Based on long-term ethnographic research, including documentary research, qualitative interviews and observations made at a Portuguese shelter for “sex trafficked women,” this paper explores the counter-trafficking apparatus questioning who benefits from it. The discussion explores the contrasts between an institutional commitment to constructing this apparatus and the actuality of procedural efforts purporting to support “trafficking victims.” The author argues that the higher goal of building a countertrafficking apparatus — in itself a political objective — limits the rights of “victims,” making processes that claim to be part of their protection de facto neo-liberal anti-political exercises in reenforcing bureaucratic state power.
Series Brief 1: Cambodia (June 2020) Between the months of February and May 2020, more than 90,000 labor migrants returned to Cambodia as the Covid-19 pandemic caused mass business and industry closures in destination countries such as neighborin...Read More
40.3 million people – around 1 in every 185 people alive – experienced modern slavery or forced labour in 2016. States have committed to take immediate and effective measures to end modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking by 2030, an...Read More
This report on modern slavery and financial institutions by the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies and the Freedom Fund considers the role that the financial sector can play in reducing human trafficking and modern slave...Read More
As stores closed around the world in response to COVID-19 lockdowns in early 2020, fashion brands and retailers sought to minimize their losses, shifting the financial burden of the disruption to the bottom of their supply chain. Cancelled orders, d...Read More
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