North Koreans’ migration to China is highly complex, more so than when it is depicted simply as ‘human-trafficking’ and/or ‘modern slavery’ in anti-trafficking discourse.
Migrant domestic workers in the Middle East act as if they were already free when they resist the constraining kafala system by setting out on their own as freelancers.
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.
The question of mobility was central to struggles against the transatlantic slave trade and slavery. Current campaigns focus on the journey into slavery, overlooking the spatial captivity entailed in ‘modern slavery’.
Immigration rules in Canada are forcing out already-vulnerable temporary foreign workers. The measure’s class dimensions are representative of the injustice of Canada’s revolving-door system of labour exploitation.
The dehumanisation of transatlantic slaves has strong echoes in the UK’s current immigration regime, which separates families, denies parents custodial rights over their children, and condemns migrants to social death.
The relatively small number of torture survivors who make it to the UK face disbelief, the threat of detention and removal, and barriers of access to vital services.
British immigration controls aren’t working and policies stripping rights from large numbers of migrants are creating a ‘slave’ population in the UK.
The United States uses the detention of families and unaccompanied minors as a method of deterring immigration. This must stop.
Casting migrants and smugglers as 'victims and villains' allows states to play saviour and legitimates immigration enforcement as the sole appropriate response.
Contemporary anti-trafficking discourses are powered by a series of gendered and racialised binaries that silence the voices of the global subalterns, undermining their agency, and defusing their transgressions.
