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DESCRIPTION:A Slavery Old and New Talk with Professor Joel Quirk\, Universi
 ty of the Witwatersrand.\n\nAbstract\n\nCombating human trafficking has be
 en widely presented as a cohesive and singular global cause\, which builds
  upon the noble work of ‘modern-day abolitionists’ seeking to finally end 
 slavery once and for all. The main argument of this paper is that this pop
 ular rhetoric of shared global struggle is both highly misleading and poli
 tically problematic. In its current incarnation\, ‘the cause’ of ending hu
 man trafficking and ‘modern-day slavery’ brings together two major element
 s: i) an increasingly dense regime of law and policy which is universal in
  scope yet shallow and selective when it comes to effective application\, 
 and ii) a diverse portfolio of more substantive political interventions wh
 ich tend to heavily concentrate upon specific locations and industries. Th
 ese case-specific interventions often have little or no direct connection 
 to parallel interventions taking place in other parts of the world. There 
 may well be broad similarities in the types of abuses which occur in diffe
 rent contexts and countries\, but a great deal of a creative aggregation a
 nd extrapolation is required in order to translate broad similarities into
  the language of a singular and cohesive global cause. Once we puncture th
 is fictive coherence\, it quickly becomes clear that there is not one glob
 al anti-trafficking or anti-slavery movement\, but many different movement
 s and actors with different agendas and interests\, most of which primaril
 y focus upon specific issues and/or localised concerns. In stark contrast 
 to historical campaigns to end legal slavery\, which were firmly aimed at 
 the profits and privileges of the rich and powerful\, most of these interv
 entions only rarely pose a direct threat to major political and economic i
 nterests\, which is ultimately a key source of their appeal.\n\nAbout the 
 speaker\n\nJoel Quirk is Associate Professor in the Department of Politica
 l Studies\, University of the Witwatersrand. His research focuses on slave
 ry and abolition\, human mobility and human rights\, repairing historical 
 wrongs\, and history and politics of sub-Saharan Africa. Recent works incl
 ude The Anti-Slavery Project(Penn\, 2011)\, International Orders in the Ea
 rly Modern World (Routledge\, 2014\, co-edited)\, Mobility Makes States (P
 enn\, 2015\, co-edited)\, and The Invention of Contemporary Slavery (UBC\,
  in press\, co-edited). He has also recently co-edited special issues/sect
 ions on Repairing Historical Wrongs (Social & Legal Studies\, 2012)\, Samp
 ling Techniques in Johannesburg (Journal of Refugee Studies\, 2012) and th
 e Politics of Numbers (Review of International Studies\, 2015). Joel is a 
 current member of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Sla
 ve Route Project\, where he serves as Rapporteur\, and is also an editor f
 or openDemocracy’s ‘Beyond Trafficking and Slavery’ (opendemocracy.net/bey
 ondslavery).\n\nAbout the series\n\nSlavery Old and New is a joint researc
 h initiative which examines the legal conceptualization of labour exploita
 tion. Through an interdisciplinary\, transnational and historical methodol
 ogy\, this project draws on a variety of disciplines\, spaces in time\, an
 d places around the world\, to explore law’s understanding of “labour expl
 oitation” and its relationship to society and practices.\n
DTSTART:20150928T163000Z
DTEND:20150928T180000Z
LOCATION:Room 107 (via video-conference)\, Burnside Hall\, CA\, QC\, Montre
 al\, H3A 0B9\, 805 rue Sherbrooke Ouest
SUMMARY:The Fictive Coherence of Global Struggle: Combating ‘Modern-Day Sla
 very’ in Rhetoric and Practice
URL:/law/channels/event/fictive-coherence-global-strug
 gle-combating-modern-day-slavery-rhetoric-and-practice-255443
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