When Aid Comes With Strings: Donor Power and Everyday Anti‐Trafficking Work in Moldova

ABSTRACT Anti‐trafficking governance in Moldova unfolds far from the conference rooms where global priorities are set. Drawing on ethnographically informed research and 15 interviews with frontline practitioners, this article shows how donor agendas shape the daily realities of anti‐trafficking work, not only through funding, but through the softer pressures of reputation, metrics, and the symbolic authority of foreign expertise. Using coercion theory, the analysis reveals how external actors define what ‘counts’ as a victim, a solution or a successful intervention, often sidelining the contextual knowledge of Moldovan experts. Yet local actors do not simply comply. Over the decades from the 2000s to 2025, they crafted subtle, skillful strategies to manage, reinterpret and sometimes quietly resist donor expectations. Moldova thus becomes a strategic analytical lens for understanding how global anti‐trafficking ambitions collide with local realities, and why interventions often fail to address the structural vulnerabilities that make exploitation possible.