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.

“A profound and vivid account of the afterlives of well-intended protocols and laws that are not able to resolve the very aspirations that embed their core mandates. By making plain the relationship between ‘do good aspirations,’ global political economy, inept legal tools, and the contradictions inherent in international justice, The Banality of Good offers new clarity on why human trafficking persists today. Truly a tour de force. A must-read!” - Kamari Maxine Clarke, author of (Affective Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Pan-Africanist Pushback) “This is a significant contribution to studies of international law and policy with a critical and on-the-ground granular approach to deepening our understanding of how anti-trafficking practices may be received and modified in local communities. Lieba Faier argues that contemporary models of global governance that propose universal solutions should include local thinking about trafficking. By training our eye on the nuances of human trafficking, Faier demonstrates, we would produce more layered understandings of the conditions that produce the violence in the first place and allow for the possibility of making material changes in the lives of victims.” - Arzoo Osanloo, author of (Forgiveness Work: Mercy, Law, and Victims' Rights in Iran)

Lieba Faier is Professor of Geography and Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Intimate Encounters: Filipina Women and the Remaking of Rural Japan.