| In this thesis, I examine how health stakeholders in British Columbia think and talk about human trafficking. I interrogate the health stakeholders' speech as a site where broad societal discourses associated with human trafficking manifest. Using critical race theory, interlocking analysis, and a Foucauldian discourse analysis approach, I critically deconstruct health stakeholders' understandings of human trafficking and persons who are trafficked. I pay particular attention to the discursive strategies the health stakeholders employ to construct the subjectivities of both persons who are trafficked and themselves in human trafficking discourse. I argue that these meaning-making processes and the uncritical reproduction of dominant human trafficking discourse in the health sector at least, in part, account for the lack of development and implementation of provincial human trafficking-specific policy and services to date. Given this absence, this thesis encourages health stakeholders to create evidence-based initiatives to address human trafficking and the health needs of persons who are trafficked. |
