| dc.description.abstract |
Human trafficking has become a prominent political issue in the United Kingdom since
2001, with all major parties in the country agreeing on the importance of abolishing
trafficking. However, the political discourse is riddled with two frameworks, with
each party supporting one or the other at various times: trafficking as a border security
issue versus trafficking as a human rights issue. In order to examine the relationship
of this discursive political dichotomy with the journalistic understanding of the
issue, the paper examines discourse on sex trafficking among four major newspapers,
each with a different political affiliation: The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian,
and The Independent. The study finds that the nineteenth century perception of innocent,
and usually white and virgin women being lured into trafficking by “evil” foreign
traffickers is still implicitly present in modern-day journalistic discourse. The
presence of these ethnic and sexual politics, which influence the border security
and human rights frameworks, respectively, confound the reality of trafficking with
a discursive myth. The journalistic discourse thus has a policy implication of victims
needing to fit the discursive mold of a trafficked person in order to receive human
rights protections. Though finding a factual account of trafficking is difficult,
adding voices of trafficked persons to narratives may create a clearer picture of
the issue, and lead to better protections for trafficked persons in U.K. policy.
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