“Nothing but…stuff being played with”: body-constructed narratives of drug-trafficking young girls

In research on females' participation in the drug economy, Chinese scholarship continues to focus predominantly on the roles and division of labor undertaken by females, with the aim of refining law enforcement practices and sentencing procedures. This orientation overlooks females' subjectivities within drug trades and simplifies the complex entanglements between gender, embodiment, and illicit economies. This study centers on three cases from the southwestern border, foregrounding the narratives and understandings of female participants regarding their bodily experiences before recruitment, during participation in pregnancy-based drug trafficking, and across different stages of their post-trafficking lives. Through the lens of body politics, the analysis reveals how females' bodies, whether within patriarchal structures or the drug economy, are objects. These bodies undergo a trajectory of construction from sanctification to desacralisation, yet at no point do females attain true agency over the interpretation, shaping, or autonomy of their corporeality. Pregnancy-based drug trafficking not only reconfigures the function of the body but also undermines females' moral standing within patriarchal social norms, leaving them to endure intensified trauma and profound experiences of meaninglessness in the aftermath of trafficking. By situating these cases within the specific framework of prohibition-centered drug policy, this article contributes to cross-regional dialogue and offers empirical insights into gendered embodiment. It highlights how state power, illicit economies, and social violence intersect to shape women's corporeal and moral lives.