Through genealogical methods and “rhetorical-material analyses,” Annie Hill’s Trafficking Rhetoric: Race, Migration, and the Making of Modern-Day Slavery effectively critiques the UK’s harrowing antitrafficking agenda which, according to Hill, puts marginalized identities at risk and seeks to deflect responsibility from the state. In doing so, Hill demonstrates how a nation’s agenda can perpetuate violence against marginalized populations. The introduction begins with George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests in Bristol, England. Hill traces the history of the Edward Colston statue, a “rhetorical and material reminder[s]” of Bristol’s legacy as a major port in the slave trade. Jen Reid, a Black woman who stood in Colston’s place after the statue’s removal in the Bristol Harbour, inspired artist Marc Quinn to create a statue of her; however, the statue of Reid was up for only twenty-four hours, while Colston’s, who was sprayed with red paint that symbolized his violence and the slave trade, was displayed in a museum. The rapid removal of Quinn’s statue, and the subsequent legal proceedings against four BLM protestors charged with the removal of Colston’s statue, are just the first of many examples Hill employs to further explore how “the torque of state veneration and state violence is evinced–it is evidenced–when a state points to the supposed misdeeds of others as a way of celebrating itself and concealing its own aggression.” In Trafficking Rhetoric, Hill highlights how the UK’s antitrafficking agenda “defines people who migrate, frames border control, and, above all, relies on state regimes of racialization;” Hill does so by tracing the UK and the European Union’s relationship, and the UK’s continual historical mistreatment of East Europeans.

In Chapter One, Hill analyzes two reports commissioned by the United Kingdom’s Home Office. Hill notes that these reports from 1998 and 2003 are merely ‘speculative,’ given that it is impossible to obtain accurate figures on the sexual trafficking of women. However, these “speculative figures” take on a life of their own: “The rhetorical life of trafficking estimates manifests as they travel through texts, gaining traction and validity as empirical claims. Estimates help antitrafficking agendas to go live, circulating as statistical counterparts to sensationalistic stories about sex slavery [. . .] justify[ing] antitrafficking law, policy, and policing.” Through an examination of the methodological shortcomings and conflations of real human experiences found in the source inventory and material texts of the 1998 report, Hill thoroughly dissects that report and the speculative conclusions it led to. Hill similarly dismantles the 2003 report, arguing the authors were “seduced by specificity,” using weak sources that prevent accurate data, not actually measuring people who were trafficked, and other methodological shortcomings. As a result of both reports, trafficking estimates in the media ranged from “4,000 to 67,000.” Hill claims “the impossibility of arriving at an accurate number allowed estimates to proliferate and persuade, which illustrates how speculative figures rhetorically constitutes the problem they appeared to measure,” which then “corroborated speculative and wildly fluctuating claims about trafficking in the UK.” Through a rhetorical-material analysis, Hill debunks the speculative nature of these inaccurate statistics that ultimately allowed the UK government to construct a destructive narrative that placed the responsibility for sexual trafficking somewhere else.

Chapter Two analyzes the 2007 UK Action Plan on Tackling Human Trafficking through the use of a visual rhetorical analysis of how the UK explains trafficking, one that ultimately dismantles claims made in UK official documents that further their antitrafficking agenda. By deflecting the responsibility of the transatlantic slave trade and shifting its origin to East Europe, an alternative history and “selective memory” is presented where “slavery comes from elsewhere and enters the UK;” as a result, the UK further perpetuates “border logics” that displace Eastern Europeans and immigration and keeps Britain’s hands clean. After tracing the effects of the Action Plan and the fear of “white slavery” that circulated, Hill argues that “trafficking rhetoric mediated both physical and symbolic borders, often depicting white migrants as threats, or as threatened, while telling Britons to act against the people putting their country at risk.” Hill’s Chapter Three also continues dismantling troubling state rhetoric by focusing on the 2007 Blue Blindfold campaign by the UK Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC). This campaign aimed to “devolv[e] authority for detecting trafficking to the average Briton, who acts as a surrogate for the law and immigration enforcement apparatus. Surveillance is individuated because every citizen should look for signs of trafficking.” Drawing from J. Anthony Blair and Wendy Hesford for their analysis of visual rhetorics and evocative materials, Hill points out that by primarily representing white women, the campaign renders whiteness normative. She also argues that for the Blue Blindfold campaign, “disability [. . .] becomes a prop and plot device for the dramatic action of removing the blindfold and restoring sight. The ableist logic subtending this plot device suggests that blindness must be fixed to defend the nation against a foreign foe and save innocent women and children.” Hill’s deconstruction of this campaign highlights how the UK’s antitrafficking agenda created more violence toward marginalized populations in its attempt to protect the state’s veneration.

Chapter Four analyzes the Immigration Acts of 2014 and 2016, and more specifically, The Hostile Environment Policy. This policy not only punishes those who are unhoused, but it also “obstruct[s] access to vital services to force migrants out of the country and deter others from traveling to the UK.” Hill then digs into 2006 Operation Pentameter, a four-month pilot that tested surveillance on locations that were used for exploitation such as “massage parlors, hotels, and private residences suspected of facilitating prostitution.” This problematic operation had a sequel a year later in 2007 with Pentameter 2 which expanded the operations to other locations and no longer just focused on trafficking. Hill’s examination of Pentameter 2, Section 57 of the Sexual Offences Act of 2003, and The National Referral Mechanism leads to her conclusion that these programs and documents created and circulated by the UK ultimately continued to perpetuate a violence against actual victims of trafficking, especially those who were immigrants. 

Hill concludes with a case study on a 2018 UK scandal where those who immigrated from the Commonwealth Caribbean between 1948 and 1971 were “denied legal rights, losing jobs, and in some cases experiencing deportation.” Hill then discusses how this “Windrush generation” was impacted by the Hostile Environment Policy and other Home Office policies that put members of this generation as well as their children at risk of deportation. Hill ends her strong analyses and critiques of the UK antitrafficking agenda by concluding that not only do “xenophobia and racism materialize (as) state agendas,” but that the UK’s trafficking rhetoric enacted state violence against immigrants and created a hostile environment. Hill’s conclusion aims to lay further groundwork for the field of rhetoric and how it can “reframe a state agenda” by “interrogating” how we do rhetoric and what we are able to analyze. 

Annie Hill’s examination of the UK’s antitrafficking agenda highlights how a global power can enact violence on marginalized populations, whether it be its own citizens or migrants. Hill’s focus, for example, on the seduction of quantification highlights how statistics commissioned by the state, no matter how incorrect they might be, can circulate into the media and create destructive narratives that sensationalize trafficking victims. Hill highlights how the UK government’s antitrafficking agenda attempts to wipe their hands clean of responsibility for the violence that ensues and rather, places the responsibility in the hands of its citizens. The UK’s claim of abolishing the transatlantic slave trade and using human trafficking as a fight against modern-day slavery emphasizes the UK’s role as a global imperial powerhouse who, despite its history that is embedded in colonialism and violence against racialized bodies, is still aiming to displace responsibility for this issue and rather, place the responsibility and blame on marginalized bodies. Trafficking Rhetoric then, not only pushes the field of rhetoric to be less myopic and US-centric, but it also emphasizes the importance of holding a nation and government accountable for its history of colonialism and violence, which ultimately displaces and enacts violence against marginalized populations.