This paper explores the 21st century re-emergence of the intersection of faith and slavery in its 'modern slavery and hu
MONASH ARTS
SEMINAR SERIES CRIMINOLOGY @ MONASH
'Modern slavery and human trafficking: The re-emergence of the intersection of faith and slavery in post-secular contexts Dr Hannah Lewis, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Sheffield This paper explores the 21st century re-emergence of the intersection of faith and slavery in its ‘modern slavery and human trafficking’ guise. The rise of ‘neo-abolitionism’ emerges from a nexus of faith, (modern) slavery, and human trafficking in a context of the UK’s changing religious landscape and growing welfare pluralism in times of austerity. The new assemblages of faith based organisations operating in secular welfare provision can be seen as creating new forms of postsecular partnerships. Nevertheless, the faith/anti-trafficking nexus at times reproduces discursive constructions of deservingness and dependency that are especially acute within gendered anti-trafficking efforts to tackle ‘modern slavery’. This paper sets out the context and conceptual framework of a new ESRC study that aims to understand the role of faith based organisations in anti-trafficking. The project is designed to explore anti-trafficking responses in three terrains of action: support for trafficked persons; campaigns and public awareness; government and statutory responses. The paper will sketch the rapid growth in the number of faith-based organisations and their diversity of roles in the anti-trafficking sector. Abolishing modern slavery has achieved international policy consensus. Against such a backdrop, rather little is empirically known about the particular assemblages and affective atmospheres created for trafficked persons in either faith-based or secular antitrafficking settings, and how particular faith-based constructions of trafficking may affect the wider project of ‘ending modern slavery’.
Hannah Lewis is Vice-Chancellors Fellow, University of Sheffield, UK with research interests in migration and refugee studies. She is interested in how experiences of immigration and asylum policy shape daily life, precarity, forced labour and ‘modern slavery’. She is PI on the ESRC project 'Understanding the roles of faith based organisations in anti-trafficking' (2017-2019). Her work on these themes has been published in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Progress in Human Geography, ACME, Social and Cultural Geography, Refugee Studies, Policy & Politics, International and Comparative Social Policy, Poverty and Social Justice, Critical Social Policy and Leisure Studies. She is co-author of Precarious lives: forced labour, exploitation and asylum, 2014, Policy Press (with P. Dwyer, S. Hodkinson and L. Waite), and coeditor of Vulnerability, Exploitation and Migrants, 2015, Palgrave Macmillan (with G. Craig, K. Skrivankova and L. Waite).
EVENT DETAILS: Date: Tuesday 10 April Time: 11 am – 12 Location: Menzies Building, Room N502 Registration/RSVP:
[email protected] 