Europeiska unionen och människohandel - En diskursanalys av offerskap och utsatthet

Sammanfattning: In this thesis I aim to examine how human trafficking, victimization and vulnerability are conceptualized in the European union and what these descriptions say about EU as an institution. The study has been made through a discourse analysis of the European union framework of policy documents on trafficking in human beings by using Carol Lee Bacchis What’s the problem represented to be?. The material has been analysed in line with Wendy Browns arguments about rights in Suffering the Paradoxes of Rights and through a postcolonial approach that has influenced Browns arguments. One of the things my study showed is that the problems that are presented in the framework are closely connected to the ‘root causes’ of trafficking but that the solutions are mostly focused on safety measures like increased border control, police operations and legal actions. This approach can be derived to neoliberalism in various ways, for instance the neoliberal way of constructing solutions in agreement with interests such as regulation of migration flows and effects of globalization. The second thing that the study showed is that narrow and rather static descriptions of victimhood were recurrently presented and were closely connected to terms such as passivity and restraint.