Talk Inspects Politics of Human Trafficking

Grace Chang, a writer and activist for the labor and welfare rights of immigrants and women of color, explores the complex governmental issues of human trafficking in a lecture, “Trafficking by Any Other Name,” Thursday, April 30, at 7 p.m. in Kerrwood Hall’s Hieronymus Lounge.

Chang, an associate professor of feminist studies at UC Santa Barbara, says that attention to human trafficking in both media and public policy has focused almost exclusively on sex trafficking.

“This emphasis deflects attention from sending and receiving country governments’ complicity in all forms of human trafficking for labor exploitation,” Chang says. “Coerced migration and exploitation within every labor sector, including service work, manufacturing and agriculture, must also be recognized as trafficking.”

Further complicating the issue, many people are forced to migrate due to destructive economic policies, Chang says.

“U.S. economic interventions forcing people to migrate or policies allowing for labor exploitation could be seen as state-sponsored trafficking,” she says. “Many anti-trafficking policies and ‘rescue’ activities promoted by the U.S. and nongovernmental organizations serve a function that’s less about combating trafficking than about rationalizing this state-sponsored human trafficking.”

Chang’s essays have appeared in Radical America, Socialist Review and several anthologies. She was co-editor of “Mothering: Ideology, Experience and Agency” and authored “Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy.” She is currently working on a book, “Trafficking by Any Other Name: Transnational Feminist, Immigrant and Sex Worker Rights Responses.

The lecture is co-sponsored by Westmont Intercultural Programs, Political Science and Sociology Departments and the student ministry group Not For Sale.