Tacking towards freedom? Bringing journeys out of slavery into dialogue with contemporary migration

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3642008
AutoresAngelo Martins Junior (0000-0002-0878-8096), Julia O’connell Davidson (0000-0002-5525-4142)
Año2022
Volumen48
Número7
Páginas1479-1495
Fecha de publicación2022-05-19
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaNew Community (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369183x.2021.1886062
OpenAlexW3123795102
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8
Referencias citadas32

Antislavery actors evoke the history of the transatlantic slave trade in campaigns to mobilise action to address the suffering experienced by contemporary migrants described as ‘victims of trafficking’. That framing has been picked up by state actors who present measures to supress unauthorised migration per se as necessary to protect migrants from a ‘modern-day slave trade’. Yet the parallel between trafficking and the slave trade is undermined by the fact that people who today are described as ‘trafficked’, as much as those described as ‘smuggled’, actively wish to travel and do so in the hope that by moving, they will secure greater freedoms. This article therefore asks whether there are similarities between the journeys of contemporary unauthorised migrants and those of enslaved people who fled from slavery in the Atlantic World, and if so, why. Bringing data from historical sources on slave flight into dialogue with data on the journeys of contemporary sub-Saharan African migrants to Europe and Brazil, it identifies a number of experiential parallels, and argues that for those concerned with migrants’ rights, enslaved people’s fugitivity potentially offers a more fruitful point of historical comparison than does the slave trade

Apprehension · Framing (construction · Parallels · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · History · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Sex work and related issues