UCLA Center for the Study of Women

Like me, many people may at first glance gloss over the popular images and rhetoric of human trafficking as an “easy” moral judgment. Upon examination, however, issues of globalization, immigration, law enforcement, gender roles, and controversial legal definitions make human trafficking an extremely complex tragedy-one that defies generalization and, within the political reality of international and national laws, is often conflated with otherinterests such as state control of immigration or prostitution. It is therefore to our benefit to consider and analyze the wide range of views being expressed by different stakeholders in the anti-trafficking effort. Elizabeth Bernstein’s lecture offered a glimpse into her analysis of the ideological politics surrounding and informing anti-trafficking discourses, particularly what seems an unexpected, powerful coalition between contemporary feminists and evangelical Christians as self-identified “modern-day abolitionists” of not only trafficking but also all forms of prostitution/sex work.