White Supremacy, Racism and the Coloniality of Anti-Trafficking

Kempadoo, Kamala; Shih, Elena

doi:10.4324/9781003162124

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…While it encompasses a huge range of highly disparate issues, certain forms of exploitation, such as exploitative labour in prison, mandatory military service, grooming and recruitment into terrorism, are routinely excluded (Muraszkiewicz 2020;Kempadoo & Shih 2022). This narrow lens underlines the political dimensions of trafficking discourse, reflecting conscious choices of what is included or excluded.…”

Section: Intersections and Overlaps In Smuggling And Trafficking And ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over the two decades since UNTOC came into effect, anti-trafficking has become a major and well-funded social movement of the 21st century (Davidson 2017). Anti-trafficking responses have been heavily criticised for a focus on 'rescue' and 'rehabilitation' over rights-building and solidarity, and for the ways anti-trafficking can be a smokescreen for immigration control (see, e.g., Kempadoo & Shih 2022;McGrath & Watson 2018). Yet, for all the flaws of the dominant anti-trafficking responses, smuggled migrants rarely attract a fraction of the interest and sympathy afforded (even if sometimes only superficially) to trafficked people.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Exploring the ‘Blurred Boundary’: Human Smuggling and Trafficking on the Central Mediterranean Route to Europe

Bish,

Cockbain,

Walsh

et al. 2024

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development

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Objectives: This study examines the convergence of smuggling and trafficking in persons along the Central Mediterranean Route (CMR) to Europe. We explore where and how these phenomena blur, impacting states' obligations and policy decisions. Methods:We analyse 71 interviews with migrants who travelled on the CMR in 2018 and 2019, with a focus on 17 participants who experienced forced labour. Results:We find clear overlaps and crossovers between smuggling of migrants, forced labour, debt bondage, extortion, kidnapping and human trafficking. Notably, we observed transitions from trafficking to smuggling -a phenomenon rarely reported. This includes cases where people negotiated boat crossings with their traffickers as a means of escaping detention. The concept of exploitation as a 'purpose' of trafficking, not clearly defined in international law, complicates the distinction between smuggling and trafficking. For example, instances where individuals were coerced onto boats by armed men could be considered trafficking, should extortion through the extraction of significant sums of money for dangerous sea crossings be recognised as a 'purpose of exploitation'. In our investigation into conditions of detention during these journeys, we argue that the deliberate use of torture for ransom, forced labour and extortion in certain facilities meets the 'purpose' criteria for exploitation, meaning migrants subjected to these conditions could reasonably be considered to have been trafficked. Conclusion:Given the challenges in neatly categorising some experiences as either smuggling or trafficking under international law, we call for humanitarian protection based on the hardships that people experienced en route, rather than on dichotomous legal categorisations or on their initial motivations for leaving. 71 Bish et al.

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Section: Intersections and Overlaps In Smuggling And Trafficking And ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the ‘Blurred Boundary’: Human Smuggling and Trafficking on the Central Mediterranean Route to Europe

Bish,

Cockbain,

Walsh

et al. 2024

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…According to Ribeiro and Escobar (2006), coloniality operates through institutional structures that allocate superiority to some ways of life and inferiority to others (Ribeiro and Escobar 2006). This implies that in the context of antitrafficking, those inferior and 'dominated' become objects for the civilising mission for which the Palermo Protocol provides the guidelines (Kempadoo and Shih 2022). When fighting against whatever ill, examples abound of how the Protocol allows selective criminalisation of whole communities and customs (Einarsdóttir et al 2010;Einarsdóttir and Boiro 2014).…”

Section: Layers Of Coloniality and Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

The Emergence of the Bissau-Guinean Fula Cernos

Boiro

Einarsdóttir

2023

J. Relig. Afr.

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International agencies and non-governmental organisations classify Quranic schoolboys who beg on behalf of their teachers as victims of child trafficking. The aim here is to understand why no Bissau-Guinean Fula religious leader, referred to as cerno, has been sentenced to prison, despite accusations of child trafficking. The findings show that community members hold religious leaders in high esteem for their role within the spiritual, educative, and social spheres. Community members, entrenched in complex discriminatory relations within their ethnic group and beyond, perceive them as their saviours, while politicians, high-ranking officers and traders compete for their endorsement. Criminalising the cernos is unsuccessful; to safeguard the interests of children, the children and their community members, including the cernos, should be put at the heart of the safeguarding measures. Despite complex layers of coloniality, the religious leaders are the masters of the game, and their imprisonment is challenging.

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“…Most centrally, in the late 1990s and early 2000s the governing institutions of the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union invoked human trafficking—particularly sex trafficking—as an alibi to intensify border control and the policing of migrants in imperial geographies. Against the recommendations of global sex worker advocacy organisations, powerful countries passed a series of anti‐trafficking policies that doubled as anti‐prostitution policies, and then they pressured poorer countries to do the same (DeStefano 2008; Doezema 2010; FitzGerald 2008, 2016; Kempadoo 2007; Kempadoo and Shih 2022; Lindstrom 2004). In the Korean activist milieu, “trafficking” and “escape” prevailed as key terms to frame a range of issues, from the conditions of migrant camptown workers to the journeys of North Korean defectors (Choi 2014; Moon 2005).…”

Section: Sex Empire and The Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

Anti‐Prostitution Politics and Militarised Urban Prosperity in the US Military Camptown in Korea

Martin

2023

Antipode

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Camptowns (kijich'on) are neighbourhoods located near US military bases in Korea that are organised around the military service economy, especially the sex industry. While most studies of Korean camptowns point to the US military's involvement with the camptown sex industry as evidence of US military imperialism, this article argues that since 2004 anti‐prostitution polices have been essential to stabilising American militarisation in Korea's urban realm. Focusing on Anjeong‐ri, a camptown located adjacent to Camp Humphreys, the largest overseas US military base on the planet, the article examines how Korean development actors invoke hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, and class to distance the camptown from the sex industry and to construct the camptown as a space of militarised urban prosperity. By showing emerging ways in which US military empire works through anti‐prostitution policies and through the urban system in Korea, the argument poses a challenge to anti‐prostitution feminists who have long located evidence of American empire in the sex industry itself.

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White Supremacy, Racism and the Coloniality of Anti-Trafficking

Cited by 8 publications

References 12 publications

Exploring the ‘Blurred Boundary’: Human Smuggling and Trafficking on the Central Mediterranean Route to Europe

Exploring the ‘Blurred Boundary’: Human Smuggling and Trafficking on the Central Mediterranean Route to Europe

The Emergence of the Bissau-Guinean Fula Cernos

Anti‐Prostitution Politics and Militarised Urban Prosperity in the US Military Camptown in Korea

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