This thesis focuses on the role of front-line workers in constructing individuals as eligible, or ineligible, for the status of victim of human trafficking. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this thesis brings the sociology of social problems into discussion with an analysis of public policy and socio-legal studies to develop new empirical evidence of instability in the victim of trafficking status. Claims are made at the international and national level in the UK that policies to tackle human trafficking are based on a human rights approach. Multiple claims are embedded within this claim about the nature and scale of human trafficking, presenting an idealised view of the victim of trafficking as clearly defined. This perspective is contested in encounters between claimants to the victim of trafficking status and front-line workers. The decisions and actions of front-line workers about the eligibility of concrete individuals to the status of ‘victim of trafficking’ highlight the use of multiple definitions of human trafficking in different institutions. These decisions are influenced by the front-line worker’s assessment of the credibility of the claimant; the multiple accountabilities that apply to front-line workers; and temporality. The discretion to select a definition that is most useful for the context within which the front-line worker operates identifies them as street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 1980).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:716371 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Tangen, James |
| Publisher | University of Nottingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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