Conclusion 6/6

The argument that lack of evidence or neglect of evidence can lead to ineffective anti-trafficking policies and practices is an important one made in all the papers in some way or another. But should we also look to research anti-trafficking itself? Such a focus has been suggested by some commentators already. Sverre Molland, for example, outlines the need for researchers examining human trafficking to undertake ‘tandem ethnography’ that explores both the, ‘social worlds of trafficking and anti-trafficking’, helping to understand both their co-constitution and enabling state responses to human trafficking to be critically framed in relation to the phenomenon itself.27 Ultimately, examining the moral, political, and economic interests at stake in understanding the nature, direction and reticence of particular policy and advocacy stances and anti-trafficking projects themselves is a task that begs for a deeper and more politically-charged call to research. Evidence may then well take on a different and less technocratic guise than currently inhabits the world of human trafficking research.

Lack of effectiveness is tied to lack of sound justification for policy in the first place. The logic is circular and takes us back to the questions posed at the outset of this Editorial: why is there such a dearth of good research on human trafficking? How can research be better designed and carried out in ways that avoid the prescriptive logics of intervention? It is hoped that the papers in this special issue, and the considerations put forward in the four debate pieces, will contribute to the extension of our ways of thinking about why evidence is important, what evidence matters, and how research to produce meaningful evidence can be better designed and carried out.


*Sallie Yea is an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University, Australia. Prior to this she held academic positions in Human Geography and International Development in Singapore, Melbourne and New Zealand. She has published widely on the subject of human trafficking including journal articles in Antipode, Political Geography and Gender, Place and Culture. She has also published an edited volume titled Human Trafficking in Asia: Forcing issues, and a monograph titled Trafficking Women in Korea: Filipina migrant entertainers, both with Routledge. She is currently working on an edited volume exploring the issue of trafficking of migrant fishers, and a monograph exploring human trafficking and the anti-trafficking movement in Singapore.

Anti-Trafficking Review, Issue 8, PP 1-13 - http://www.antitraffickingreview.org/index.php/atrjournal/issue/view/16