Department of Sociology and Criminology

Economic inequality has been on the rise in the United States since the 1980s and by some measures stands at levels not seen since before the Great Depression. Although the strikingly high and rising level of economic inequality in the nation has alarmed scholars, pundits, and elected officials alike, research across the social sciences repeatedly concludes that Americans are largely unconcerned about it. Considerable research has documented, for instance, the important role of psychological processes, such as system justification and American Dream ideology, in engendering Americans' relative insensitivity to economic inequality. The present work offers, and reports experimental tests of, a different perspective-the opportunity model of beliefs about economic inequality. Specifically, two convenience samples (study 1, n = 480; and study 2, n = 1,305) and one representative sample (study 3, n = 1,501) of American adults were exposed to information about rising economic inequality in the United States (or control information) and then asked about their beliefs regarding the roles of structural (e.g., being born wealthy) and individual (e.g., hard work) factors in getting ahead in society (i.e., opportunity beliefs). They then responded to policy questions regarding the roles of business and government actors in reducing economic inequality. Rather than revealing insensitivity to rising inequality, the results suggest that rising economic inequality in contemporary society can spark skepticism about the existence of economic opportunity in society that, in turn, may motivate support for policies designed to redress economic inequality. Author contributions: L.M. and J.A.R. designed research; L.M., D.B., M.L., and J.A.R. performed research; L.M., D.B., and M.L. analyzed data; and L.M. and J.A.R. wrote the paper. Reviewers: K.F., The Ohio State University; and V.H., University of Michigan.

Over the last few decades, the position of women vis-à-vis the welfare state has changed dramatically. Welfare states have adapted to women's increased labour force participation and to the "new social risks" that characterize postindustrial societies. In this paper, we examine gendered policy developments in the US, focusing on conceptions of vulnerability that inform policies meant to mitigate gendered social risks. Focusing on three policy areas: parental leave, domestic violence and disability, we show that policies increasingly target women's integration into the workforce and self-regulation as strategies to mitigate gendered social risk. We also discuss how these policies rely on individual interventions implemented by what we call punitive therapy practitioners, who encourage women's workforce participation and psychological self-regulation. Finally, we argue that enduring gendered conceptions of vulnerability have shaped the specific designs of policies that emerged in the 1960s-1970s, intensified through the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, and persist today.

This paper explores the racial dimensions of police body-worn cameras (BWCs) in Canada and the contested politics of seeing that they raise. By drawing on interview data with four Canadian police services and analyzing them through the work of anti-racist and anti-colonialist scholars, we argue that BWCs are engaged in the act of not-seeing the state violence that makes racialized communities vulnerable to police brutality in the first place. To include the politics of not-seeing in the story of BWCs changes our understandings of policing’s new visibility and the potential promise of “policing on camera.”

In Responding to Human Trafficking: Dispossession, Colonial Violence, and Resistance among Indigenous and Racialized Women, Julie Kaye offers a critical examination of how Canadian state and non-state actors understand human trafficking and implement anti-trafficking measures. Kaye examines Canada’s anti-trafficking policies and the efforts of non-government organisations (NGOs) through one-on-one interviews and focus group discussions. She demonstrates the way in which this politically charged issue has worked to conceal Canada’s violent colonial history and naturalise the inequalities and structural and material conditions in which trafficking and various forms of violence occur. Kaye argues that trafficking discourses position the colonial state as the saviour and therefore work to reinforce its power.

This paper explores the racial dimensions of police body-worn cameras (BWCs) in Canada and the contested politics of seeing that they raise. By drawing on interview data with four Canadian police services and analyzing them through the work of anti-racist and anti-colonialist scholars, we argue that BWCs are engaged in the act of not-seeing the state violence that makes racialized communities vulnerable to police brutality in the first place. To include the politics of not-seeing in the story of BWCs changes our understandings of policing's new visibility and the potential promise of "policing on camera."

International and domestic anti-trafficking agendas received an enormous boost in 2002 from the re-definition of human trafficking as a major and pressing transnational organized crime threat through the enactment of the UN Trafficking Protocol. This dissertation traces the way in which the definition of human trafficking and subsequent efforts to combat it are shaped in local context-specific ways through the 'crime-security nexus' (Pratt, 2005) and, what I call, the 'human trafficking matrix'. While the issue of trafficking has received wide-ranging, interdisciplinary scholarly attention, there is to date only three empirical Canadian studies that examine frontline anti-trafficking policing and prosecution efforts with a focus on migrant worker justice (Millar and O'Doherty 2015), on international trafficking cases (Ferguson 2012) and on Indigenous communities (Kaye 2017), as well as a handful of European (Meshkovska et al. 2016; Lester et al. 2017) and American studies (Farrell et al., 2015, 2016). This doctoral dissertation combines detailed analysis of relevant national and international laws and policies, case law, court documents, transcripts, and interviews with criminal justice actors to provide an empirically grounded study of front line anti-trafficking policing and prosecution in Canada, with a particular focus on the province of Ontario. This dissertation asks two main questions: 1) How have international discourses around organized crime threats to national security and corollary concerns with victims and human rights come to shape international and domestic legal regimes and domestic criminal justice responses to criminal activity defined as trafficking? and 2) What are the varied local effects of these developments on the culture, organization and decision-making of frontline of anti-trafficking criminal justice enforcement and prosecution? The local empirical research of this dissertation displays that the international and national antitrafficking regimes, which are embedded within the human trafficking matrix and are, at least in part, fueled by the crime-security nexus, have entailed a variety of practical effects on the frontline. These not only show the continuation of the historically longstanding criminalization of various activities associated with the sex trade and certain marginalized groups, but also reveal some interesting and novel effects relating to, for example, the infusion of resources, the development of various modes of policing and prosecution, the production and deployment of forms of knowledge and expertise, as well as the use of well-documented legal tactics in new ways that not only reshape trafficking victims and offenders but that also continually work to reshape and reproduce the problem of trafficking on the frontline. I am grateful to many who helped in various ways to bring this dissertation together. First and foremost, my supervisor Anna Pratt, who spent countless hours guiding, editing, supporting and encouraging me in this process. I cannot thank you enough for this. I'd like to thank my committee Annie Bunting and Alan Young as well as my internal reviewer Kamala Kempadoo and my external reviewer Annalee Lepp for their constructive feedback. And, a special thank you to Amanda Glasbeek, for your continued guidance and support throughout this process. I am indebted to my interview participants for sharing their invaluable insights as well as to my friends and former colleagues at the Ministry of the Attorney General for your kind assistance with research collection. I would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security Studies and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program. This journey would not have been the same without my dear colleagues and friends Heather Tasker, Emily Lockhart, Mariful Alam, Patrick Dwyer, Jessica Templeman and Bevery Orser. A big thank you to my family for always supporting me in my many ventures. And lastly, to my partner Ivica, for seeing me through the toughest parts of this journey, for your love, patience and sense of humour.

In 2005, Canada implemented its fi rst-ever domestic human traffi cking legislation under sections 279.01 through 279.04 of the Criminal Code of Canada. Th e fi rst conviction under this legislation came about three years aft er its implementation, with a total of only fi ve convictions having been obtained as of January of 2011. Th is article examines the legislation and the legislative defi nition of human traffi cking in Canada, arguing that the vagueness of this legislation, the breadth of the legislative defi nition, and its similarity to other provisions within the Criminal Code make it diffi cult to distinguish human traffi cking from other criminal off ences, particularly procurement, or in lay language-pimping, which is governed under section 212 of the Code. Analyzing cases identified as human trafficking by Canadian police and legal authorities, this article demonstrates the problematic eff ects of Canada's human traffi cking legislation. Th e article points out the challenges arising from identifying non-traffi cking cases as human traffi cking, including undermining the severity of human traffi cking and impeding eff orts to combat it.

This article explores the experiences, challenges and findings of two empirical research studies examining Canada's legal efforts to combat human trafficking. The authors outline the methodologies of their respective studies and reflect on some of the difficulties they faced in obtaining empirical data on human trafficking court cases and legal proceedings. Ultimately, the authors found that Canadian trafficking case law developments are in their early stages with very few convictions, despite a growing number of police-reported charges. The authors assert it is difficult to assess the efficacy and effects of Canadian anti-trafficking laws and policies due to the institutional and political limitations to collecting legal data in this highly politicised subject area. They conclude with five recommendations to increase the transparency of Canada's public claims about its anti-trafficking enforcement efforts and call for more empirically-based law reform.

This paper draws on postcolonial temporal analysis to make sense of police use of body-worn cameras (BWCs). We argue that the potential of BWCs to make racist policing visible, as originally hoped, is compromised by the inability of "real-time" video to capture the complexity of historical and ongoing colonial relations. Drawing on postcolonial literary and visual theory, and especially Homi Bhabha's (2004) postcolonial analysis of "belated-ness" and Andrea Smith's (2015) anti-colonial analysis of "notseeing," we argue that BWCs reproduce a white settler gaze in which the complex histories of colonialism become temporally incommensurate with real-time images of policing social order.

Kaye offers a critical examination of how Canadian state and non-state actors understand human trafficking and implement anti-trafficking measures. Kaye examines Canada's antitrafficking policies and the efforts of non-government organisations (NGOs) through one-on-one inter views and focus group discussions. She demonstrates the way in which this politically charged issue has worked to conceal Canada's violent colonial history and naturalise the inequalities and structural and material conditions in which trafficking and various forms of violence occur. Kaye argues that trafficking discourses position the colonial state as the saviour and therefore work to reinforce its power. 1 Sarah Hunt is an assistant professor in First Nations and Indigenous Studies and the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. Her work, which focuses on Indigenous and legal geographies, critically takes up questions of justice, gender, self-determination, and the spatiality of Indigenous law. She has written several articles on the role of the anti-trafficking framework on Indigenous communities.