The Anti-trafficking Security Assemblage: Examining Police and NGO Cooperation, Negotiation, and Knowledge Production in Ontario, Canada.

Canada's anti-trafficking efforts deploy security mechanisms through a diffused set of actors, including police and prosecutors, but also non-governmental organisations (NGOs), health care providers, educators, the travel and hospitality industry, private corporations, the media, and the public, to name a few. This article brings together two large research studies to focus on the particular and complex ways in which police and NGOs in the province of Ontario, Canada carry out anti-trafficking security tasks in cooperation, negotiation, and contention with each other, while simultaneously producing knowledge around trafficking, exploitation, and consent. We rely on Marc Schuilenburg's (The Securitization of Society: Crime, Risk, and Social Order, New York University Press, New York, 2015) work on the securitisation of society and 'security assemblage' to make sense of anti-trafficking risk management functions, considering how, where, and to what extent police and NGOs negotiate on-the-ground security work in their practices, revealing the contradictions and tensions that unfold in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]