Call for Papers: "Trafficking, Smuggling, and Illicit Migration in Historical Perspective"
A group of scholars from the Birkbeck (University of London), Sydney, and Texas Tech have recently announced a conference on the history of trafficking, smuggling, and illicit migration to take place at Birkbeck from June 18-20, 2015 – a great chance for a field that necessarily invokes global themes to coalesce more and for scholars to develop international connections. "Human trafficking, human smuggling, and illicit migration," write the conference organizers,
are some of the most politically volatile and pressing issues in the present day. They are also the subject of a growing amount of sociological, criminological, and historical research. This combined conference and workshop aims to bring together the growing number of scholars who are currently working on the histories of trafficking, smuggling, and illicit and sexual migration from all regions in the modern period. In particular, it aims to critically engage with the concept of sexual trafficking in the past by exploring the way in which it was entangled with labour and with migration more broadly. Papers need not be limited, therefore, to the subject of trafficking: we encourage submissions from those working on smuggling and illicit migration as well, though we are especially interested in work from a gendered perspective.It promises to be a rich discussion. The conference organizers request that proposals for papers (300-500 words) and expressions of interest in the workshop (150-200 words) be sent to traffickinghistoryconference@gmail.com no later than October 1, 2014.