Anti-Violence Iconographies of the Cage: Diasporan Crossings and the (Un)Tethering of Subjectivities

• Published in: Frontiers (Boulder) Vol. 36; no. 3; pp. 160 - 192
• Main Author: Fukushima, Annie Isabel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lincoln University of Nebraska Press 01.01.2015
• Subjects: Diaspora; Federal legislation; Human rights; Human trafficking; Migrants; Space; Victims of crime; United States > US
• ISSN: 0160-9009; 1536-0334; 1536-0334
• DOI: 10.1353/fro.2015.a604908

In the year 2000 the US passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (tvpa), reinforcing national commitments to prevent human trafficking through anti-trafficking awareness efforts, provide legal relief for migrants and social services for all trafficking victims, and prosecute traffickers. The tvpa legislated human trafficking as a transnational crime and created a legal category for the trafficked and the traffickers. These legal maneuvers go hand-in- hand with local and transnational movements against human trafficking, colloquially described as modern- day slavery. This article responds to the following questions: What are the material limits of anti- violence iconographies? How do such limits sustain the coloniality of categories and what it means to cross into visibility? How are diasporans, who are constituted in the US as crossing into visibility, determined by multiple crossings (geographical, sociopolitical, and legal) to which their subject location is tethered by dualities of criminality/victimhood, illegality/ legality, non- citizenry/citizenry, and nonhuman/human?