- School of Sociology & Social Policy
University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG7 2RD
United Kingdom - +44 115 846 7177
- Anthropology, Sociology, Migration, History of Slavery, Slavery, Prostitution & Trafficking, and 11 moreMigrant labour, Sociology of Slavery, Modern Day Slavery, Prison Industrial Complex, Debt, Gambling and Debt, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Research Ethics, Immigration Law, and Borders and Borderlandsedit
- Julia O'Connell Davidson is Professor in Social Research at the University of Bristol. She studied Sociology with Psy... moreJulia O'Connell Davidson is Professor in Social Research at the University of Bristol. She studied Sociology with Psychology as an undergraduate at the University of Bath (1982-86) and for her PhD in the Department of Sociology at the University of Bristol (1987-90).
She currently holds a European Research Council Advanced Grant for a project titled "Modern Marronage: the Pursuit and Practice of Freedom in the Contemporary World".
Julia has a longstanding research interest in work and economic life that started from a concern with the variability of capitalist employment relations which she explored in her 1993 book, Privatization and Employment Relations: The Case of the Water Industry (Cassell) and a number of journal articles and book chapters on the restructuring of work and employment in privatised utilities and the use of franchising in milk distribution. In the mid 1990s, she started to research prostitution as a form of non-standard work and to address questions about what, precisely, is exchanged in the prostitution contract and the diversity of prostitution in terms of its social organisation and the power relations it involves (both globally and nationally). She has also undertaken research on sex tourism, and on child prostitution(Prostitution, Power and Freedom, 1998, Polity; Children in the Global Sex Trade, 2005, Polity).
In 2001, she and Bridget Anderson (COMPAS, University of Oxford) were commissioned by the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to conduct multi-country pilot research on 'the demand side of trafficking'. They were asked to focus on two sectors - prostitution and domestic work - and they subsequently developed this research through an ESRC funded project examining the markets for migrant sex and domestic workers in the UK and Spain. This research has informed a number of publications that explore that definitional problems associated with the term 'trafficking', critique dominant discourse on 'trafficking as modern slavery' and challenge the framing of 'trafficking' as a problem of transnational crime as opposed to a migrants' rights issue. Julia has also been involved in research on child migration. Between 2013 and 2016, she held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for a project titled "Modern Slavery and the Margins of Freedom", and, with Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor and Katie Cruz, she also recently conducted British Academy funded research on "trafficking" in Jamaica.
At a theoretical level, Julia has been concerned to link her research on prostitution, sex tourism, and 'trafficking' to critiques of dominant liberal fictions about contract, freedom, citizenship, human rights, and childhood, as well as to questions of power, especially the question of how we can critique those theoretical traditions that approach power as domination without slipping into the relativism and subjectivism of much post-modern and post-structuralist theory. These themes are further developed in her book, 'Modern Slavery: The Margins of Freedom', Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.edit
Violence, injustice, and exploitation are all around us, but there is no such thing as ‘modern slavery’, this book argues. Bringing the literature on transatlantic slavery into dialogue with research on informal sector labour, child... more
Violence, injustice, and exploitation are all around us, but there is no such thing as ‘modern slavery’, this book argues. Bringing the literature on transatlantic slavery into dialogue with research on informal sector labour, child labour, migration, debt, and sex work today, it challenges the ‘new abolitionist’ reading of slavery past and present, and calls for more serious political debate and analysis of the systems of domination (race, caste, class, gender, nationality) that routinely restrict rights and freedoms in the contemporary world.
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The US TIP Report frames Jamaica as having a problem with 'human trafficking' and 'child sex tourism'. This paper presents preliminary findings from our mixed methods research on Jamaicans' experience of working in the sex trade and in... more
The US TIP Report frames Jamaica as having a problem with 'human trafficking' and 'child sex tourism'. This paper presents preliminary findings from our mixed methods research on Jamaicans' experience of working in the sex trade and in the formal and informal tourism economy. In brief, though our sex worker research participants routinely face violence in the course of their work, they were not driven into sex work and are not prevented from exiting it by 'human traffickers', but rather by economic need and, in the case of male and trans sex workers, by anti-gay prejudice. Our participants view the criminalisation of sex work and of homosexuality as far more urgent and significant threats to their safety and well-being than 'human trafficking'. Criminalisation and marginalisation were also pressing concerns for our non-sex-worker interviewees, and the paper uses these data to critically interrogate the lines that are drawn between work, slavery, and freedom in this dominant, Global North discourse.
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This issue of the Anti-Trafficking Review is concerned with some of the histories that created, and that continue to shape, both the present-day phenomena discussed under the rubric of trafficking, and the contemporary discourse of... more
This issue of the Anti-Trafficking Review is concerned with some of the histories that created, and that continue to shape, both the present-day phenomena discussed under the rubric of trafficking, and the contemporary discourse of trafficking itself. One such history is that of transatlantic slavery. Since the millennium, numerous NGOs have been founded in the US, Australia and Europe with a mission to end what they call ‘modern slavery’. Their campaigns have overlapped with, and played a significant role in shaping, the development of media, NGO, policy and political discourse on human trafficking, which is, according to the antislavery NGO Free the Slaves, ‘the modern day slave trade—the process of enslaving a person’.1 In this discourse, the history of transatlantic slavery is invoked by means of visual as well as textual references in order to emphasise the severity of trafficking (and other phenomena included under the umbrella of ‘modern slavery’) as a human rights violation. The message has been communicated so effectively that although in international law slavery is held to be only one of several possible outcomes of trafficking, in the anti-trafficking rhetoric emanating from national and international policy agencies, as well as NGOs, trafficking is now frequently said to be ‘modern slavery’.
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In a world where chattel slavery is outlawed everywhere, so that nobody, anywhere, is legally ascribed the status of ‘slave’, what do campaigners and politicians mean by the term ‘modern slavery’? This article explores ‘new abolitionist’... more
In a world where chattel slavery is outlawed everywhere, so that nobody, anywhere, is legally ascribed the status of ‘slave’, what do campaigners and politicians mean by the term ‘modern slavery’? This article explores ‘new abolitionist’ efforts to define ‘slavery’, observing that it follows a tradition of liberal thought in which the singular wrong of slavery is held to be that it converts persons into things, an assumption that has also informed one strand of the historical literature on slavery in the Atlantic World. It then considers another strand of slavery scholarship, as well as some historical evidence, that alerts us to serious flaws in accounts that frame slavery through reference to the conceptual opposition of persons and things. In reality, Atlantic World slaves had a ‘bifurcated existence’ as both ‘things’ and ‘persons’, as Saidiya Hartman puts it. The article asks what closer attention to the history of the slave's double character might teach us about serious and heavy restraints on freedom in the contemporary world.
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In the face of the contemporary global economic and political crisis, there has been a renewal of interest in Karl Polanyi’s analysis of market societies as the product of a continuous process of contestation between forces pressing for... more
In the face of the contemporary global economic and political crisis, there has been a renewal of interest in Karl Polanyi’s analysis of market societies as the product of a continuous process of contestation between forces pressing for the liberalisation of markets, and those seeking to protect the social fabric against marketization (the ‘double movement’). This includes Nancy Fraser’s (2013) critical appreciation of Polanyi, in which she calls for a third vector of analysis to be added to the ‘double movement’, namely the forces of emancipation. We need to think in terms of a ‘three-sided conflict among proponents of marketization, adherents of social protection, and partisans of emancipation’, she argues (2013: 129). However, reading Fraser’s discussion of the ‘triple movement’ through the lens of my current interest in slavery raised a number of questions that are pursued in this chapter. After outlining the background to Fraser’s contribution, the chapter considers white European and American thinking on transatlantic slavery historically, and, more briefly, the politics of those at the forefront of today’s antislavery movement. I aim to show that in the main, abolitionists were and remain hard to fix as proponents of either market freedom or social protection, or indeed of ‘emancipation’ as defined by Fraser. The post-abolition experience of freed slaves and their descendants in America further suggests marketization, social protection, and emancipation are not fully dis-articulable political forces. Though Fraser discusses some of the ambiguities of the three forces she identifies, political contestations around slavery draw attention to further equivocality in relation to each that, the chapter concludes, may make the idea of the triple movement less useful for those committed to a politics of non-domination than it may initially appear.
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Contemporary liberal states are eager to combat ‘human trafficking’, which state actors describe as ‘the scourge of modern slavery’ and a violation of human rights. The same states are also depriving migrants of their freedom on an... more
Contemporary liberal states are eager to combat ‘human trafficking’, which state actors describe as ‘the scourge of modern slavery’ and a violation of human rights. The same states are also depriving migrants of their freedom on an unprecedented scale through immigration detention, forcibly moving them across borders through deportation, and sustaining a flourishing industry in the prevention and control of human movement. This is not a paradox. The ambition to eradicate ‘slavery’, as much as the desire to severely restrict freedom of movement, reflects a concern to preserve and extend state powers, in particular its monopoly on violence and on the control of mobility.
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Commentary on a chapter by Eithne Luibheid, which helps to make sense of ways in which the love between children and their adult carers is rendered legible or illegible at the border, as well as many other ways in which people’s intimate... more
Commentary on a chapter by Eithne Luibheid, which helps to make sense of ways in which the love between children and their adult carers is rendered legible or illegible at the border, as well as many other ways in which people’s intimate ties are legitimated or de-legitimated, made visible or invisible, hierarchized, naturalized or made suspect through the immigration policy and practice that produces and polices the shifting line between citizens and migrants.
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In liberal thought, slavery is imagined as reducing the human being to nothing but a body, while the free and equal political subjects of modern liberal democracies are held to be abstract, universal, and disembodied individuals. In... more
In liberal thought, slavery is imagined as reducing the human being to nothing but a body, while the free and equal political subjects of modern liberal democracies are held to be abstract, universal, and disembodied individuals. In theory, bodies are also unimportant in the wage labour exchange. Though traditional models of worker citizenship insist on state and employers’ duty to protect the human worth of worker citizens, they also assume the disembodied, thing-like nature of commodified labour-power. Because bodies are so obviously important in the exchange between prostitute and customer, sex work is difficult to reconcile with liberal fictions of disembodiment, and one strand of feminist debate on prostitution is preoccupied by the question of whether prostitutes are like slaves or wage labourers. Protagonists on both sides of this debate often reproduce liberal understandings of labour power as a ‘thing’ that can be detached from the person. And yet labour power is also a contested commodity, and wage labour has historically been likened to slavery by activists struggling against the commodification of labour power. This article argues that stepping outside liberal fictions of disembodiment and recognizing the parallels between prostitution, wage labour and slavery, would allow greater scope for establishing a common political subjectivity amongst prostitutes, other wage workers, and all those who have an interest in halting and reversing the current global trend towards the commodification of everything.
Key words: Commodification, embodied labour, prostitution, sex work, citizenship
Key words: Commodification, embodied labour, prostitution, sex work, citizenship
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In Global Human Trafficking: Critical Issues and Contexts, Edited by Molly Dragiewicz, Routledge, 2015 This chapter looks critically at the way in which calls to criminalize men who pay for sex have been presented as a means by which to... more
In Global Human Trafficking: Critical Issues and Contexts, Edited by Molly Dragiewicz, Routledge, 2015
This chapter looks critically at the way in which calls to criminalize men who pay for sex have been presented as a means by which to address what is termed ‘the demand side of trafficking’. The clients of sex workers are described as key links in the ‘trafficking chain’, whereas those who consume pornography, and those who provide demand for labour in other economic sectors, are not automatically considered to be implicated in ‘trafficking’. The chapter argues that the intense focus in ‘demand-side’ policy debate on punishing individuals who choose to enter into what are, in the main, consensual sexual acts with adults, deflects attention from deeper questions about the role of the state in constructing and shaping all markets (informal as well as formal, criminalized as well as sanctioned, stigmatized as well as socially valued) and producing the vulnerability of certain groups to exploitation within them.
This chapter looks critically at the way in which calls to criminalize men who pay for sex have been presented as a means by which to address what is termed ‘the demand side of trafficking’. The clients of sex workers are described as key links in the ‘trafficking chain’, whereas those who consume pornography, and those who provide demand for labour in other economic sectors, are not automatically considered to be implicated in ‘trafficking’. The chapter argues that the intense focus in ‘demand-side’ policy debate on punishing individuals who choose to enter into what are, in the main, consensual sexual acts with adults, deflects attention from deeper questions about the role of the state in constructing and shaping all markets (informal as well as formal, criminalized as well as sanctioned, stigmatized as well as socially valued) and producing the vulnerability of certain groups to exploitation within them.
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Commenting on whether there was evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime was involved in supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups, Donald Rumsfeld, then US Secretary of Defence, famously told the press: "There are known... more
Commenting on whether there was evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime was involved in supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups, Donald Rumsfeld, then US Secretary of Defence, famously told the press: "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know".
These ‘unknown unknowns’ were the threats from Saddam that could not even be imagined or suspected (Zizek, 2004).
Rumsfeld’s formulation resonates closely with dominant discourse on human trafficking in general, and child trafficking in particular. ‘Trafficking’ is understood to involve the forcible movement of people for purposes of exploitation, and individual cases in which either adults or children have been subject to very violent and also very particular forms of exploitation and abuse are presented as the things we know that we know about this phenomenon. The prevalence of such cases in any given sector, country, or region appears as the ‘known unknown’. Virtually every governmental, intergovernmental, and non-governmental organisation (NGO) report and ‘factsheet’ on trafficking includes a statement to the effect that because trafficking is an illegal industry, it is difficult to ascertain exactly how many victims there are, then follows this up with a sizeable and frightening estimate. For example, ‘It is very difficult to assess the real size of human trafficking because the crime takes place underground, and is often not identified or misidentified. However, a conservative estimate of the crime puts the number of victims at any one time at 2.5 million’ (UNODC, 2013). There are also ‘unknown unknowns’. The assumed links between trafficking and terrorism, organised crime, paedophile rings, corruption, and so on, are discussed as representing unknown threats to national security and the core values of liberal democratic societies.
Slavoj Zizek (2004) observes that in his ‘amateur philosophizing’ on the known and the unknown, Rumsfeld ‘forgot to add the crucial fourth term: the "unknown knowns," the things we don't know that we know - which is precisely, the Freudian unconscious, the "knowledge which doesn't know itself"’. And where Rumsfeld was preoccupied by the threat of ‘unknown unknowns’, Zizek points out that if we focus on the treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib (or indeed on the many thousands of civilians killed and maimed by cluster bombs in the Iraq conflict), danger seems to inhere as much, or more, in ‘unknown knowns’, that is, ‘the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values’ (2004).
This chapter asks whether similar ‘unknown knowns’ operate in relation to what is described as child trafficking. Are there things that are in fact knowable or known, but that politicians, policy makers, as well as many journalists, activists, and members of the general public in liberal democratic societies would prefer not to know? What knowledge and which practices does dominant discourse on child trafficking camouflage, conceal, and enable us to disavow? The chapter begins by tracing the way in which, over the past two decades, child trafficking has been constructed as a global social problem of immense proportions, then moves to consider the ‘known unknowns’ and the ‘unknown knowns’ that dominant discourse on child trafficking conjures with.
These ‘unknown unknowns’ were the threats from Saddam that could not even be imagined or suspected (Zizek, 2004).
Rumsfeld’s formulation resonates closely with dominant discourse on human trafficking in general, and child trafficking in particular. ‘Trafficking’ is understood to involve the forcible movement of people for purposes of exploitation, and individual cases in which either adults or children have been subject to very violent and also very particular forms of exploitation and abuse are presented as the things we know that we know about this phenomenon. The prevalence of such cases in any given sector, country, or region appears as the ‘known unknown’. Virtually every governmental, intergovernmental, and non-governmental organisation (NGO) report and ‘factsheet’ on trafficking includes a statement to the effect that because trafficking is an illegal industry, it is difficult to ascertain exactly how many victims there are, then follows this up with a sizeable and frightening estimate. For example, ‘It is very difficult to assess the real size of human trafficking because the crime takes place underground, and is often not identified or misidentified. However, a conservative estimate of the crime puts the number of victims at any one time at 2.5 million’ (UNODC, 2013). There are also ‘unknown unknowns’. The assumed links between trafficking and terrorism, organised crime, paedophile rings, corruption, and so on, are discussed as representing unknown threats to national security and the core values of liberal democratic societies.
Slavoj Zizek (2004) observes that in his ‘amateur philosophizing’ on the known and the unknown, Rumsfeld ‘forgot to add the crucial fourth term: the "unknown knowns," the things we don't know that we know - which is precisely, the Freudian unconscious, the "knowledge which doesn't know itself"’. And where Rumsfeld was preoccupied by the threat of ‘unknown unknowns’, Zizek points out that if we focus on the treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib (or indeed on the many thousands of civilians killed and maimed by cluster bombs in the Iraq conflict), danger seems to inhere as much, or more, in ‘unknown knowns’, that is, ‘the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values’ (2004).
This chapter asks whether similar ‘unknown knowns’ operate in relation to what is described as child trafficking. Are there things that are in fact knowable or known, but that politicians, policy makers, as well as many journalists, activists, and members of the general public in liberal democratic societies would prefer not to know? What knowledge and which practices does dominant discourse on child trafficking camouflage, conceal, and enable us to disavow? The chapter begins by tracing the way in which, over the past two decades, child trafficking has been constructed as a global social problem of immense proportions, then moves to consider the ‘known unknowns’ and the ‘unknown knowns’ that dominant discourse on child trafficking conjures with.
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No abstract - but extract Slavery occupies a prominent place on the political agenda today. Home Secretary Theresa May’s Modern Slavery Bill was announced in the Queen’s Speech in June 2014; in the United States, President Barack Obama... more
No abstract - but extract
Slavery occupies a prominent place on the political
agenda today. Home Secretary Theresa May’s Modern
Slavery Bill was announced in the Queen’s Speech in
June 2014; in the United States, President Barack Obama
proclaimed January 2014 as National Slavery and Human
Trafficking Prevention Month. This interlacing of the
terms ‘trafficking’ and ‘modern slavery’ produces an
extremely broad appeal to humanitarian feeling. Those
involved in campaigns against trafficking and modern
slavery include politicians from across the political
spectrum, and religious leaders from across the faiths.
Trades unions are there, but so too are big businesses.
The Global Business Coalition Against Human
Trafficking (gBCAT), includes Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil,
Ford, Microsoft and ManpowerGroup amongst its
members. As its co-founder David Arkless put it, ‘When
you get involved in something like this your employees
will love it, the public will love it and your shareholders
will love it.’3 Famous actors and rock stars are also there
‘lovin’ it’, contributing to what Dina Haynes terms, ‘the
celebrification of human trafficking’,4 and lending their
support to the many NGOs that exhort ‘ordinary’ folk,
especially the young, to join the struggle against modern
slavery.
Slavery occupies a prominent place on the political
agenda today. Home Secretary Theresa May’s Modern
Slavery Bill was announced in the Queen’s Speech in
June 2014; in the United States, President Barack Obama
proclaimed January 2014 as National Slavery and Human
Trafficking Prevention Month. This interlacing of the
terms ‘trafficking’ and ‘modern slavery’ produces an
extremely broad appeal to humanitarian feeling. Those
involved in campaigns against trafficking and modern
slavery include politicians from across the political
spectrum, and religious leaders from across the faiths.
Trades unions are there, but so too are big businesses.
The Global Business Coalition Against Human
Trafficking (gBCAT), includes Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil,
Ford, Microsoft and ManpowerGroup amongst its
members. As its co-founder David Arkless put it, ‘When
you get involved in something like this your employees
will love it, the public will love it and your shareholders
will love it.’3 Famous actors and rock stars are also there
‘lovin’ it’, contributing to what Dina Haynes terms, ‘the
celebrification of human trafficking’,4 and lending their
support to the many NGOs that exhort ‘ordinary’ folk,
especially the young, to join the struggle against modern
slavery.
Research Interests:
This article is concerned with the role of debt in contemporary practices of mobility. It explores how the phenomenon of debt-financed migration disturbs the trafficking/smuggling, illegal/legal, and forced/voluntary dyads that are widely... more
This article is concerned with the role of debt in contemporary practices of mobility. It explores how the phenomenon of debt-financed migration disturbs the trafficking/smuggling, illegal/legal, and forced/voluntary dyads that are widely used to make sense of migration and troubles the liberal construction of ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery’ as oppositional categories. The research literature reveals that while debt can lock migrants into highly asymmetrical, personalistic, and often violent relations of power and dependency sometimes for several years, it is also a means by which many seek to extend and secure their future freedoms. Financing migration through debt can be an active choice without also being a ‘voluntary’ or ‘autonomous’ choice, and migrants’ decisions to take on debts that will imply heavy restrictions on their freedom are taken in the context of migration and other policies that severely constrain their alternatives. Vulnerability to abuse and exploitation is also politically constructed, and even migrant-debtors whose movement is state sanctioned often lack protections both as workers and as debtors. Indeed, large numbers of migrants are excluded from the rights and freedoms that in theory constitute the opposite of slavery. As argued in the conclusion, this illustrates the contemporary relevance of Losurdo’s historical account of the fundamentally illiberal realities of self-conceived liberal societies. There remain ‘exclusion clauses’ in the social contract that supposedly affords universal equality and freedom, clauses that are of enormous consequence for many groups of migrants, and that also deleteriously affect those citizens who are poor and/or otherwise marginalized.
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This paper considers the trafficking as modern slavery metaphor, compares the discourse and strategy of abolitionists old and new, critically discussing the focus on "the demand side" in contemporary anti-trafficking discourse.
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In dominant discourse, "trafficking" is presented as a hugely profitable business in which organized criminals transport millions of human victims around the globe into conditions of slavery, and frequently described as a modern day slave... more
In dominant discourse, "trafficking" is presented as a hugely profitable business in which organized criminals transport millions of human victims around the globe into conditions of slavery, and frequently described as a modern day slave trade. Juxtaposing talk of "trafficking" with images of the trans-Atlantic slave trade makes for powerful rhetoric. As this paper argues, it also serves to divorce the human rights violations that are commonly associated with the term "trafficking" from their specific historical context.
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This article explores dominant discourse on ‘trafficking as modern slavery’ in relation to the many legal and social fetters that have historically been and are today imposed upon individuals who are socially imagined as ‘free’. It argues... more
This article explores dominant discourse on ‘trafficking as modern slavery’ in relation to the many legal and social fetters that have historically been and are today imposed upon individuals who are socially imagined as ‘free’. It argues that discourse on ‘trafficking as modern slavery’ revitalises the liberal understandings of freedom and unfreedom that have historically allowed vigorous moral condemnation of slavery to co-exist with the continued imposition of extensive, forcible restrictions on individuals deemed to be ‘free’. In place of efforts to build political alliances between different groups of migrants, as well as between migrants and non-migrants, who share a common interest in transforming existing social and political relations, ‘trafficking as modern slavery’ discourse inspires and legitimates efforts to divide a small number of ‘deserving victims’ from the masses that remain ‘undeserving’ of rights and freedoms.
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Research Interests:
This article aims to contribute to the growing body of scholarly work that critically deconstructs dominant discourse on ‘trafficking’ and to the literature that documents and theorizes the gap between states’ spoken commitment to... more
This article aims to contribute to the growing body of scholarly work that critically deconstructs dominant discourse on ‘trafficking’ and to the literature that documents and theorizes the gap between states’ spoken commitment to children’s rights and the lived experience of migrant children in the contemporary world. It contrasts the intense public and policy concern with the suffering of ‘trafficked’ children against the relative lack of interest in other ways that migrant children can suffer, in particular, suffering resulting from immigration policy and its enforcement. It argues that discourse on ‘child trafficking’ operates to produce and maintain exclusionary conceptions of who is normatively a child. These conceptions of the normative child then inform policy and practice that often punishes, rather than protects, children who do not conform to the imagined norm, and that simultaneously reinforces children’s existing vulnerabilities and creates new ones.
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A recent CNN video of an apparent ‘slave auction’ in Libya has caused horror on social media, but the term slavery hides the European migration policies leading to such abuse.
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Policymakers and modern-day abolitionists have co-opted trafficking and slavery discourse for illiberal ends. To say so is not the same as denying the appalling realities of the modern world. Quite the opposite.
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In an open letter, hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers held at the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre recently called on the Australian Government to execute them rather than force them to continue indefinitely to experience... more
In an open letter, hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers held at the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre recently called on the Australian Government to execute them rather than force them to continue indefinitely to experience ‘gradual death’ on the island. The previous week, those stranded on Greece’s northern border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia by the introduction of a policy granting passage only to people from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, also staged protests. They started a hunger strike, some sewing their lips together using nylon thread. They also sought to block the railway line running between the two countries. One group of Bangladeshi men involved in the protest had slogans written in red paint on their bared chests—"Shoot us or save us," read one.
How should we respond to these calls?
How should we respond to these calls?
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Suffering occupies an important place in refugee and forced migration studies, for in international refugee and human rights law, those who are understood to have suffered are often afforded special status in terms of rights and... more
Suffering occupies an important place in refugee and
forced migration studies, for in international refugee
and human rights law, those who are understood to
have suffered are often afforded special status in terms
of rights and protections. But much as the connective
tissue between suffering and rights appears as a humane
counterbalance to the often callous comments made in response to migrants deaths at the borders of Europe, the US and Australia, it also presents us with a quandary, which is explored in this short piece.
forced migration studies, for in international refugee
and human rights law, those who are understood to
have suffered are often afforded special status in terms
of rights and protections. But much as the connective
tissue between suffering and rights appears as a humane
counterbalance to the often callous comments made in response to migrants deaths at the borders of Europe, the US and Australia, it also presents us with a quandary, which is explored in this short piece.
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Though anti-trafficking campaigners often state that men, as well as women and children, can be ‘victims of trafficking,’ the concept of ‘trafficking,’ especially that of ‘sex trafficking,’ actually provides a highly gendered lens through... more
Though anti-trafficking campaigners often state that men, as well as women and children, can be ‘victims of trafficking,’ the concept of ‘trafficking,’ especially that of ‘sex trafficking,’ actually provides a highly gendered lens through which to view the experience of migrants who are subject to various forms of exploitation, abuse, and violence in the destination country.
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Transatlantic slavery relied on force to move people, while today’s ‘trafficking’ does not. Vulnerable migrants have more in common with those escaping from historical slavery than those entering into it.
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Abstract UK dairies are increasingly replacing directly employed roundspeople with self-employed workers operating franchises. The financial benefits for the dairies are substantial and managers also see franchising as a solution to... more
Abstract UK dairies are increasingly replacing directly employed roundspeople with self-employed workers operating franchises. The financial benefits for the dairies are substantial and managers also see franchising as a solution to problems of labour control. For ...
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This paper is concerned with the changing nature of office work in one region of a privatised public utility, which will be referred to as National Utility (NU). It describes how clerical work at NU, traditionally characterised by a... more
This paper is concerned with the changing nature of office work in one region of a privatised public utility, which will be referred to as National Utility (NU). It describes how clerical work at NU, traditionally characterised by a detailed division of labour and functional specialism, is being transformed by the introduction of on-line processing and multi-functional team-working. At the same time, NU management is seeking to change the nature and pattern of clerical employment. The intention is to increase the ratio of part time to full time staff, to increase the ‘personal accountability’ of staff, and to move towards a performance-based, rather than a seniority-based, pay and promotion structure.These changes are of some broader theoretical significance. As Batstone et al. (1987) note, much industrial sociology literature has focused on job content as the primary determinant of a number of features of work and employment, including worker autonomy, supervisory styles, and management control strategies. Indeed, much recent industrial sociology, management and institutional economics literature has tended to link employment patterns and conditions, as a whole, with job content, in a direct and unproblematic fashion. In particular, it is often assumed that in order to secure multiple skills, high quality work and the innovative capacities of labour, employers will have to offer not only better pay, but also a better package of conditions, job security, fringe benefits and training and promotion opportunities. Developments at National Utility suggest that the link between job content and employment relations may be weaker than has sometimes been implied, and cast doubt on the theoretical basis for ‘post-Fordist’ confidence in the emergence of a new deal for labour as a result of flexible methods of work organisation.
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The need for a permanent revolution in organizational structures and use of human resources is legitimated by reference to the need to adapt to ever more turbulent times. This gives rise to and is sustained by a distinctive... more
The need for a permanent revolution in organizational structures and use of human resources is legitimated by reference to the need to adapt to ever more turbulent times. This gives rise to and is sustained by a distinctive anti-bureaucratic rhetoric based largely on over-hyped, ...
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Abstract: The public utilities have not featured prominently in recent research in industrial sociology on restructuring, changes in employment relations and work flexibility. The fact that the utilities occupy a key position in the... more
Abstract: The public utilities have not featured prominently in recent research in industrial sociology on restructuring, changes in employment relations and work flexibility. The fact that the utilities occupy a key position in the Government's privatisation programme makes ...
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This article draws on a survey of over 400 employees in two privatised companies. It examines the relationship between the depth of share ownership and social class and prior political orientations, and suggests that employee attitudes... more
This article draws on a survey of over 400 employees in two privatised companies. It examines the relationship between the depth of share ownership and social class and prior political orientations, and suggests that employee attitudes are best understood as a function of these standard sociological factors.
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... In Canada, it's ridiculous. You know, if you go with a prostitute and you don't pay her, you know what? They call it rape. You can be in court on a rape charge.(Canadian sex... more
... In Canada, it's ridiculous. You know, if you go with a prostitute and you don't pay her, you know what? They call it rape. You can be in court on a rape charge.(Canadian sex tourist in Cuba) There is a sense in which Western men's sex tourism can be said" to constitute... ...
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... When I see a girl, when I'm looking to buy her, I always look at her arms to see what she's been doing to herself.('Dick'British sex tourist to Thailand) The term 'sex... more
... When I see a girl, when I'm looking to buy her, I always look at her arms to see what she's been doing to herself.('Dick'British sex tourist to Thailand) The term 'sex tourism'is widely associated with organized sex tours, often conjuring up images of groups of middle-aged ...
Over the past decade, public and policy concern has increasingly been expressed about the phenomenon of 'child sex tourism', which is widely understood as an aberrant form of movement that can be cleanly... more
Over the past decade, public and policy concern has increasingly been expressed about the phenomenon of 'child sex tourism', which is widely understood as an aberrant form of movement that can be cleanly demarcated from 'sex tourism'and 'tourism'more generally. ...
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Page 214. 12 Child Prostitution and Tourism: Beyond the Stereotypes Julia O'Connell Davidson and Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor In May of 1995, Christian Aid published a short report on child prostitution in the economically ...
... NCMEC) Andree Ruffo, Judge Quebec Juvenile Court, Canada; President, International Bureau for the Rights of Children Rick Scharlat, Executive ... core staff in the US included Batkhishig Adilbish, Nicole Ives, Patricia Loff Surak,... more
... NCMEC) Andree Ruffo, Judge Quebec Juvenile Court, Canada; President, International Bureau for the Rights of Children Rick Scharlat, Executive ... core staff in the US included Batkhishig Adilbish, Nicole Ives, Patricia Loff Surak, Howard Nemon, Kim Nieves, Joseph Surak, Lisa ...
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... child prostitutes, brothel-keepers, pimps, procurers and other third-party beneficiaries in eight countries: Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, Costa ... Questions about child sex tourism are therefore very much questions about... more
... child prostitutes, brothel-keepers, pimps, procurers and other third-party beneficiaries in eight countries: Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, Costa ... Questions about child sex tourism are therefore very much questions about power, for the sex tourists who exploit both adult ...
... Envoyer le lien de cette référence. Titre du document / Document title. Sex tourism in Cuba Auteur(s) / Author(s). DAVIDSON J. O'C. (1) ; Affiliation(s) du ou des auteurs / Author(s) Affiliation(s). (1) University of Leicester,... more
... Envoyer le lien de cette référence. Titre du document / Document title. Sex tourism in Cuba Auteur(s) / Author(s). DAVIDSON J. O'C. (1) ; Affiliation(s) du ou des auteurs / Author(s) Affiliation(s). (1) University of Leicester, ROYAUME-UNI Résumé / Abstract. ...
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The present collection of occasionally overlapping studies confirms Brubaker's standing as the most impressive of the younger generation of the scholars in the, now vast, field of nationalism. At all events, he is the one... more
The present collection of occasionally overlapping studies confirms Brubaker's standing as the most impressive of the younger generation of the scholars in the, now vast, field of nationalism. At all events, he is the one whose merits are most readily appreciated by ...
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1994). For those radical feminists who hold all heterosexual intercourse to be an expression of patriarchal power (for example, Dworkin 1987; MacKinnon 1984; Jeffreys 1990), prosti-tution is perhaps the purest expression of male... more
1994). For those radical feminists who hold all heterosexual intercourse to be an expression of patriarchal power (for example, Dworkin 1987; MacKinnon 1984; Jeffreys 1990), prosti-tution is perhaps the purest expression of male domination. The client secures direct control ...
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Growing international concern about the phenomena of trafficking in persons has given feminist abolitionists a more high profile platform from which to call for a shift in attitudes and policy responses towards prostitution. There is... more
Growing international concern about the phenomena of trafficking in persons has given feminist abolitionists a more high profile platform from which to call for a shift in attitudes and policy responses towards prostitution. There is increasing receptivity to the idea that those who consume commercial sex may represent a social problem, not least because it is frequently asserted that it is the demand for foreign and ‘exotic’ prostitutes that makes trafficking into a profitable activity. This growing willingness to apply social controls to men who buy sex apparently marks a significant shift in policy direction. It also makes for some curious bedfellows. For instance, at the seemingly endless round of ‘anti-trafficking’ conferences that have been held in Europe over the past five years, radical feminists have been found supporting police chiefs’ calls for more extensive police powers and tougher sentencing policy, joining anti-immigration politicians in calls for tighter border controls, and building alliances with all manner of moral conservatives. This paper is concerned with the dangers of climbing into bed with those who would more usually be viewed as ‘enemies’ of feminism and other progressive social movements. It begins with a brief review of the findings of recent research on the demand for commercial sexual services, then puts forward some reasons why feminist abolitionists should be cautious about calling on the state to penalise sex buyers.
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This essay critically explores contemporary Euro-American feminist debate on prostitution. It argues that to develop analyses which are relevant to the experience of more than just a small minority of ‘First World’ women, those who are... more
This essay critically explores contemporary Euro-American feminist debate on prostitution. It argues that to develop analyses which are relevant to the experience of more than just a small minority of ‘First World’ women, those who are concerned with prostitution as a form of work need to look beyond liberal discourse on property and contractual consent for ways of conceptualizing the rights and wrongs of ‘sex work’.
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Theorizing on Power and Exploitation ver the past decade, general theorists within feminism have developed increasingly sophisticated responses to questions about how best to theorize power and subjectivity. This has involved bringing... more
Theorizing on Power and Exploitation ver the past decade, general theorists within feminism have developed increasingly sophisticated responses to questions about how best to theorize power and subjectivity. This has involved bringing the" unsettling power" of theory ...
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In international policy circles, it is increasingly common to hear talk of the need to address ‘the demand-side of trafficking’, and a number of research studies on this phenomenon have recently been commissioned. Though the idea that... more
In international policy circles, it is increasingly common to hear talk of the need to address ‘the demand-side of trafficking’, and a number of research studies on this phenomenon have recently been commissioned. Though the idea that ‘sex trafficking’ is stimulated by the demand for commercial sexual services has a certain commonsense appeal, this paper argues that questions about the relationship between exploitative and abusive labour practices in the sex sector and the demand for commercial sexual services are rather more complicated than is allowed in dominant anti-trafficking discourse.
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This paper critically explores the way in which ‘trafficking’ has been framed as a problem involving organised criminals and ‘sex slaves’, noting that this approach obscures both the relationship between migration policy and... more
This paper critically explores the way in which ‘trafficking’ has been framed as a problem involving organised criminals and ‘sex slaves’, noting that this approach obscures both the relationship between migration policy and ‘trafficking’, and that between prostitution policy and forced labour in the sex sector. Focusing on the UK, it argues that far from representing a step forward in terms of securing rights and protections for those who are subject to exploitative employment relations and poor working conditions in the sex trade, the current policy emphasis on sex slaves and ‘victims of trafficking’ limits the state’s obligations towards them.
Key words: trafficking; sexual slavery; sex work; forced labour; irregular migration.
Key words: trafficking; sexual slavery; sex work; forced labour; irregular migration.
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Page 1. Book Reviews Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. By Rogers Brubaker. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xi+202. $54.95 (cloth); $16.95 (paper). EJ Hobsbawm University of... more
Page 1. Book Reviews Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. By Rogers Brubaker. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xi+202. $54.95 (cloth); $16.95 (paper). EJ Hobsbawm University of London ...
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This article reflects on some ethical dilemmas presented by an ethnographic study of prostitution that I conducted in the 1990s. The study drew one research subject into a long and very close relationship with me, and though she was an... more
This article reflects on some ethical dilemmas presented by an ethnographic study of prostitution that I conducted in the 1990s. The study drew one research subject into a long and very close relationship with me, and though she was an active and fully consenting participant in the research, she was also objectified within both the field relationship and the textual products it generated. This kind of contradiction has been recognized and discussed as a more general problem for ethnography by feminist and critical ethnographers. In this article it is considered
specifically in relation to informed consent as an ethical issue. If an ethnographer secures the free and informed consent of a research subject, does this necessarily make the intimacy of their subsequent relationship ethical? Is it possible for anyone to genuinely consent to being objectified through the research process?
Key words: care, ethics, ethnography, informed consent,
prostitution
specifically in relation to informed consent as an ethical issue. If an ethnographer secures the free and informed consent of a research subject, does this necessarily make the intimacy of their subsequent relationship ethical? Is it possible for anyone to genuinely consent to being objectified through the research process?
Key words: care, ethics, ethnography, informed consent,
prostitution
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Mobility is widely understood as integral to human freedom, so much so that when injury, illness, or old age restrict our capacity to move we are commonly referred to as ‘dis-abled’. This is also what makes... more
Mobility is widely understood as integral to human freedom, so much
so that when injury, illness, or old age restrict our capacity to move
we are commonly referred to as ‘dis-abled’. This is also what makes
imprisonment, or even house arrest, such a profound and terrifying
punishment. Whether nipping to the shops, commuting for work, or
travelling for leisure, mobility is and always has been an essential part
of humankind’s economic, social, cultural, and political life. To be able
to move freely is a good. Yet in an unjust world, it is also an unearned
and unequally distributed privilege.
so that when injury, illness, or old age restrict our capacity to move
we are commonly referred to as ‘dis-abled’. This is also what makes
imprisonment, or even house arrest, such a profound and terrifying
punishment. Whether nipping to the shops, commuting for work, or
travelling for leisure, mobility is and always has been an essential part
of humankind’s economic, social, cultural, and political life. To be able
to move freely is a good. Yet in an unjust world, it is also an unearned
and unequally distributed privilege.
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Both academic and political debate about the effects of privatisation upon employees in privatised companies has taken place in something of an empirical vacuum. In particular, there is a lack of systematic enquiries into the major... more
Both academic and political debate about the effects of privatisation upon employees in privatised companies has taken place in something of an empirical vacuum. In particular, there is a lack of systematic enquiries into the major privatised utilities. Despite the lack of evidence, a number of claims have been advanced, both about the impact of privatisation upon the political attitudes of employees, and about its effects on working conditions, worker motivation and behaviour. This paper presents the results of a survey of 442 employees in two privatised public utilities. It is divided into two parts, looking first at the more general social and political attitudes of these employees, then presenting their views on the impact of privatisation on the company they work for, and on their working lives. The findings reported here lend little support either to new right claims about privatisation's transformative powers or to the view that ‘for most people … privatisation will make ...
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This article draws on qualitative data on journeys to Europe or Brazil undertaken by adults and teenagers from Sub-Saharan African countries to develop a conceptual analysis of the blurriness of the lines drawn between supposedly... more
This article draws on qualitative data on journeys to Europe or Brazil undertaken by adults and teenagers from Sub-Saharan African countries to develop a conceptual analysis of the blurriness of the lines drawn between supposedly different types of movement via referencing the conceptual binary of forced/voluntary movement (such as asylum, trafficking, smuggling). It questions the liberal model of ‘agency’ that is employed not just by state actors, but also by many antislavery, anti-trafficking, child rights, and refugee rights activists, to construct boundaries between different ‘types’ of people on the move. Conceptual divisions between refugees and economic migrants, trafficked and smuggled persons, forced and voluntary labourers, child and adult migrants, and the idea of ‘modern slavery’, deflect attention from the structures that limit the choices open to people on the move. This article argues that the voluntary/forced binary encourages a tendency to falsely conflate choice wi...
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In this interview for the TCS website, Angelo Martins Jr interviews Professor Julia O’Connell Davidson about her recent book, Modern Slavery: The Margins of Freedom (2015). The interview further discusses some of the most prominent (and... more
In this interview for the TCS website, Angelo Martins Jr interviews Professor Julia O’Connell Davidson about her recent book, Modern Slavery: The Margins of Freedom (2015). The interview further discusses some of the most prominent (and often controversial) topics examined by O’Connell Davidson’s book, such as her understanding of modern slavery and her critique on (and consequences of) how anti-slavery movements, NGOs and right-wing and social democratic media and politicians have mistakenly appropriated and used the term. The interview further considers some of the global contemporary social, political and economic issues, such as ‘the refugee crisis’, border control, citizenship and global socio-economic inequalities.
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ABSTRACT Antislavery actors evoke the history of the transatlantic slave trade in campaigns to mobilise action to address the suffering experienced by contemporary migrants described as ‘victims of trafficking’. That framing has been... more
ABSTRACT Antislavery actors evoke the history of the transatlantic slave trade in campaigns to mobilise action to address the suffering experienced by contemporary migrants described as ‘victims of trafficking’. That framing has been picked up by state actors who present measures to supress unauthorised migration per se as necessary to protect migrants from a ‘modern-day slave trade’. Yet the parallel between trafficking and the slave trade is undermined by the fact that people who today are described as ‘trafficked’, as much as those described as ‘smuggled’, actively wish to travel and do so in the hope that by moving, they will secure greater freedoms. This article therefore asks whether there are similarities between the journeys of contemporary unauthorised migrants and those of enslaved people who fled from slavery in the Atlantic World, and if so, why. Bringing data from historical sources on slave flight into dialogue with data on the journeys of contemporary sub-Saharan African migrants to Europe and Brazil, it identifies a number of experiential parallels, and argues that for those concerned with migrants’ rights, enslaved people’s fugitivity potentially offers a more fruitful point of historical comparison than does the slave trade.
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This paper draws upon research into restructuring and changing employment relations in the public utilities. It describes how one water authority, `Albion Water', is extending and developing its use of non-standard labour and it... more
This paper draws upon research into restructuring and changing employment relations in the public utilities. It describes how one water authority, `Albion Water', is extending and developing its use of non-standard labour and it provides a case study of one particular group of direct employees. By commercialising its relationship with these employees, Albion has exacted greater internal flexibility from them and at the same time undermined their job security. These developments are of some theoretical significance. They suggest that the link between job content and employment relations is not as direct as is sometimes implied. They also show that the analytical distinction, drawn by the `flexible firm' model, between management's desire for internal flexibility and its desire for numerical flexibility does not always help to explain management practice.