Negotiating Narratives of Human Trafficking: NGOs, Communication and the Power of Culture

Abstract

This article draws on interviews with anti-trafficking NGO employees in Thailand to illustrate the use of narratives as a tool for communicating cultural values. Drawing on theories of modernization, culture, and liberation psychology, I assess the way anti-trafficking NGO employees construct narratives, or “stories,” about human trafficking. These narratives rely on Western values associated with modernization, the role of NGOs in development, gendered constructions of victimhood, “Othering,” and Orientalism. Analyzing these narratives, I build a theory of “culture as a space of safety:” a self-reinforcing mechanism whereby employees ritualistically retreat from the overwhelming circumstances they confront in their work.