The Anatomy of a Social Justice Field: The Growth, Collaboration, and Dissonance of the Modern U.S. Anti-Trafficking Movement

In this dissertation, I explore how the social actors which are part of the field of anti-human trafficking organize and operate together as a collective. Around the end of the twentieth century global interest began to grow in ending the phenomenon of human trafficking. In the United States this interest has gained particular momentum since the federal statute, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, became law in 2000. Over the past twenty years a growing number of municipalities, politicians, nonprofits, religious entities and celebrities have been organizing around “fighting” and/or “ending” human trafficking. I study this collection of entities not merely as a group of organizations aimed at a particular purpose, but as a social field oriented around a perceived social and moral problem. This research contributes to our understandings of social fields, and moral problems.

In my first chapter, I build from theoretical work which explores how problems rise and fall in the public’s consciousness. Using a unique dataset, I test several hypotheses about what factors cause society and governments to notice a social problem and respond through institutional means. I explore what factors contribute to the start and growth of human trafficking task force formation across the fifty states and conclude that a “domino effect” pattern best describes how environment, media and politics has affected task force formation.

In my second chapter, I draw on interviews and participant observation to describe how organizations in the movement operate together as a social field. In asking “how is the movement held together as a social field?” I bring an emphasis on synergy back to the forefront of field theory research. I describe a particular type of organization, a scaffolding organization, which explains how the loose, diverse, and disperse field of anti-human trafficking operates. I describe the distinctive characteristics which these scaffolding organizations possess, and how this theoretical concept can be applied in other field-based research.

Finally, in my last chapter I build on past interdisciplinary work which has studied the anti-human trafficking movement as an odd and somewhat baffling partnership of organizations which should not, on paper, be able to work together: conservative religious groups, radical Feminists, government entities, etc. Building from Elizabeth Bernstein’s concept of “Carceral Feminism” I describe how the collective of organizations in the U.S. who are fighting human trafficking shift adjust, and/or hide their political and philosophical commitments in response to internal and external challenges. I discuss what my findings tell us about gender-based social movements and the dynamics that govern the odd assortment of social actors which coalesce around them.