Anti-Trafficking Review
Not a member yet
276 research outputs found
Sort by
Slaves to Technology: Worker control in the surveillance economy
Get PDFTechnology is enabling new forms of coercion and control over workers. While digital platforms for labour markets have been seen as benign or neutral technology, in reality they may enable new forms of worker exploitation. Workers in precarious conditions who seek employment via digital platforms are highly vulnerable to coercion and control via forms of algorithmic manipulation. This manipulation is enabled by information asymmetries, lack of labour protection, and predatory business models. When put together, these deficits create a perfect storm for labour exploitation. This article describes how digital platforms alter traditional labour relations, summarises case data from several existing studies, and details emerging forms of worker control and barriers to worker agency. It explores current definitions of forced labour and whether digital spaces require us to consider a new conceptualisation of what constitutes force, fraud, and coercion. It concludes with a summary of possible responses to these new forms of abuse in the global economy, including alternative models for business and for worker organising
'I've Never Been So Exploited': The consequences of FOSTA-SESTA in Aotearoa New Zealand
Get PDFAotearoa New Zealand’s 2003 decriminalisation of sex work has reduced the exploitation of sex workers, as well as the health and safety risks in the industry. Nevertheless, United States-driven criminalising policies still influence sex workers abroad. The Fight Online Sex Trafficking and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Acts (FOSTA-SESTA) effectively criminalised websites where sex workers advertise. Shortly before that, the FBI shut down the internationally used Backpage.com, leading many sex workers in both countries to return to the streets or brothels. These events contributed to the rising dominance of one advertising website. Drawing on twenty semi-structured interviews and four observation cases with sex workers in Auckland, in this paper, I explore the international consequences of FOSTA-SESTA and the closure of Backpage on my participants. I show that this punitive approach to segments of the online sex industry has not only placed sex workers in greater financial insecurity, but has reduced their ability to control their working conditions. These outcomes, I conclude, have undermined the positive impacts of decriminalisation, while exacerbating socioeconomic, racial, gender, and legal inequalities in Auckland’s sex industry
Editorial: Between Hope and Hype: Critical evaluations of technology’s role in anti-trafficking
Get PDFOver the past decade, scholars, activists, and policymakers have repeatedly called for an examination of the role of technology as a contributing force to human trafficking and exploitation. Attention has focused on a range of issues from adult services websites and the use of social media to recruit victims and facilitate trafficking to the utilisation of data analytics software to understand trafficking and identify ‘hotspots of risk’. This article introduces the Special Issue of Anti-Trafficking Review devoted to the role of technology in (anti-)trafficking. It outlines the main assumptions and critiques some of the proposed ‘solutions’ in the field and presents briefly the articles included in the issue. It concludes that the factors that enable and sustain human trafficking are varied and complex and require political will – not tech solutionist fixes
Rights Not Rescue: Lessons from migrant domestic workers in the UK and their struggle for systems change
Get PDFResponse to the ATR debate proposition ‘It is worth undermining the anti-trafficking cause in order to more directly challenge the systems producing everyday abuses within the global economy.
Same Same but Different? Gender, sex work, and respectability politics in the MyRedBook and Rentboy closures
Get PDFAmong the many policies implemented to eradicate trafficking in the sex industry, US government agencies have targeted online platforms that market and facilitate sex work. In this paper, I consider two instances of this activity: the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2014 raid and subsequent closing of MyRedbook.com, and the Department of Homeland Security’s 2015 raid and closing of Rentboy.com. Drawing from a qualitative-interpretive analysis of the media coverage of these raids, I show that the responses to them emphasised how the sites’ closures increased both men’s and women’s economic vulnerability, but the similarities largely ended there. Instead, I argue broadly that public responses to these events reflected and reinforced gendered notions of women’s vulnerability and men’s agency in the sex industry. While these responses may seem unsurprising, they are also potentially productive, calling into question the limits of respectability politics and signalling new solidarities in the struggle for sex worker rights
Erased: The impact of FOSTA-SESTA and the removal of Backpage on sex workers
Get PDFThis short article presents in brief the findings of a community-based, sex worker-led survey that asked sex workers about their experiences since the closure of Backpage and adoption of FOSTA. It shows that the financial situation of the vast majority of research participants has deteriorated, as has their ability to access community and screen clients. It concludes that FOSTA is just the latest example of the US government using anti-trafficking policy and restrictions on technology to police already marginalised people
The Anti-Trafficking Cause: From exceptionalism to shared struggle
Get PDFResponse to the ATR debate proposition ‘It is worth undermining the anti-trafficking cause in order to more directly challenge the systems producing everyday abuses within the global economy.
Base Motives: The case for an increased focus on wage theft against migrant workers
Get PDFSince the adoption of the UN Trafficking Protocol, most of the efforts dedicated to eliminating exploitation of migrant workers have focused on human trafficking. Yet, there is limited evidence to show that this approach has been effective at reducing the scale or severity of abuses they experience. This article presents the case for increasing attention to a range of labour rights abuses falling under the category of wage theft. It considers the opportunities to shift the strategy for responding to exploitation, addressing the underlying pecuniary issues as a chief priority rather than as a matter of secondary concern. The analysis concludes that expanding engagement with the more ‘mundane’ vulnerabilities to abuse is essential to developing a pragmatic approach that enables migrants themselves to identify and denounce abuses. Interventions to prevent and remediate wage theft would contribute to better working conditions for the vast missing middle who experience more commonplace forms of abuse and help to diminish the enabling environment for severe exploitation to occur. Ensuring a more equitable distribution of wages would also redirect attention to a core issue at stake in the era of globalisation—the expansion of economic and social justice for migrant workers
From Conflict to Common Ground: Why anti-trafficking can be compatible with challenging the systemic drivers of everyday abuses
Get PDFResponse to the ATR debate proposition ‘It is worth undermining the anti-trafficking cause in order to more directly challenge the systems producing everyday abuses within the global economy.
There’s an App for That? Ethical consumption in the fight against trafficking for labour exploitation
Get PDFAmong the market-based strategies being used to fight trafficking for labour exploitation are apps aimed at encouraging ethical consumption. Such apps have surfaced in tandem with the increased involvement of businesses in anti-trafficking efforts and the promotion of social entrepreneurism. In this article, I describe and critically analyse three apps aimed at individual consumers, arguing that they do little to actually address labour exploitation. They rest on questionable assumptions about consumption, employ problematic assessment methodologies, and rely on business models that do more to provide opportunities for social entrepreneurs in the burgeoning anti-trafficking field than solutions for labour exploitation in the global economy