Sex Trafficking: Exploring Agency

Research: Agency

Agency focuses on one’s capacity to act independently. Agency  taps into power and control dynamics caused by external entities (i.e., a person or force vs. one’s own sense of control to perform a behavior).

According to the victimization frame, women are in terms of their innocence, purity and inability to take action on their own behalf (Pajnik, 2010).  The victimization frame assumes this deception and naturalizes it, downplaying individual capacities for agency and subjectivity by locating all women as passive and easily led, in need of protection. "Ideal victims" are viewed as exercising no agency (Hoyle, et al, 2011).

The only option for relief for those who are trafficked is to be rescued by the police and NGOs, perceived to be saviors of women; "saving victims from the clutches of vendors" (Bezjak 2003).

Bezjak, B. 2003. ‘V krempljih trgovcev z ljudmi [In the Clutches of Traffickers]’. Nedeljski dnevnik, 15 June
Hoyle, C., Bosworth, M., & Dempsey, M. (2011). Labelling the victims of sex trafficking: Exploring the borderland between rhetoric and reality. Social & Legal Studies, 20(3), 313-329.
Pajnik, M. (2010). Media framing of trafficking. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 12(1), 45-64.

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