Representations of Transnational Human Trafficking: Present-day News Media, True Crime, and Fiction
- Submitting institution
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The University of Leeds
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- UOA27-1670
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Palgrave Pivot
- ISBN
- 9783319782133
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
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-
- Supplementary information
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-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This cross-disciplinary collection utilises analytical tools from the humanities and social sciences, including linguistics, literary and media studies, and cultural criminology, to explore representations of human trafficking. It shows that different types of media portray different forms of trafficking and trafficking victims in different ways, although many popular media forms nonetheless still draw on and disseminate the dominant narrative described in detail in the introduction. Gregoriou and Ras’s chapter 2 draws on corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to examine a substantial corpus of media texts amounting to 61.5 million words.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The book derived from a funded project into transnational human trafficking. Gregoriou proposed, secured a contract for, edited, and secured funds with which to publish, the relevant book via Open Access. She co-wrote chapters 1 and 2 (with Ras), her contributions totalling 1/5 of the book. Chapter 1 defines human trafficking and offers an in-depth literature review that assesses the significance of attention to the topic, suggests new directions for research, and provides a synopsis and integrative analysis of the collective contributions of manuscripts within the collection. It starts by detailing the story of human trafficking (the types, causes and frames of trafficking), then discusses the effects of misrepresentation on the directly affected (draws on victim hierarchy, criminalisation and secondary victimisation), and then deals with the socio-political causes and effects of misrepresentation (gender and wealth inequality, global and local politics, and secondary exploitation). It ends by providing a rationale as to the nature of the case studies the book and its contributors consider. Chapter 2 draws on corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to examine a 61.5 million word corpus of articles published by UK newspapers between 2000 and 2016, and on qualitative critical discourse analysis of a 67 article sample corpus in depth. Both approaches analyse the naming and describing of victims and traffickers, metaphors, transitivity, and speech and writing presentation, while the in-depth qualitative approach furthermore analyses the text images (multi)modally. Findings include that trafficking for sexual exploitation is over-reported compared to other trafficking forms, and that victims are generally presented as young, female, and vulnerable. As a result, non-stereotypical victims, of crimes like forced begging and domestic servitude, are not readily recognised as victims, and are deprived of opportunities for assistance.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
