“ That’s   Not the Point of This ”: How Service Providers Challenge Carceral Humanitarianism in Their Government-Anti-trafficking Alliances

Abstract

The alliance between neoliberal states states and service providers—especially those engaged in issues related to gender, sex, or human trafficking—is most often described by scholars and human rights activists as a one-way street in which social workers, health care professionals, and other service providers become tools of a carceral state. These carceral humanitarian projects often lead to increased state intervention and control with dubious outcomes in terms of addressing or preventing social problems. Yet, given the literature that increasingly problematizes the state-activist binary, it is likely that service providers who partner with state actors may be more than complicit or willing collaborators. In this project, I use the concept of “institutional activism” to understand how service providers leverage their professional and moral resources to push back against or resist state actors and aims they view as problematic. I examine a wide sample of service providers in US anti-trafficking efforts through content analysis, participant observation and interviews. Since the service providers I observe neither universally support nor universally reject the aims of state carceral humanitarianism, I offer the term “Quasi-institutional Activism” to describe their position relative to the alleged binary between state carceral actors and outside opposition. I describe four interrelated ways they employ this quasi-institutional activism: deference, storytelling, professionalism and problem-solving.