Policing the absence of the victim

For this chapter, ethnographic methods (participant observations) have been applied to analyse police raids in areas of commercial sex work in Germany as a standardised operating procedure with the purpose of identifying victims of human trafficking. The aim of this chapter is twofold: first, it shows how local policing practices revolve around different and rather contrasting forms of subjectivities – the absent victim and the problematic sex worker – and second, it indicates how police officers perform their role as saviour and upholder of the social order in their daily practices.