Abstract
In 2000, the United Nations and its member countries sought to address the problem of transnational human trafficking (THT). This led to the Palermo Protocol to “Prevent Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children” (2). For the public, our understanding of THT comes from the media and its portrayal of the crime, policy, and impact of THT. The media, therefore, plays a significant role in shaping public discourse and opinion on THT, the victims, and the perpetrators. In this edited volume, Gregoriou seeks to explore how various forms of media shape this dialogue. To do this, Gregoriou calls on experts in the field of language, culture, and communication to explore different forms of media and how they contribute to the public consciousness of THT.
There are two critical arguments made throughout the book. First, the authors argue that the media does not engage nearly enough with global institutions and wealth inequalities that lead to THT. In particular, the media lacks a critical awareness in tying trafficking to issues of local instability, war, and poverty, often caused by the West. Circumstances that prompt individuals to leave their country, opening a market for traffickers. Second, the authors consistently discuss the role that gender plays in how the media chooses to define human trafficking and victims. For example, men are more likely to be trafficked for labor, so they are treated as illegal labor migrants rather than victims. Nuance is lost, and there is a lack of consideration for how men are controlled and abused by their traffickers. This ties into their argument about global inequality structures that lead men to seek out employment opportunities and fall victim to THT.
The book has five chapters, all using data from after the Palermo Protocol. The first chapter is an introductory chapter and conceptualizes the multilayered issues surrounding human trafficking and how media narratives overlook them. The authors argue that media can play an important role in framing THT to encourage structural changes. The chapter does a wonderful job setting up the subsequent chapters to discuss the major issues of the media, THT, and how they interact.
Chapters two and three both look at newspapers. The second chapter by Gregoriou and Ras (who also wrote chapter one) studies linguistic characteristics of daily and Sunday newspapers in the United Kingdom (UK). The importance of this chapter lies in how the authors clearly demonstrate that newspapers rely on specific words, turns of phrases, and tropes to describe the problem of THT. In doing so, the reader is shown just how one-dimensional news reporting is and how they obfuscate the structural issues leading to trafficking by describing trafficking as an imported problem. Chapter three builds on chapter two by comparing the same UK newspapers with Serbian ones. However, this chapter uses media and narrative theory to explore how newspapers shape the discourse surrounding THT. Muždeka's central argument is that there are “similar aspects of narrative construction [that are] crucial for understanding the process of news creation” (62). The author reminds the reader that newspapers want readers and will follow a narrative structure that attracts the most attention. Unfortunately, this chapter falls short in its analysis of how narrative structures affect the discourses of THT. Instead, the chapter often reads like an exploration of narrative theory with THT as an example instead of a critical analysis of newspapers through narrative theory.
In chapter four, we turn to fictional media, the crime novel. Here, Beyer explores how crime novels can give a more authentic representation of THT through storytelling. The author focuses on five English and Scandinavian crime novels dealing with transnational child trafficking (TCT). The strength of this chapter is the way the author clearly demonstrates how the novel can go further than newspapers to discuss varying forms of trafficking, the psychological effects on the victim, and their root causes. Unfortunately, the author stops short of addressing how crime fiction as a genre can contribute to public discourse on TCT and THT. As such, it leaves the reader of this chapter wondering how crime fiction connects to the broader discussions on public awareness being had throughout this book.
Chapter five is the final chapter and looks at true crime, specifically an Al-Jazeera documentary called Modern Slavery: A Twenty-First Century Evil. The author uses a cultural criminological framework to explore how the documentary frames the traffickers. This is an interesting turn from the rest of the book that prioritized the crime itself or the victims with brief mentions of the traffickers. Notably, Deary elucidates the imbalance between Western notions of justice that center blame on the individual and the reality of THT that is tied to unequal access to jobs and wealth. In particular, she notes how in certain countries, legal systems can be used against victims, especially if the trafficker is a social elite. While the chapter goes on to explore the linguistic characteristics of the documentary and how the decision to use certain terms are tied to gender, the strength of this chapter lies in its exploration of crime and law. Confusingly, the author, a cultural criminologist, questions why different languages might not refer to the perpetrators as traffickers.
Despite some shortcomings, this book clearly demonstrates how various forms of media often tell a very narrow story of THT. It encourages the reader to think beyond the narrative we are fed to critically assess how national and international global structures lead to THT, particularly the role the West plays. It also encourages the reader to think about how gender shapes public views of trafficking, leaving men to be often re-victimized by the public and government of receiving nations. While I would not recommend it to someone strictly interested in criminal justice or crime, I would recommend it to anyone interested in taking a critical approach to how media and language shapes public discourse on this global crime.
