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Implementing Policy for Invisible Populations: Social Work and Social Policy in a Federal Anti-Trafficking Taskforce in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2013

Anthony Marcus  and
Ric Curtis
Anthony Marcus
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, John Jay College of the City University of New York E-mail: amarcus@jjay.cuny.edu
Ric Curtis
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, John Jay College of the City University of New York E-mail: rcurtis@jjay.cuny.edu
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Abstract

In the United States, the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) has been one of the principal foci in the fight against human trafficking during the past decade with billions of dollars spent and hundreds of thousands of helping professionals trained in anti-trafficking best practices. Despite this attention, prosecutions, convictions and rescues have been scarce relative to funding, leading critical scholars to argue that CSEC is a moral panic. The following article, based on fourteen months of participant-observation between 2009 and 2010 with social service providers, law enforcement officials, not-for-profit directors and local clergy from a voluntary participation federal anti-trafficking taskforce in Atlantic City, New Jersey provides an ethnographic account of the ways that helping professionals confront the challenges and contradictions of implementing policy and advocating for an invisible target population that is rarely, if ever, visible in their work lives.

Keywords

Human TraffickingSocial WorkCommercial Sexual Exploitation of ChildrenMoral PanicProstitution
Type
Articles
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , October 2014 , pp. 481 - 492
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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