| Summary: | This chapter examines the implications of U.S. antitrafficking policy and practice for both trafficking survivors and immigrant workers across labor sectors. In U.S. media and public policy discourses alike, the term “human trafficking” has become synonymous with sex trafficking, which in turn has been equated with sexual violence and prostitution. Yet the many forms of violence enacted in human trafficking can include racial and sexual violence as well as economic and imperialist violence. This chapter argues that the current U.S. anti-sex trafficking agenda is so narrowly focused on the sex industry and instead gives more emphasis on enforcement and prosecution as well as the explicit and exclusive criminalization of prostitution. In order to highlight the dangers and pitfalls of this policy, the chapter considers a case of extreme labor abuse, tantamount to trafficking, of immigrant workers in the United States in the meatpacking industry in Postville, Iowa.
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