ABSTRACT
In the 1990s the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW—the Alliance) looked at what constituted the term “trafficking.” The Alliance and researchers globally at that time were seeking to ascertain what set of experiences made up this particular phenomenon. In 2000, with the establishment of an internationally recognized definition in the UN Trafficking Protocol, trafficking became a rights violation defined and set apart from other violations. Many police officers, immigration officials, NGOs, employers, trade unions, and the public generally have gained awareness of this as a problem for which to be on the lookout and to provide a set of social and legal services. With an eye for this human rights violation, the anti-trafficking field emerged. Ten years on, many have begun to see that things have become too narrow and fairly disconnected from the broader issues that affect trafficking and trafficked persons, that is, women’s rights, migration controls, livelihoods, and globalization. GAATW’s 2009–2010 Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) was a reaction to anti-trafficking’s current over-specialization.
