The Human Trafficking Research Cluster (HTRC) situates anti-trafficking interventions within historical scholarship on chattel slavery and abolition, as well as contemporary legacies of labor migration and global racial inequality. In Fall 2022, Elena Shih and Kamala Kempadoo published an edited volume, White Supremacy, Racism, and the Coloniality of Anti-Trafficking (Routledge).

The volume reflects five years of collaborative work born through the HTRC, including a 2018 conference, “Whitewashing Abolition,” that aimed to understand the opportunities and limitations of the metaphor that likens human trafficking to modern-day slavery. The convening brought together 17 global scholars and activists of anti-trafficking, migration, and sex workers' rights for a 2-day convening, igniting the conversations and contributions that became the backbone for the celebrated edited volume.

View photos from the conference