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Trafficking, Smuggling and Illicit Migration in Historical Perspective

Birkbeck Inst i tute for the Humanit i es , London, June 18-20, 2015

Sponsored by the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, the Economic History Society, Birkbeck Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck Department of Law, and the University of Sydney Laureate Research Programme in International History  

 

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Thursday, 18 June

11:00-1:00 Registration

Lunch on your own

1:00 Opening remarks

1:30-2:45 Panel 1: Girl Traffic, White Slaves, and Circulating Narratives: Civil Society Discourses and Activism

Chair: TBC

Unwelcome Departures? ‘Foreign Jews’, ‘British Jews’, and Sex Trafficking in an Age of Mass Migration, 1899 – 1910 by Rachel Attwood (Sussex)

The Concept of ‘Mädchenhandel’ in Imperial Germany by Stephanie Skier (University of Michigan)

White Slavery Activism, Law Reform and Constructing the Ideal Victim in England, 1885-1912 by Laura Lammasniemi (Birbeck College)

2:45-3:15 Coffee

3:15-4:45 Panel 2: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges of Historical Trafficking

Chair: TBC

A View from the Russian Archives: Can the Trafficked Subaltern Speak by Philippa Hetherington (University of Sydney)

The Jazz Singer: Microhistory and the International Traffic in Women by Paul Knepper (Sheffield)

Contested History, Contested Field by Petra de Vries (Amsterdam)

6:00 Conference Dinner for speakers

 

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FRIDAY, 19 JUNE

9:00-10:30 Panel 3: Tracing Trafficking Networks from Eastern Europe and Beyond

Chair: TBC

Prostitution, Illicit Migration, and “White Slaving” on the Austrian Riviera by Nancy M. Wingfield (Northern Illinois University)

Trafficking, Smuggling, and Illicit Migration in Hashemite Iraq by Elizabeth Bishop (Texas State University)

Sex Trafficking and Labour Migration: Genesis of a Panic in Eastern Europe by Keeley Stauter-Halstead (University of Illinois at Chicago)

10:30-10:45 Coffee

10:45-12:15 Panel 4: International Governance: Views from Geneva

Chair: Jessica Pliley

From the Dance Halls of Marseilles to the Brothels of Rio: American Women and the League of Nations Enquiry into the Traffic in Women and Children by Eva Payne (Harvard University)

Debates on Prostitution and the ‘Traffic in Women’ in International Organizations and Transnational NGOS (1945-1985) Sonja Dolinsek (University of Erfurt, Germany)

Female Emigrants, Domestic Workers, and Sexual Danger: The International Labor Organization and the Trafficked Woman by Eileen Boris (University of California Santa Barbara)

12:15-1:15 Lunch

1:15-3:15 Panel 5: Implementing Anti-Sex Trafficking Laws: Adventures in State Building

Chair Julia Laite

Abolition and Immigration Restriction: The Deportation of Japanese Karayuki-san from Australia in the First Half of the 20th Century by Julia Martinez (University of Wollongong)

Lessons of Enforcement: The FBI, the White Slave Traffic Act, and “Any Other Immoral Purpose” by Jessica R. Pliley (Texas State University)

 

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Le Havre–Buenos Aires: The ‘White Slave Trade’ and Transatlantic Female Migration by Kate Marsh (University of Liverpool)

Gatecrashers or Gatekeepers? The Role of Shipping Companies in Circumventing and Enforcing Migration Laws, 1882 – 1929 by Torsten Feys (FWO/Ghent University)

3:15-3:30 Coffee

3:30-5:00 Panel 6: Marriage and Illicit Migration

Chair: TBC

White Slave Wives and Jewish Husbands on the Road to Buenos Aires: Jewish Marriage and Migration Strategies in the Interwar Sex Traffic Battles by Mir Yarfitz (Wake Forest University)

Marriages of Convenience in 1930s Britain by Julia Laite (University of London, Birkbeck)

Fictitious Marriage as Illicit Strategy to Escape the Nazi Regime by Irene Messinger (University of Vienna)

5:00-6:00 Panel 7: Tracing Clandestine Networks

Chair: TBC

Polish Illegal Migration into the Soviet Union: A View from Soviet Secret Police Files by Maria Blackwood (Harvard University)

The Actors of the Portuguese Illegal Migration to France between 1957 and 1974 by Victor Pereira (Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour)

6.00-8.00 Catered Wine Reception sponsored by the University of Sydney Laureate Research Programme in International History

 

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SATURDAY, JUNE 20

9:30-11:00 Panel 8: Smuggling & Sex Work

Chair: TBC

Selling Sex in Saint Petersburg in the Middle of the 18th Century by Ira Rodulgina (Higher School of Economics)

Human Trafficking in the American West: “The Importation of Females in Bulk” by Jean Pfaelzer (University of Delaware)

Trafficking and the High Class Sex Trade in Mid-Nineteenth Century London by Pamela Cox (University of Essex) & Amanda Wilkinson (University of Essex)

11:00-11:15 Coffee

11:15-12:15 Panel 9: Beyond ‘Trafficking’: Gender, Culture, and Illicit Migration in the Recent Past

Chair: Genevieve LaBaron

Evidence that Evidence Doesn’t Matter: Contemporary and Historical Analysis of Human Trafficking in Canada by Ann De Shalit (Ryerson University, Toronto) & Katrin Roots (York University, Toronto)

Disappeared and Indeterminate: Human Trafficking, Globalized Populations, and Acting Otherwise at Europe’s Limit by Jacqueline Berman (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe)

12:15-1:15 Lunch

1:15-2:45 Panel 10: Slavery, Trafficking, and Smuggling: Crossing Conceptual Borders

Chair: TBC

‘Reverse-trafficking’: The Underground Railroad as an Early Example of Human Rights Activism by Faith Marchal (Birkbeck College)

 

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Supplicants and Savoirs: The History and Legacies of Anti-Slavery Activism in Africa by Joel Quirk (University of the Witwatersrand)

The Rhetorical Conflation of Trafficking and Slavery in the Context of Securitization by Deliana Popova (University of Hamburg)

2:45-Collect coffee and move into workshops

2:45-4:15 WORKSHOPS:

Divide into three 'theme' groups for discussion of panels

Theme 1: Enforcement, networks, and experience Workshop Faci l i tator : Jul ia Laite

Theme 2: Challenging conceptual boundaries Workshop Faci l i tator : Jess i ca Pi le ly

Theme 3: Creating knowledge, forming opinion and making law Workshop Faci l i tators : Phi l ippa Hether ington and Laura Lammasniemi

4:15-5:00 Final discussion/roundup/future directions

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CONFERENCE ENDS