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Religions
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Critical Perspectives on Religion, Sex, and Human Trafficking
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Critical Perspectives on Religion, Sex, and Human Trafficking

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2023) | Viewed by 8102

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Yvonne Zimmerman

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Methodist Theological School in Ohio, Delaware, OH 43015, USA
Interests: human trafficking; social movements; sexual ethics; queer theory in religion
Dr. Lauren McGrow

E-Mail Website
Assistant Guest Editor
PACT Research Centre, Charles Sturt University, Canberra 2678, Australia
Interests: gender and sexualities; Christian purity/impurity culture; faith-based social services; embodied religious metaphors and imagination

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Western antitrafficking activism and advocacy closely associates human trafficking with commercial sex, and sex work with slavery. In turn, “good” religion is posited as a social, cultural, and spiritual force that always and essentially opposes all of these (separately and together).However this familiar arrangement of categories is less timeless and stable than it appears, as well as less inherently emancipatory than it claims. For example, religion has (and does) not always oppose slavery. Religion does not necessarily entail sex negativity nor automatically oppose sex work. Sex work is not always trafficking or slavery; and trafficking is not always commercial sex. Critical theories expose these contingencies. Queer theory helps make visible and subsequently deconstruct the binaries that give this commercial sex - human trafficking - slavery vs. (good) religion narrative its coherence. Likewise, post-colonial theory challenges the totalizing forms of western interpretation, pays attention to how sexuality is deployed in representations of the marginalized groups; and centers the insights of people who have been 'othered' in western colonial discourse. Alongside critical theories, fragments of lived experience, blog posts, research contributions, interviews with, and activism by, sex workers and trafficking survivors also deconstructs the coherence of this (sex)-trafficking-as-slavery vs (good) religion narrative. Paying particular attention to the role of religious discourse, power, and claims, this issue uses these and other critical theoretical approaches to raise critical questions about conventional understandings of human trafficking, including what trafficking is (and isn’t), who (and what) is “against” trafficking, and how lives free from trafficking are lived. To these ends, we invite papers that critique the dominant antitrafficking narrative through discussion of:

  • Religious support of human trafficking 
  • Religious responses to human trafficking that does not center on sexual exploitation (i.e., labor trafficking)
  • Sex positive religious responses to commercial sex 
  • Connections between purity culture and antitrafficking activism and advocacy 
  • The religious lives and experiences of people in trafficking relationships/situations

Drawing these critical perspectives into a sustained interdisciplinary conversation will clarify the implicit logics of power and neoliberal respectability that undergird the familiar religion-sex-human trafficking arrangement and open space for exploring manifestations of resistance to forces that constrain human well-being.

Dr. Yvonne Zimmerman
Guest Editor
Dr. Lauren McGrow
Assistant Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • human trafficking
  • labor trafficking
  • sex work
  • queer theory
  • post-colonial theory
  • neoliberalism
  • capitalism
  • freedom
  • religious studies
  • religious beliefs (theology)

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 218 KiB  
Article
Breaking the Body of Evangelical Whiteness: A Womanist Ethic of Encounter for Faith-Based Anti-Trafficking Work
by Nicole S. Symmonds
Religions 2023, 14(6), 688; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060688 - 23 May 2023
Viewed by 1300
Abstract
For the last thirty years, white evangelical Christians have been one of the most prominent groups in the anti-trafficking movement in North America. Whether advocating for policy changes on behalf of survivors, interacting with populations vulnerable to sexual exploitation, or staging rescues, these [...] Read more.
For the last thirty years, white evangelical Christians have been one of the most prominent groups in the anti-trafficking movement in North America. Whether advocating for policy changes on behalf of survivors, interacting with populations vulnerable to sexual exploitation, or staging rescues, these moral actors use Christian religious practices and values to respond to trafficking and commercial sex work. Anti-trafficking work is coated with and coded by evangelical whiteness, which uses the norms of sexual, social, and racial purity in their interactions with and recovery of trafficking victims and survivors. In response to the white evangelical stronghold on anti-trafficking interventions, the womanist ethic of encounter utilizes womanist frameworks to center the historical realities lived experience of Black women and talk back to the history of evangelical whiteness in anti-trafficking work. Secondly, it focuses on how to interact with the holistic body of Black women in the urban mission field of anti-trafficking. Finally, the womanist ethic of encounter seeks to bridge the gap between the Protestant moralistic centering of the word of the Gospel that coats rescue and recovery efforts and asserts a Catholic centering of the Eucharist to clarify the power of sacrificing and breaking the body of whiteness in anti-trafficking work. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Critical Perspectives on Religion, Sex, and Human Trafficking)
16 pages, 315 KiB  
Article
“Human Trafficking Is Modern Day Slavery”: Rev. Margaret Fowler, Sex Work and Trafficking
by Anna K. Perkins and Dane C. Lewis
Religions 2023, 14(6), 687; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060687 - 23 May 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2600
Abstract
The late Rev. Margaret Fowler, United Church Minister, was a key supporter of LGBTQ rights and a vocal advocate against human trafficking in Jamaica. As the founder of the Theodora Project, Rev. Fowler served many persons coerced into sex work or subject to [...] Read more.
The late Rev. Margaret Fowler, United Church Minister, was a key supporter of LGBTQ rights and a vocal advocate against human trafficking in Jamaica. As the founder of the Theodora Project, Rev. Fowler served many persons coerced into sex work or subject to sexual exploitation. She argued that human trafficking is a complex connection of economy, gender, social dynamics, law, and foreign relations. She called for the Church to be involved in anti-trafficking work as to do nothing risks “the very real possibility of Jamaica becoming another major area of sex tourism”. As we celebrate her life and ministry, we are given the opportunity to carefully excavate her perspective on the nexus among trafficking, slavery, and sex work. It does appear that her discourse follows the traditional Church line, which conflates slavery, trafficking and sex work in a fashion that views sex work as wholly coerced. In exploring the arguments that validated her important ministry in Negril, this chapter centres sex positive approaches to sex work and questions the slavery and exploitation framing that is normal in Christian discourse. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Critical Perspectives on Religion, Sex, and Human Trafficking)
28 pages, 379 KiB  
Article
Learning from Black Lives Matter: Resisting Purity Culture in US Antitrafficking
by Yvonne C. Zimmerman
Religions 2023, 14(4), 430; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14040430 - 23 Mar 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2112
Abstract
Persistent racial disparities in antitrafficking in the US reflect the antitrafficking movement’s reliance on a moral economy of purity and blamelessness that is steeped in White supremacy. I deconstruct two key strands of this moral economy: the middle-class economic values associated with the [...] Read more.
Persistent racial disparities in antitrafficking in the US reflect the antitrafficking movement’s reliance on a moral economy of purity and blamelessness that is steeped in White supremacy. I deconstruct two key strands of this moral economy: the middle-class economic values associated with the Protestant ethic, and the patriarchal, Christian values around gender and sexuality associated with purity culture. Both of these strands skew White and fail to work reliably for Black people. Constructively, I argue that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is an important model for the antitrafficking movement as it models the explicit rejection of and divests from the logics and practices of White supremacy. As a Black-centered political movement that is committed to resisting the unjust dehumanization of Black bodies, BLM’s responses to systemic injustice and harms consistently prioritize the well-being of Black lives and the flourishing of Black communities. I elaborate specific ways that the antitrafficking movement can learn from the wisdom that BLM provides. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Critical Perspectives on Religion, Sex, and Human Trafficking)
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