White Supremacy, Racism and the Coloniality of Anti-Trafficking

Introduction

Rethinking the Field from Anti-Racist and Decolonial Perspectives
Kamala Kempadoo and Elena Shih

1. Anti-Trafficking and Anti-smuggling Campaigns in West Africa as New Racialised Migration Deterrence Efforts
   Sam Okyere and Peter Olayiwola
2. Trafficking, Terror and their Tropes
   Pardis Mahdavi
3. The Anti-Trafficking Apparatus has a Racial Justice Problem
   Lyndsey Beutin
4. Exploring the Role of Race and Racial Difference in the Legislative Intent of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act
   Arifa Raza
5. Global White Supremacy and Anti-Trafficking: Race, Racism, and the Politics of Human Trafficking
   Elya Durisin
6. To Trip the White Fantastic: The Road from White Supremacy to Sex Trafficking Safaris
   Gregory Mitchell

Colonialism and Racialization in Anti-Trafficking

7. Whore’s Passport: Racialism, National Identity and the Trafficking of Brazilian Women
   Thaddeus Blanchette and Ana Paula da Silva
8. Anti-Trafficking and Settler-Colonial Discourses of Protection: The Coloniality of Racialized Interventions
   Julie Kaye
9. The Jaula and Racialization of the Amazon: Reflections on Racism and Geopolitics in the Struggle Against Human Trafficking in Brazil
   José Miguel Nieto Olivar and Flávia Melo
10. Constructing Victims and Criminals Through the Racial Figure of ‘The Gypsy’
    Marlene Spanger
11. "Is It Because I’m Not Young and White with Blue Eyes?": Canadian Police Response to Sex Workers of Color’s Experiences of Exploitation and Trafficking
    Menaka Raguparan
12. Trafficking Indianness by Legislating Settler Sexuality Logics
    April Petillo
13. Imperial Anti-Trafficking: Producing Racialized Knowledge Regimes over the Longue Durée
    Mishal Khan

Migrant and Sex Worker Resistance to Anti-Trafficking

14. Resistance of Butterfly: Mobilization of Asian Migrant Sex Workers Against Sexism and Racism in Canadian Anti-Trafficking Measures
    Elene Lam, Jaden Hsin-Yun Peng and Coly Chau
15. The Aesthetic of Migrant Sex Work: Creation of White Identity and Perceived Moral Superiority
    Nada DeCat
16. Sex Work in Jamaica: Trafficking, Modern Slavery and Slavery’s Afterlives
    Julia O’Connell Davidson and Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor
17. Migrant Domestic Workers, Asylum-Seekers and Premonitions of Anti-Trafficking in Hong Kong
    Julie Ham, Iulia Gheorghiu and Eni Lestari

Biography

Kamala Kempadoo is Professor of Social Science at York University, Canada. She has published extensively on the Caribbean sex trade, global sex workers’ rights, and hegemonic anti- trafficking discourses, including the books Global Sex Workers (edited with Jo Doezema, Routledge 1998), Sexing the Caribbean (Routledge 2004), and Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered (edited with Jyoti Sanghera and Bandana Pattanaik, Paradigm 2005/ 2011). More recently, she is co-editor, with Halimah A. F. DeShong, of the collection Methodologies in Caribbean Research on Gender and Sexuality (Ian Randle Press 2021).

Elena Shih is Manning Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University in the U.S., where she directs a human trafficking research cluster through Brown’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Her research focuses on the impact of anti- trafficking programs on the policing of migration, sex work, gender, and poverty. She is the author of Manufacturing Freedom (University of California Press 2023), a global ethnography of anti-trafficking rehabilitation in China, Thailand, and the U.S.

‘This book offers a trenchant — and utterly necessary — critique of contemporary anti-trafficking efforts, exposing the racist and neo-colonialist underpinnings of mainstream and even self-styled "critical" approaches to addressing severe exploitation in our global economy. By providing a platform for anti-racist scholars — and more importantly, those who are racialized, colonized, and marginalized by anti-trafficking interventions — to voice their concerns, this volume humbles and challenges us to do and think better. This should be required reading for any academic, activist, or policy-maker who aspires to help rid the world of "modern-day slavery."’

Janie Chuang, American University – Washington College of Law

‘This illuminating volume puts to rest any lingering doubt that racism is integral to the history and advancement of coloniality and global capitalism—not just in the case of human trafficking, but equally in measures designed to fight trafficking. A much-needed intervention at the intersection of global migration, class, and sex/gender.’

Ilan Kapoor, York University, Toronto, and author of Confronting Desire: Psychoanalysis and International Development

‘White Supremacy, Racism and the Coloniality of Anti-Trafficking is a bold and imaginative project. The editors of the book, Kamala Kempadoo and Elena Shih, have brought together contributors that dig deeper, and go beyond the smokescreen of ‘rescue’ that dominant anti-trafficking campaigners with more resources convey on our TV screens.

‘For those who seek a better understanding of studying the methodologies and responses to human trafficking, this book is worth reading.’

Kwame Nimako, Founder and Director, Black Europe Summer School, Amsterdam

‘This is an important collection that sets the framework for how we understand human trafficking. It provides a sweeping overview of anti-trafficking campaigns across the globe as it
definitively shows how racism undergirds these efforts resulting in criminalization and exclusion.’

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Florence Everline Professor of Sociology and Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of Southern California

This robust tapestry of works from an interdisciplinary body of authors is a required reading for any person interested in contemporary debates on human trafficking, how this phenomenon has been historically conceptualized, and the impact that anti-trafficking measures have had on particular groups.

Carlos Iglesias Vergara, Lancaster University Law School, UK