This article traces the development of popular forms of anti-trafficking activism in the United States through a social network and discourse analysis that focuses on NGO websites, celebrity advocacy, merchandising, social media campaigns, and policy interventions. This “branded activism,” as we describe it, plays an important role in legitimizing an emerging anti-trafficking consensus that increasingly shapes both US foreign policy and domestic policing, and is frequently driven by an anti-sex work politics. Popular anti-trafficking discourses, we find, build on melodramatic narratives of victims and (white) saviors, depoliticize the complex labor and migration issues at stake, reinforce capitalist logics, and enable policy interventions that produce harm for migrants, sex workers, and others ostensibly being “rescued.” Celebrity and marketing-driven branded activism relies especially strongly on parallels drawn between histories of chattel slavery and what anti-trafficking campaigns call “modern-day slavery.” We challenge these parallels, particularly as they encourage participants to see themselves as abolitionist saviors in ways that reinforce neo-liberal notions of empowerment rooted in communicative capitalist networks.

本文通过关注 NGO 网站、名人宣传、商品推销、社交媒体活动和政策干预的社交网络和话语分析，追溯了美国流行的反贩运活动形式的发展。正如我们所描述的，这种“品牌激进主义”在使新兴的反贩运共识合法化方面发挥着重要作用，这种共识日益影响着美国的外交政策和国内警务，并且经常受到反性工作政治的推动。我们发现，流行的反人口贩运话语建立在对受害者和（白人）救世主的戏剧化叙述之上，将面临的复杂劳工和移民问题非政治化，强化资本主义逻辑，并促成对移民、性工作者和其他人造成伤害的政策干预表面上被“拯救”。” 名人和营销驱动的品牌激进主义尤其强烈依赖于动产奴隶制历史与反贩运运动所称的“现代奴隶制”之间的相似之处。我们挑战这些相似之处，特别是因为它们鼓励参与者将自己视为废奴主义的救世主，以强化植根于交流资本主义网络的新自由主义赋权观念。