"It’s Happening Here!” Anti-Trafficking Policy in the City of Ottawa – A Critical Analysis

Over the last several years human trafficking has been in the political spotlight, and anti-trafficking has become a political arena on its own. “Anti” projects are useful in understanding how law and policies are made. What does it mean to be against human trafficking? Using governmentality and genealogy methods, I focus on one anti-sex trafficking campaign located in Ottawa to examine how trafficking has been constructed as a coherent social problem. How does one NGO add or shape the anti-trafficking narrative in the community? I consider anti-sex trafficking as an evolving phenomenon that is constantly being produced through discourse, and practices. The empirical focus helps determine how power is established and controlled related to anti-trafficking, the conflation with sex work and the broader trafficking debates. In this way, government is not only policy or laws itself, but also the spaces in between and the personal lived experience of anti-trafficking.