White Savior Projects: An Examination of the Antitrafficking Social Movement

• In Event: Preventing and Responding to Sex Trafficking

Abstract

I conducted an ethnography of three anti-sex trafficking organizations (ASMOs) in a midwestern context, which includes collecting observational data, semi-structured interviews with 12 survivors and 26 activists, and conducting a content analysis of organizational documents. I examine how evangelical Christianity influences the ASMOs, and the antitrafficking movement. I discuss the four ways evangelical Christianity influences the organizations through services for survivors, training for staff and the public, the recruitment of staff and volunteers at church, and the practice of Christianity in front of and with survivors. I also discuss how evangelical Christianity influences activists’ understanding of gender and sexuality, and how this influences services. Survivors becomes more conservative over time. I argue this stems from activists’ conservative beliefs being pushed on survivors as part of their effort to teach them white evangelical values and norms. I argue that antitrafficking Christian activism amounts to white saviorism. Activists “rescue” trafficking victims from their trafficking situation, and then work to teach them white evangelical values and norms, which are meant to prevent victims from returning to trafficking.

Author

• Jennifer Cheek, Metropolitan State University of Denver