Feminism, white slavery and the development of consent in international trafficking law

Abstract

Abstract of thesis entitled FEMINISM, WHITE SLAVERY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONSENT IN INTERNATIONAL TRAFFICKING LAW

Submitted by Allyson Peers for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Law at the University of Hong Kong in December 2019

On the subject of trafficking protections, feminism is marked by a dispute on the question of whether women consent to prostitution. Some feminists claim that to argue that women do not consent is Victorian. They have turned to international trafficking law to show how the law is also marked by the exclusion of women’s agency in prostitution and its nineteenth century roots. In their view, the early White Slavery treaties are based on a fiction, akin to the nineteenth century popular penny dreadfuls’ stories of innocent women, kidnapped and enslaved in prostitution. In accordance with this view, they argue that the 2000 Protocol is a law haunted by the past. Little is known about the treaties and the new ground on which feminism argues over consent. This thesis addresses the issue of agency in feminism and asks how did consent develop in the international trafficking treaties? An archival, interdisciplinary method examines the objectives of the white slavery campaigns, the origins of the legal term white slavery and the drafting of the substantive offences in order to provide a doctrinal answer to the question of consent. The Victorian concept of white slavery is traced to a notion of indentured servitude that arose in the colonisation of America. It is found to resurface in trafficking, as it did in other white slavery discourses of the nineteenth century, as a narrative of labour. The term white slavery, alluded to the financial exploitation of the poor by new, capital orientated, methods of organising work. At the centre of the development of consent in the treaties is not a racialised slave but a free person bound by indenture. A purpose of suppressing financial exploitation rather than prostitution itself. The doctrinal answer to the question of the development of consent shows that trafficking was a prohibition on a type of trade and the relevant consent is to the business of commercial vice. The findings pose a problem for feminism’s contention that trafficking law turns on agency in prostitution and their annexation of the human rights discourse to define trafficking. It also problematises the premise that animates contemporary trafficking, that slavery and trafficking are similar legal concepts.