Law Enforcement vs NGOs: How Do the Different Professional Backgrounds of Anti-Trafficking Practitioners Influence Their Views on Human Trafficking in the UK?

Employing schema theory—a theoretical framework widely used to examine how police officers’ pre-existing notions shape practice but less frequently applied to support workers— and through qualitative interviews, this paper analyses how UK anti-trafficking professionals conceptualise human trafficking in a country marked by a sharp rise in referrals of trafficking victims to its National Referral Mechanism. Evidently, law enforcement officials adopt public protection schemas, whilst support workers draw on distinct trauma/vulnerabilities schemas to conceptualise trafficking. This contributes to the adoption of starkly opposite discourses: an immigration and law-and-order discourse amongst law enforcement; and victims’ needs-centred discourse for support workers. Such divergence produces contrasting yet equally narrow stereotypes concerning victims and traffickers, evidencing the influence of professional backgrounds in practitioners’ trafficking understandings and conceptualisations. Whilst each perspective captures partial aspects of trafficking realities, their fragmentation risks undermining the effectiveness of the UK’s anti-trafficking response. Therefore, this paper emphasises the need to synthesise these perspectives through improved cross-sector communication, knowledge exchange and integration. Engaging critically with scholarship that associates restrictive immigration policies and the criminalisation model in destination states with increased trafficking flows, this paper counterargues that border control and criminal justice approaches can strengthen anti-trafficking efforts, when embedded within broader, multi-level, and multi-jurisdictional strategies that simultaneously cover origin, transit, and destination states. However, such a combined approach is contingent on addressing the conceptual fragmentations identified between professional groups. Bridging these divides thus becomes a necessary first step towards achieving a more comprehensive and effective anti-trafficking agenda in the UK.