[URBANTH-L]CFP: Anti-Trafficking, Human Rights, and Social Justice

[Tiantian Zheng]

CALL FOR PAPERS AND/OR VISUAL/AUDIO TAPES

"Anti-Trafficking, Human Rights, and Social Justice"
Special issue for Wagadu, Journal of Transnational Women's and Gender
Studies. SUNY Cortland.

This special issue of Wagadu, Journal of Transnational Women's and
Gender Studies aims to explore the life experiences, agency, and human
rights of the women who are involved in a variety of activities that are
characterized as "trafficked" terrains in a deterritorialized and
reterritorialized world, in order to shed light on the complicated
processes in which anti-trafficking, human rights and social justice are
intersected.  While previous studies have highlighted popular
discourses, national and international policies, and the victimization
and struggles of the trafficked women, few studies have centered on the
stories of the migrant subjects themselves to offer a critical reading
of the recent competing definitions of trafficking and the complex ways
in which the intertwined configurations of gender, race, ethnicity, and
nationality complicate the contemporary hegemonic discourse on
trafficking.  This special issue will fill this lacuna through
theorizing and conceptualizing the intersecting discourses on
anti-trafficking, human rights, and social justice from the perspectives
of the transnational migrant populations.  Specifically, this issue will
include articles and/or visual/audio tapes that will rearticulate the
trafficking discourses away from the state control of immigration and
the global policing of borders, and reassert the social justice and the
needs, agency, and human rights of migrant and working communities.
Some of the topics of investigation may include:

a critical analysis of the conflation of trafficking with sex work in
international and national discourses and its effects on migrant women;

effects on the vulnerable population as a result of the
anti-prostitution policy and a denial of human rights of sex workers;

suggestions of more effective anti-trafficking interventions that will
ameliorate social justice and human rights of the migrant populations;

the sociocultural effects on the migrant population as a result of the
global and national laws against trafficking, immigration and smuggling;

the debate between the recognition of women's human rights to migrate
and work as sex workers and the anti-trafficking policy that classifies
sex workers as trafficked victims and slaves;

a critical analysis of the global anti-trafficking policy and the root
causes for the undocumented migration and employment;

the relationship between the human rights of the vulnerable population
and the state approaches to trafficking;

the effects upon the migrant population as a result of the ways in which
the state and international policies define "trafficked persons" and
"undocumented migrants;"

the complicated intersections of forced and voluntary labor and
migrations at the national and international level.


Please send abstracts (75 words) in English (June 1, 2006) and complete
essays (approximately 5,500-7,500 words) and/or visual/audio tapes by
August 1, 2006.  Submissions should be sent electronically in MLA or APA
format to zhengt at cortland.edu.

Tiantian Zheng 
Sociology/Anthropology
State University of New York, College at Cortland
P.O. Box 2000
Cortland, NY 13045
Office phone number: 607-753-2478
Fax: 607-753-5973
Email: zhengt at cortland.edu


Tiantian Zheng, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Co-ordinator of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Sociology/Anthropology
State University of New York, College at Cortland
P.O. Box 2000
Cortland, NY 13045
Office phone number: 607-753-2478
Fax: 607-753-5973