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.
The Modern Slavery Act 2015 (“the Act”) is a ground-breaking piece of legislation. Four years after it received Royal Assent, and as other countries are following our lead and developing similar legislation, it is critical to consider the legal ...Read More
The data in this report represents signals and cases from January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018 and is accurate as of July 25, 2019. Cases of trafficking may be ongoing or new information may revealed to the National Hotline over time. Consequen...Read More
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has instituted an unprecedented system of state-sponsored forced la- bor for Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other minoritized citizens in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (or XUAR or Uyghur Region, also known...Read More
The expansion of the social audit industry exemplifies the neoliberal culture of private and voluntary codes of conduct in combination with the privatization of inspections.Over-reliance on...Read More
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