Beyond Trafficking and Slavery editors introduce their first themed issue, which explores how slavery and trafficking have been represented—by public officials, activists, and numerous others—together with the frequently troubling consequences that these popular representations have had upon polic
The UK Modern Slavery Bill, and UK politicians’ obsession with immigration, risk undermining political moves to greater solidarity among all those—migrant and non-migrant—experiencing abuse or unfreedom in their employment.
The war on trafficking is a contemporary imperialist move that involves ‘the West’ saving ‘the rest’, appearing as a reconfigured version of the ‘white man’s burden.’ Modern-day slavery abolitionism, abolitionist feminism, and celebrity humanitarianism together make up this renewed imperialism. Es
At the end of 2014, our editorial partnership Beyond Trafficking and Slavery looks back at the ground covered and previews all that is still to come.
This article reviews the outcomes of research assessing anti-trafficking funding commitments by the UK government. It suggests that antitrafficking government funding stabilises specific policy representations of human trafficking that need to be interrogated and challenged.
The Global Slavery Index uses questionable data and ignores global interdependence to frame modern slavery as an issue rooted in the Global South. It exculpates the Global North of its continuing role in extreme exploitation and perpetuates a politics of rescue.
The Global Slavery Index is critically flawed: compromised by a weak methodology, unverified assumptions and multiple errors of fact and logic. Why the silence?
Prevailing accounts of a division between sex work and ‘trafficking’ obscure the routine fact of economic compulsion and exploitation, and their basis in the law. We must centre immigration law as part of more ambitious political enquiries and actions.
What is the difference between migrant smuggling and human trafficking? As these distinct phenomena each get more media attention their definitions get more confused, with dangerous policy implications.
Evo Morales has been condemned for lowering the working age in Bolivia to 10. But when child labour remains a given, it is in the children’s best interests to formalise and regulate it. Español
Laws to reduce buying sex, such as proposed amendments to the Modern Slavery Bill, are not only ineffective, but their moral underpinnings drive them to single out sex work while ignoring other sectors in which women are at risk of exploitation.
Is human trafficking an unintended consequence every time a sector of commerce is zoned illicit by lawmakers as a way of policing morality? What are the links between human trafficking and the wars on drugs and on undocumented immigration?
