and Connelly’s (2000) three-dimensional structure of narrative analysis. Three of the themes emerging from this are discussed here; namely abuse and mistreatment in early life, the negotiation of survival within the trafficking context, and sexuality as a bargaining tool. We argue that victims’ access to traditional mechanisms of social capital accrual may be precluded by the multiple sites of gendered disadvantage that collude to entrap victims in a subordinate and exploited position. However, to negotiate their continued survival despite the constraints to their agency, they appear to access both vicarious physical capital and feminized (and usually sexualised) capital by instrumentalizing their sexual appeal or prowess and the protection of the subjectively more powerful male “partner.”