Julia O'Connell Davidson
Julia 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.
Phone: +44 115 846 7177
Address: School of Sociology & Social Policy
University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG7 2RD
United Kingdom
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.
Phone: +44 115 846 7177
Address: School of Sociology & Social Policy
University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG7 2RD
United Kingdom
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Books by Julia O'Connell Davidson
This edited volume provides a space to reinvigorate the theory and practice of representing slavery and related systems of domination, in particular our understandings of the binary between slavery and freedom in different historical and political contexts. The book takes a critical approach, interrogating the concept of modern slavery by exploring where it has come from, and its potential for obscuring and foreclosing new understandings.
Including contributions from philosophers, political theorists, sociologists, anthropologists, and English literature scholars, it adds to the emerging critique of the concept of ‘modern slavery’ through its focus on the connections between the past of Atlantic World slavery, the present of contemporary groups whose freedoms are heavily restricted (prisoners, child labourers in the Global South, migrant domestic workers, and migrant wives), and the futures envisaged by activists struggling against different elements of the systems of domination that Atlantic World slavery relied upon and spawned.
'Modern Slavery' and 'Trafficking' by Julia O'Connell Davidson
Key words: Commodification, embodied labour, prostitution, sex work, citizenship
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.
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.
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.
This edited volume provides a space to reinvigorate the theory and practice of representing slavery and related systems of domination, in particular our understandings of the binary between slavery and freedom in different historical and political contexts. The book takes a critical approach, interrogating the concept of modern slavery by exploring where it has come from, and its potential for obscuring and foreclosing new understandings.
Including contributions from philosophers, political theorists, sociologists, anthropologists, and English literature scholars, it adds to the emerging critique of the concept of ‘modern slavery’ through its focus on the connections between the past of Atlantic World slavery, the present of contemporary groups whose freedoms are heavily restricted (prisoners, child labourers in the Global South, migrant domestic workers, and migrant wives), and the futures envisaged by activists struggling against different elements of the systems of domination that Atlantic World slavery relied upon and spawned.
Key words: Commodification, embodied labour, prostitution, sex work, citizenship
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.
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.
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.
How should we respond to these calls?
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.
Key words: trafficking; sexual slavery; sex work; forced labour; irregular migration.
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
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.