Janie Chuang and Joel Quirk on the Impacts of Terminology in the Modern Anti-trafficking Movement

Janie Chuang and Joel Quirk on the Impacts of Terminology in the Modern Anti-trafficking Movement
Monday, October 15, 2018


Thomas Thurston talks with Yale Modern Slavery Working Group members Janie Chuang and Joel Quirk on the impacts of terminology in the anti-trafficking and abolition movements of today.


Janie Chuang is a Professor of Law who teaches and writes in the areas of international law, human trafficking and labor migration.  Drawing on her expertise on human trafficking issues, Professor Chuang has served as an adviser to the United Nations, the International Labor Organization, and the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and is currently a member of the Freedom Network USA.  Professor Chuang has also served in leadership positions with the American Society of International Law and the International Law Association, and as an Open Society Foundations Fellow.  Prior to joining AUWCL, Professor Chuang practiced with the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, representing foreign governments in international litigation/arbitration and pro bono clients in asylum and human rights cases.   Professor Chuang represented the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women during the U.N. Trafficking Protocol negotiations.

Professor Chuang’s articles have appeared in the American Journal of International Law, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, and the North Carolina Law Review, and have been cited in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Guardian, among others.  Her recent publications include: Using Global Migration Law to Prevent Human Trafficking, 111 Am. J. Int’l L. Unbound 147 (2017); Debt Bondage and ‘Self-Exploitation,’ in Unsettling Paradigms, Revisiting the Law of Human Trafficking, Forced Labor and Modern Slavery Fifteen Years after the Palermo Protocol (Prabha Kotiswaran, ed.) (2017); Giving as Governance: Philanthrocapitalism and Modern-Day Slavery Abolitionism, 62 UCLA Law Rev. 1516 (2015); The Challenges and Perils of Reframing Trafficking as ‘Modern-Day Slavery,’ Anti-Trafficking Review (debate section), vol. 5 (2015) (peer-reviewed);  Exploitation Creep and the Unmaking of Human Trafficking Law 108 American J. of Int’l Law 1 (2014) (peer-reviewed, and the focus of a Symposium issue of AJIL Unbound (June 2015), featuring responses from Clifford, Bob, Chantal Thomas, Karen Bravo, and Aziza Ahmed); The U.S. Au Pair Program: Labor Exploitation and the Myth of Cultural Exchange,  36 Harv. J. L. & Gender 269 (2013).  Professor Chuang is also an author of a forthcoming textbook, entitled The Law, Policy and Practice of Responding to Human Trafficking (with Anne T. Gallagher and Dina Francesca Haynes).


Joel Quirk is a Professor of Politics at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. His research focuses on slavery and abolition, human mobility and human rights, global governance and social movements, repairing historical wrongs, and the history and politics of sub-Saharan Africa. Recent works include The Anti-Slavery Project: From the Slave Trade to Human Trafficking (2011), Mobility Makes States: Migration and Power in Africa (2015), and Contemporary Slavery: Popular Rhetoric and Political Practice (2017).