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

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

In this round-table discussion we discuss in-depth the concept of ‘exploitation’ within international trafficking discourse. Against the décor of harsh migration policies, migrants are imagined as either ‘illegally migrated’ or ‘trafficked’; ‘child’ or ‘adult’; ‘innocent victim’ or ‘criminal’, ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’. The concept of ‘exploitation’ is crucial here, but still ill-defined in human trafficking laws. Everyday interpretations of ‘exploitation’ are often ethnocentric, racialized, gendered and adult-centered, or cultural relativist. This discussion seeks to think beyond such dichotomies, revisit stereotypical notions on migrants’ vulnerabilities and bring neglected forms of exploitation (e.g. by authorities, NGO’s or researchers) back into the discussion.

Sub Unit

• Area XIII: Roundtable Sessions

Individual Presentations

• Imagining The Migrant Child: on Flexible Realities, Forced Identities and Fake Moralities - Brenda Carina Oude Breuil, Utrecht University

• Exploiting Migrants in Research and Activism: Learning from Transatlantic Slavery and its Afterlives - Julia O'Connell Davidson, University of Bristol; Samuel Okyere, University of Nottingham

• Assembling Samira and Travel: Understanding Sexual Humanitarianism From the Global South Through Experimental Ethnofictional Filmmaking - Nicola Mai, Kingston University London

• Friends, Fellows, Brothers or Chiefs? Blurred Lines Between Traffickers and Brokers - Veronika Nagy, Utrecht University

Chair

• Veronika Nagy, Utrecht University