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Title: | “Who is not an agent here?”: The Collateral Damage of Anti-Trafficking in Nepal |
Authors: | Bhagat, A |
Keywords: | human trafficking;citizens;traffickers;stigma;migration;participatory action research;Nepal |
Issue Date: | 4-Oct-2022 |
Publisher: | Wiley on behalf of Antipode Foundation Ltd. |
Citation: | Bhagat, A. (2023) '“Who is not an agent here?”: The Collateral Damage of Anti-Trafficking in Nepal', Antipode, 55 (1), pp. 70 - 89. doi: 10.1111/anti.12882. |
Abstract: | Copyright © 2022 The Author. In this paper, I explore how the diverse labour migration practices of people who challenge their state’s restrictive policies produce a form of stigma that extends from people to the places where they reside. Drawing on the findings of Participatory Action Research (PAR) conducted in Nepal, I demonstrate how people residing in one such place attempt to undo stigma by adopting diverse practices amidst restrictive anti-trafficking and migration policies. I reveal a novel practice of prospective labour migrants negotiating and receiving money from their choicest mobility facilitators to assist their unauthorised labour migration. This exchange of money potentially criminalises prospective labour migrants, their family members, unlicensed and licensed recruitment agents, community leaders, anti-traffickers, government officials, hotel owners, transport service providers, and airport immigration officials as traffickers. Underscoring the collateral damage of anti-trafficking in Nepal, I assert that the exchange of money to facilitate unauthorised migration expands the remit of criminalisation of citizens as “traffickers”. |
Description: | This article has been written with the support of the TraffLab research project (https://www.trafflab.org/) and has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 756672). |
URI: | https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/27134 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12882 |
ISSN: | 0066-4812 |
Other Identifiers: | ORCID iD: Ayushman Bhagat https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8878-4668 |
Appears in Collections: | Dept of Social and Political Sciences Research Papers |
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FullText.pdf | Copyright © 2022 The Author. Antipode published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Antipode Foundation Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. | 257.32 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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