Anti-Trafficking Review Issue 14
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Issue 14, April 2020 ISSN: 2286-7511 EISSN: 2287-0113 Special Issue – Technology, Anti-Trafficking, and Speculative Futures Editorial: Between Hope and Hype: Critical evaluations of technology’s role in anti-trafficking Thematic Articles Freeing the Modern Slaves, One Click at a Time: Theorising human trafficking, modern slavery, and technology There’s an App for That? Ethical consumption in the fight against trafficking for labour exploitation Addressing Exploitation in Supply Chains: Is technology a game changer for worker voice? Witnessing in a Time of Homeland Futurities Same Same but Different? Gender, sex work, and respectability politics in the MyRedBook and Rentboy closures ‘I’ve Never Been So Exploited’: The consequences of FOSTA-SESTA in Aotearoa New Zealand Short Articles Erased: The impact of FOSTA-SESTA and the removal of Backpage on sex workers The Use of Digital Evidence in Human Trafficking Investigations Surveillance and Entanglement: How mandatory sex offender registration impacts criminalised survivors of human trafficking GUEST EDITORS EDITOR JENNIFER MUSTO BORISLAV GERASIMOV MITALI THAKOR EDITORIAL BOARD RUTVICA ANDRIJASEVIC, University of Bristol, United Kingdom LYNDSEY BEUTIN, McMaster University, Canada JACQUELINE BHABHA, Harvard School of Public Health, United States XIANG BIAO, Oxford University, United Kingdom DENISE BRENNAN, Georgetown University, United States LUCIANA CAMPELLO, Panamerican Health Organization, Brazil JOY NGOZI EZEILO, University of Nigeria; Former UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, Nigeria ANNE T. GALLAGHER, Independent scholar and legal advisor, Australia JOHN GEE, Transient Workers Count Too, Singapore CHANDRE GOULD, Institute for Security Studies, South Africa YANA HASHAMOVA, Ohio State University, United States SUZANNE HOFF, La Strada International, The Netherlands KRISTIINA KANGASPUNTA, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Austria KAMALA KEMPADOO, York University, Canada ANNALEE LEPP, University of Victoria, Canada MARIKA MCADAM, Independent Consultant, Thailand SVERRE MOLLAND, Australian National University, Australia MARINA NOVAES, Secretariat of Human Rights and Citizenship of Sao Paulo’s City Hall, Brazil VICTORIA IJEOMA NWOGU, United Nations Development Programme, Somalia JULIA O’CONNELL DAVIDSON, University of Bristol, United Kingdom PIA OBEROI, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Thailand SAM OKYERE, University of Bristol, United Kingdom ELAINE PEARSON, Human Rights Watch, Australia NICOLA PIPER, University of Sydney, Australia NIVEDITA PRASAD, Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences, Germany CAROLINE ROBINSON, Independent human rights consultant, United Kingdom JYOTI SANGHERA, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Switzerland MARIE SEGRAVE, Monash University, Australia KIRIL SHARAPOV, Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom ELENA SHIH, Brown University, United States KENDRA STRAUSS, Simon Fraser University, Canada REBECCA SURTEES, NEXUS Institute, United States SALLIE YEA, Independent scholar and consultant, Australia CATHY ZIMMERMAN, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom ANTI-TRAFFICKING REVIEW Special Issue TECHNOLOGY, ANTI-TRAFFICKING, AND SPECULATIVE FUTURES Issue 14, April 2020 The Anti-Trafficking Review (ISSN 2286-7511) is published by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), a network of over 80 NGOs worldwide focused on advancing the human rights of migrants and trafficked persons. The Anti-Trafficking Review promotes a human rights-based approach to anti-trafficking. It explores trafficking in its broader context including gender analyses and intersections with labour and migration. It offers an outlet and space for dialogue between academics, practitioners, trafficked persons and advocates seeking to communicate new ideas and findings to those working for and with trafficked persons. The Review is primarily an e-journal, published biannually. The journal presents rigorously considered, peer-reviewed material in clear English. Each issue relates to an emerging or overlooked theme in the field of anti-trafficking. Articles contained in the Review represent the views of the respective authors and not necessarily those of the editors, the Editorial Board, the GAATW network or its members. The editorial team reserves the right to edit all articles before publication. The Anti-Trafficking Review is an open access publication distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). The Anti-Trafficking Review promotes the sharing of information, and we therefore encourage the reproduction and onward dissemination of articles published with us. ANTI-TRAFFICKING REVIEW Issue 14, April 2020 1 Editorial: Between Hope and Hype: Critical evaluations of technology’s role in anti- trafficking Jennifer Musto, Mitali Thakor, and Borislav Gerasimov Thematic Articles: Technology, Anti-Trafficking, and Speculative Futures 16 Freeing the Modern Slaves, One Click at a Time: Theorising human trafficking, modern slavery, and technology Sanja Milivojevic, Heather Moore, and Marie Segrave 33 There’s an App for That? Ethical consumption in the fight against trafficking for labour exploitation Stephanie A. Limoncelli 47 Addressing Exploitation in Supply Chains: Is technology a game changer for worker voice? Laurie Berg, Bassina Farbenblum, and Angela Kintominas 67 Witnessing in a Time of Homeland Futurities Annie Isabel Fukushima 82 Same Same but Different? Gender, sex work, and respectability politics in the MyRedBook and Rentboy closures Samantha Majic 99 ‘I’ve Never Been So Exploited’: The consequences of FOSTA-SESTA in Aotearoa New Zealand Erin Tichenor Short Articles 117 Erased: The impact of FOSTA-SESTA and the removal of Backpage on sex workers Danielle Blunt and Ariel Wolf 122 The Use of Digital Evidence in Human Trafficking Investigations Isabella Chen and Celeste Tortosa 125 Surveillance and Entanglement: How mandatory sex offender registration impacts criminalised survivors of human trafficking Kate Mogulescu and Leigh Goodmark J Musto, M Thakor, and B Gerasimov Editorial: Between Hope and Hype: Critical evaluations of technology’s role in anti-trafficking Jennifer Musto, Mitali Thakor, and Borislav Gerasimov Please cite this article as: J Musto, M Thakor, and B Gerasimov, ‘Editorial: Between Hope and Hype: Critical evaluations of technology’s role in anti-trafficking’, Anti-Trafficking Review,issue 14, 2020, pp. 1-14, https://doi.org/10.14197/ atr.201220141 Introduction The year 2020 may well be remembered as the year of COVID-19, an unprecedented moment when a pandemic upended myriad facets of political, social, and economic life. Speculative forecasts aside, at the time of writing, this much is clear: in a relatively short period of time, a novel coronavirus has sealed off borders, restricted travel, and curtailed in-person gatherings at school, workplaces, and conference venues. Whatever meaning, however fraught, was attached to the notion of ‘business (and we would add politics and life) as usual’ before the spread of the virus has been indefinitely suspended, and global public attention daily trained to tracking confirmed cases, tallying death counts, and taking stock of the virus’s disruptive social, political, and economic effects. The links between technology and anti-trafficking—the focus of this Special Issue of Anti-Trafficking Review—and COVID-19 may seem topically distant and their analytical connections not readily apparent. However, by situating COVID-19 as an analytical launch pad into the Special Issue, our aim is to spark creative interdisciplinary approaches in tracking how distinctive global phenomena constitutively overlap in moments of social and economic disruption. And, more pointedly, we hope to better understand how issues framed as exceptional give rise to solutions,1 including state and non-governmental solutions augmented by technology, which may further contribute to structural vulnerabilities. 1 J Musto, Control and Protect: Collaboration, carceral protection, and domestic sex trafficking in the United States, University of California Press, Oakland, 2016; J Quirk, The Anti-Slavery Project: From the slave trade to human trafficking, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2011. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). Under the CC-BY license, the public is free to share, adapt, and make commercial use of the work. Users must always give proper attribution to the authors and the Anti-Trafficking Review. 1 ANTI-TRAFFICKING REVIEW 14 (2020): 1-14 Consider one COVID-19 example that dovetails with sex work, technology, and anti-trafficking politics. As travel bans, border containment efforts, and a mix of mandatory and voluntary quarantines continue apace, the upending of various industries and businesses have left many workers reeling. Workers ineligible for paid leave and lacking worker protections are especially vulnerable, including (though not limited to) people in the sex trades. In the absence of meaningful state assistance, some groups have taken to crowdfunding and found other ways to help sex workers impacted by the pandemic, for instance by raising money and sharing advice and resources.2 The use of technology in these instances reveals the resiliency of sex workers organising to help people access critically important resources and ease financial losses. However, the bitter irony is that sex workers’ use