Book Review: Representations of Transnational Human Trafficking: Present-Day News Media, True Crime, and Fiction by Christiana Gregoriou

Abstract

In 2000, the United Nations and its member countries sought to address the problem of transnational human trafficking (THT). This led to the Palermo Protocol to “Prevent Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children” (2). For the public, our understanding of THT comes from the media and its portrayal of the crime, policy, and impact of THT. The media, therefore, plays a significant role in shaping public discourse and opinion on THT, the victims, and the perpetrators. In this edited volume, Gregoriou seeks to explore how various forms of media shape this dialogue. To do this, Gregoriou calls on experts in the field of language, culture, and communication to explore different forms of media and how they contribute to the public consciousness of THT. There are two critical arguments made throughout the book. First, the authors argue that the media does not engage nearly enough with global institutions and wealth inequalities that lead to THT. In particular, the media lacks a critical awareness in tying trafficking to issues of local instability, war, and poverty, often caused by the West. Circumstances that prompt individuals to leave their country, opening a market for traffickers. Second, the authors consistently discuss the role that gender plays in how the media chooses to define human trafficking and victims. For example, men are more likely to be trafficked for labor, so they are treated as illegal labor migrants rather than victims. Nuance is lost, and there is a lack of consideration for how men are controlled and abused by their traffickers. This ties into their argument about global inequality structures that lead men to seek out employment opportunities and fall victim to THT. The book has five chapters, all using data from after the Palermo Protocol. The first chapter is an introductory chapter and conceptualizes the multilayered issues surrounding human trafficking and how media narratives overlook them. The authors argue that media can play an important role in framing THT to encourage structural changes. The chapter does a wonderful job setting up the subsequent chapters to discuss the major issues of the media, THT, and how they interact. Chapters two and three both look at newspapers. The second chapter by Gregoriou and Ras (who also wrote chapter one) studies linguistic characteristics of daily and Sunday newspapers in the United Kingdom (UK). The importance of this chapter lies in how the authors clearly demonstrate that newspapers rely on specific words, turns of phrases, and tropes to describe the problem of THT. In doing so, the reader is shown just how one-dimensional news reporting is and how they obfuscate the structural issues leading to trafficking by describing trafficking as an imported problem. Chapter three builds on chapter two by comparing the same UK newspapers with Serbian ones. However, this chapter uses media and narrative theory to explore how newspapers Book Review