Telling the Right Story at the Right Time: Women Seeking Asylum with Stories of Trafficking into the Sex Industry

Exploring the (re)emergence of human trafficking as a global social problem, this article presents an analysis of asylum determinations where claims for Asylum and/or Humanitarian Protection included accounts of trafficking to the UK. The article traces the emergence of trafficking as a credible claim for refugee status and argues that this recognition was time-specific and story-specific. Trafficking victims were identified by the UK Home Office where a claimant’s narrative mirrored the narrowly defined female ‘sex trafficking victim’ presented in campaigns and fictional depictions of human trafficking in the early 21st century. Through an exploration of the work that trafficking stories did in establishing an ‘ideal’ trafficking victim in asylum determinations, this article illustrates how social problems and legal judgments can be profoundly shaped by situated and strategic storytelling. These findings develop an understanding of the social construction of, and relationships between, social conditions and micro-meso-macro narratives of identity.