The Trafficking-Technology Nexus

Within some public policy and scholarly accounts, human trafficking is increasingly understood as a technological problem that invites collaborative anti-trafficking solutions. A growing cohort of state, non-governmental, and corporate actors in the United States have come together around the shared contention that technology functions as both a facilitator and disrupting force of trafficking, specifically sex trafficking. Despite increased attention to the trafficking-technology nexus, scant research to date has critically unpacked these shifts nor mapped how technology reconfigures anti-trafficking collaborations. In this article, we propose that widespread anxieties and overzealous optimism about technology’s role in facilitating and disrupting trafficking have simultaneously promoted a tri-part anti-trafficking response, one animated by a law and order agenda, operationalized through augmented internet, mobile, and networked surveillance, and maintained through the integration of technology experts and advocates into organized anti-trafficking efforts. We suggest that an examination of technology has purchase for students of gender, sexuality, and neoliberal governmentality in its creation of new methods of surveillance, exclusion, and expertise.