| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, January 29, 2016 | 12:00PM - 2:00PM | Seminar Room 108N, Munk School of Global Affairs 1 Devonshire Place M5S 3K7 |
Hellenic and Balkan Seminar Series
The talk will focus on a recent paper that offers new conceptual tools to understand the dynamics and relationships between trafficking in persons and diaspora networks. A diaspora methodology provides a more nuanced and in-depth method of analyzing human trafficking cases, and takes into account the intersections between traffickers, victims and diaspora communities within the human trafficking process. Data comes from 72 court files handled as cases of trafficking of adults and children for labour exploitation by various courts between 2004 and 2014. The results confirm that traffickers, to a certain extent, rely on diaspora networks in the recruitment, transportation and receipt of the victims. In particular, there is a strong correlation between the nationalities of traffickers and victims, as well as between traffickers and their intermediaries and collaborators. These findings hold in both transnational and domestic trafficking cases. Most traffickers prefer to recruit co-ethnics, but once the recruitment phase is over, traffickers are ready to move across the globe in search of the most advantageous sites of exploitation guided by a commitment to minimizing costs and maximizing profits.
Dr Antonela Arhin is the Executive Officer at the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto where she teaches courses on human trafficking, diaspora and transnationalism. She brings over 19 years of experience in higher education, government, NGOs and consulting. Most recently, Dr Arhin worked on a project that promoted identification of cases of labour trafficking involving Roma children in Serbia and Montenegro. Presently, she is engaged in a number of roundtable discussions on building collabaration to combat human trafficking in the City of Toronto by offering her expertise on the global perspectives on child trafficking and best practices in child protection. She is also developing a series on anti-human trafficking roundtables in collaboration with the U.S. Consulate in Toronto. Her co-edited book Labour Migration, Human Trafficking and Multinational Corporations: The Commodification of Illicit Flows (Routledge, 2012) addresses human trafficking for the purpose of labour exploitation within the contexts of migration and the global economy.
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