Representation of transnational human trafficking in present-day news media, true crime, and fiction

Start date: 1 September 2016
End date: 1 September 2017
Funder: AHRC/ESRC
Primary investigator: Professor Christiana Gregoriou
External co-investigators: Dr Melissa Dearey from the University of Hull, Dr Charlotte Beyer from the University of Gloucestershire, and Dr Nina Muzdeka from the University of Novi Sad in Serbia

Value

£100,237.

Partners and collaborators

Special Policing Consultant Bernie Gravett

Postgraduate students

Christiana Gregoriou's then-PhD student Ilse Ras was a project research assistant

Description

We examined representations of transnational human trafficking in media ranging from British and Serbian newspapers, British and Scandinavian crime novels, and a documentary series, and questioned the extent to which these portrayals reflect the realities of trafficking. We tackled the problematic tendency to under-report particular types of victim and forms of trafficking, and seeked to explore both dominant and marginalised points of view. We took a cross-disciplinary approach, utilising analytical tools from across the humanities and social sciences, including linguistics, literary and media studies, and cultural criminology.

Impact

A policy brief detailing an event we ran and findings and recommendations that arose out of it can be found here:

http://www.paccsresearch.org.uk

Publications and outputs

The book we co-wrote is available via open access here: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319782133

Project website

http://www.paccsresearch.org.uk/representation-of-transnational-human-trafficking/