Issue 16, April 2021 ISSN: 2286-7511 EISSN: 2287-0113 Special Issue – Trafficking in Minors Editorial: Trafficking in Minors: Confronting complex realities, structural inequalities, and agency Thematic Articles Between Theory and Reality: The challenge of distinguishing between trafficked children and independent child migrants Putting Childhood in Its Place: Rethinking popular discourses on the conceptualisation of child trafficking in Ghana ‘Why Was He Videoing Us?’: The ethics and politics of audio-visual propaganda in child trafficking and human trafficking campaigns Child Trafficking vs. Child Sexual Exploitation: Critical reflection on the UK media reports ‘Little Rascals’ or Not-So-Ideal-Victims: Dealing with minors trafficked for exploitation in criminal activities in the Netherlands Ganged Up On: How the US immigration system penalises and fails to protect Central American minors who are trafficked for criminal activity by gangs Commercial Gestational Surrogacy: Unravelling the threads between reproductive tourism and child trafficking Short Articles The Perfect Victim: ‘Young girls’, domestic trafficking, and anti-prostitution politics in Canada Online Child Sexual Exploitation in the Philippines: Moving beyond the current discourse and approach GUEST EDITOR EDITOR BRENDA OUDE BREUIL BORISLAV GERASIMOV EDITORIAL BOARD RUTVICA ANDRIJASEVIC, University of Bristol, United Kingdom LYNDSEY BEUTIN, McMaster University, Canada JACQUELINE BHABHA, Harvard School of Public Health, United States XIANG BIAO, Oxford University, United Kingdom DENISE BRENNAN, Georgetown University, United States LUCIANA CAMPELLO, Independent consultant, Brazil JOY NGOZI EZEILO, University of Nigeria; Former UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, Nigeria ANNE T. GALLAGHER, Independent scholar and legal advisor, Australia JOHN GEE, Transient Workers Count Too, Singapore YANA HASHAMOVA, Ohio State University, United States SUZANNE HOFF, La Strada International, The Netherlands KRISTIINA KANGASPUNTA, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Austria KAMALA KEMPADOO, York University, Canada ANNALEE LEPP, University of Victoria, Canada MARIKA MCADAM, Independent consultant, Thailand SVERRE MOLLAND, Australian National University, Australia MARINA NOVAES, Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, Brazil VICTORIA IJEOMA NWOGU, United Nations Development Programme, Somalia JULIA O’CONNELL DAVIDSON, University of Bristol, United Kingdom PIA OBEROI, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Thailand SAM OKYERE, University of Bristol, United Kingdom ELAINE PEARSON, Human Rights Watch, Australia NICOLA PIPER, University of Sydney, Australia NIVEDITA PRASAD, Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences, Germany CAROLINE ROBINSON, Independent human rights expert, United Kingdom JYOTI SANGHERA, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Switzerland MARIE SEGRAVE, Monash University, Australia KIRIL SHARAPOV, Edinburgh Napier University ELENA SHIH, Brown University, United States KENDRA STRAUSS, Simon Fraser University, Canada REBECCA SURTEES, NEXUS Institute, United States SALLIE YEA, Independent scholar and consultant, Australia CATHY ZIMMERMAN, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom ANTI-TRAFFICKING REVIEW Special Issue TRAFFICKING IN MINORS Issue 16, April 2021 The Anti-Trafficking Review (ISSN 2286-7511) is published by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), a network of over 80 NGOs worldwide focused on advancing the human rights of migrants and trafficked persons. The Anti-Trafficking Review promotes a human rights-based approach to anti-trafficking. It explores trafficking in its broader context including gender analyses and intersections with labour and migration. It offers an outlet and space for dialogue between academics, practitioners, trafficked persons and advocates seeking to communicate new ideas and findings to those working for and with trafficked persons. The Review is primarily an e-journal, published biannually. The journal presents rigorously considered, peer-reviewed material in clear English. Each issue relates to an emerging or overlooked theme in the field of anti-trafficking. Articles contained in the Review represent the views of the respective authors and not necessarily those of the editors, the Editorial Board, the GAATW network or its members. The editorial team reserves the right to edit all articles before publication. The Anti-Trafficking Review is an open access publication distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). The Anti-Trafficking Review promotes the sharing of information, and we therefore encourage the reproduction and onward dissemination of articles published with us. Copyediting: Matthias Lehmann Layout and printing: Sam Lada LP ANTI-TRAFFICKING REVIEW Issue 16, April 2021 1 Editorial: Trafficking i n Minors: Confronting complex realities, structural inequalities, and agency Brenda Oude Breuil and Borislav Gerasimov Thematic Articles: Trafficking in Minors 11 Between Theory and Reality: The challenge of distinguishing between trafficked children and independent child migrants Mike Dottridge 28 Putting Childhood in Its Place: Rethinking popular discourses on the conceptualisation of child trafficking in Ghana Bernard Koomson and Dawuda Abdulai 47 Retracted: ‘Why Was He Videoing Us?’: The ethics and politics of audio-visual propaganda in child trafficking and human trafficking campaigns Sam Okyere, Nana K Agyeman, and Emmanuel Saboro 69 Child Trafficking v s. C hild Sexual Exploitation: Critical reflection on the UK media reports Elena Krsmanovic 86 ‘Little Rascals’ or Not-So-Ideal-Victims: Dealing with minors trafficked for exploitation in criminal activities in the Netherlands Brenda Oude Breuil 104 Ganged Up On: How the US immigration system penalises and fails to protect Central American minors who are trafficked for criminal activity by gangs Katherine Soltis and Madeline Taylor Diaz 123 Commercial Gestational Surrogacy: Unravelling the threads between reproductive tourism and child trafficking Nishat Hyder-Rahman Short Articles 145 The Perfect Victim: ‘Young girls’, domestic trafficking, and anti-prostitution politics in Canada Elya Durisin and Emily van der Meulen 150 Online Child Sexual Exploitation in the Philippines: Moving beyond the current discourse and approach Melinda Gill B Oude Breuil and B Gerasimov Editorial: Trafficking in Minors: Confronting complex realities, structural inequalities, and agency Brenda Oude Breuil and Borislav Gerasimov Please cite this article as: B Oude Breuil and B Gerasimov, ‘Editorial: Trafficking in Minors: Confronting complex realities, structural inequalities, and agency’, Anti-Trafficking Review, issue 16, 2021, pp. 1-9, https://doi.org/10.14197/atr. 201221161 On the tenth anniversary of the Anti-Trafficking Review, and with 2021 proclaimed the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour,1 this Special Issue on ‘Trafficking in Minors’ is well-timed. You might even say it comes a bit late, considering the topic’s central place in the representation of human trafficking, which is in itself an urgent matter that has been widely discussed in previous issues of the journal. If there is one topic in the trafficking discourse that evokes particularly emotional outrage and a passionate, oftentimes moralistic ‘call to arms’, it is child trafficking. Without becoming cynical about many doubtlessly well-intentioned actions to protect children from being victimised, some critique is needed here. One only has to enter ‘child trafficking’ into an internet search engine and watch the images generated—big, innocent eyes looking straight into the camera in silent protest; small bodies curled up in helpless, foetal positions; hands protectively held up to block invisible evils; and faces distorted in expressions of agony and fear, with mouths covered by tape with ‘Help’ written on it, or by adult hands—to understand that stereotypical and symbolic depictions of children are oftentimes (ab)used to raise the stakes. Children are currency in political praxis and public discourses, as they symbolise the continuity of communities, feelings of ‘home’ and belonging, and that which is most valuable in people’s lives. If children are maltreated, it feels as if the communities they belong to are endangered, too. 1 United Nations General Assembly, Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 July 2019, A/RES/73/327; see also ‘International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour’, retrieved 19 March 2021, https://endchildlabour2021.org. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). Under the CC-BY license, the public is free to share, adapt, and make commercial use of the work. Users must always give proper attribution to the authors and the Anti-Trafficking Review. 1 ANTI-TRAFFICKING REVIEW 16 (2021): 1-9 The affective appeal and political currency of the topic of trafficking in minors— and the related issue of child labour—do not do a great service to the empirical study of the phenomenon. With the emotional stakes so high, academic and non- academic researchers, as well as civil society actors and policymakers, are quickly drawn into (or unwillingly ascribed) polarised positions, perceived as either serving the ‘abolitionists’ (claiming, tout court, that child trafficking should be eradicated), or being ‘liberal relativists’ (assumed to relativise child trafficking and child labour