This book takes this collection of protocols as the object of its analy- sis, ethnographically examining their everyday enactment in Japan’s official counter–human trafficking campaign. It examines what happens when an in- tent to “do good” and address human suffering meets the bureaucratic forms and everyday procedures of global governance.
In The Banality of Good, Lieba Faier examines why contemporary efforts to curb human trafficking have fallen so spectacularly short of their stated goals despite well-funded campaigns by the United Nations and its member-state governments. Focusing on Japan’s efforts to enact the UN’s counter-trafficking protocol and assist Filipina migrants working in Japan’s sex industry, Faier draws from interviews with NGO caseworkers and government officials to demonstrate how these efforts disregard the needs and perspectives of those they are designed to help. She finds that these campaigns tend to privilege bureaucracies and institutional compliance, resulting in the compromised quality of life, repatriation, and even criminalization of human trafficking survivors. Faier expands on Hannah Arendt’s idea of the “banality of evil” by coining the titular “banality of good” to describe the reality of the UN’s fight against human trafficking. Detailing the protocols that have been put in place and evaluating their enactment, Faier reveals how the continued failure of humanitarian institutions to address structural inequities and colonial history ultimately reinforces the violent status quo they claim to be working to change.
Contents
Abbreviations • ix Preface • xi Acknowledgments • xv
Introduction • 1
- a global solution • 25
- the protocol’s compromises • 51
- the institutional life of suffering • 75
- “to promote the universal values of human dignity,” a roadmap • 97
- banal justice • 121
- the need to know • 143
- funding frustration • 163
- cruel empowerment • 185Conclusion. The Misperformance of the Trafficking Protocol, or The Less Things Change, The More They Stay The Same • 207Notes • 217 Bibliography • 271 Index • 303