Not in My Backyard Abolitionism: Vigilante Rescue Against American Sex Trafficking

• In Event: 305 - Section on Sociology of Religion Paper Session. Race, Immigration, and Religion

Abstract

In 2008, the San Francisco-based anti-trafficking non-profit organization Not For Sale launched a campaign advocating “backyard abolitionism,” training American citizens to seek out and identify victims of human trafficking as part of their day-to-day activities. Based on two years of ethnographic participant observation with two evangelical Christian human trafficking outreach projects in Southern California, this article examines the processes of what I term “vigilante rescue” in human trafficking. The enthusiasm around this brand of civilian vigilantism mirrors contemporary trends in urban governance including, community policing and civilian neighborhood patrol as modes of law enforcement engagement that operate outside the formal dictates of state control. The non-state actors discussed in this paper are empowered not through professional skills or legal authority, but rather through merging American concern with human trafficking with moral panics concerning race, class, and migration as markers of sex trafficking. Bridging literatures of critical human trafficking scholarship with sociological literature on urban governance and carceral feminism, this article argues that “vigilante rescue” represents a neoliberal extension of state power, enacting and justifying surveillance over predominantly working class immigrant women in Los Angeles.

Author

• Elena Shih, Brown University