How was Sex Trafficking “Eradicated” in Israel?
In the 1990’s and 2000’s Israel was a destination country for sex worker migration and trafficking. Every year since the early 1990’s thousands of women entered Israel for the purpose of prostitution, many of whom were trafficked. Trafficking in women into Israel was first documented by a report of Israeli NGOs in 1997, yet it can be dated to the collapse of the Soviet Union, when transnational crime networks took advantage of the waves of migration of Soviet Jews to Israel, to...
Read MoreA Labor Paradigm for Human Trafficking?
I recently published an article in which I call for a paradigm shift from a human rights to a labor paradigm to human trafficking. In the article I argue that current efforts to combat trafficking, that view trafficking predominantly as a crime or as a human rights violation, end up helping an alarmingly small number of individuals out of the multitudes currently understood as falling under the category of trafficked persons, and even in these few cases, the assistance provided is of...
Read MoreFrom the International to the Local in Feminist Legal Responses to Rape, Prostitution/Sex Work and Sex Trafficking: Four Studies in Contemporary Governance Feminism by Hila Shamir
Co-authored with Janet Halley, Prabha Kotiswaran, Chantal Thomas Feminist advocacy projects on rape and prostitution have, by now, a signiccant track record of achievement in international law. Feminists have scored important advances in international humanitarian law governing rape in armed conflict and have helped to devise international protocols and aid/sanctions schemes governing sex trafficking. We came together in this conversation in order to figure out whether feminist achievements...
Read MoreBetween Home and Work: Assessing the Distributive Effects of Employment Law in Markets of Care by Hila Shamir
This Article offers a new analytical framework for understanding the distributive role of legal regulation in the interaction of “home ” and “work. ” Using this framework, the Article maps the “double exceptionalism ” of the family in U.S. federal employment law. It suggests that employment law treats familial care responsibilities as exceptional in two different ways: first, through family leave benefits that affect the primary labor market, labeled here...
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