Exploiting Migrants in Research and Activism: Learning from Transatlantic Slavery and its Afterlives

• In Event: Roundtable: On the Concept of Exploitation: Manipulating Migrant Identities in the Trafficking Discourse

Abstract

As a cultural figure, ‘the migrant’ is imagined in different ways and worked to very different political ends in contemporary Western popular discourse, variously appearing as powerful threat, powerless victim, and heroic resister of oppression. This plasticity alerts us to dilemmas for researchers and activists working on topics associated with migration that are simultaneously theoretical, political and ethical. What are the political and ethical implications of representing any group of migrants first and foremost as victims of any system of domination (whether that is ‘modern slavery’, ‘trafficking’, immigration regimes, capitalism, or patriarchy), or of representing them as actors either struggling against these systems, or finding a way of accommodating them? Are migrants exploited by activists and researchers pursuing particular moral or political agendas, and if so, is this unethical? This paper considers such questions in relation to debates on historical scholarship and activism around transatlantic slavery, arguing that contemporary researchers and activists have much to learn from the history of transatlantic slavery and its afterlives.

Authors

• Julia O'Connell Davidson, University of Bristol

• Samuel Okyere, University of Nottingham