Call for Papers: 'Family and Community'

Guest Editor: Nerida Chazal

Anti-Trafficking Review calls for papers for a Special Issue themed ‘Family and Community’.

Families and communities play an important role in people’s experiences with migration and trafficking. People often migrate and accept or remain in exploitative work due to the need to earn money for their children’s or siblings’ education, elderly parents’ healthcare and other needs, to repay a family debt, or to leave an abusive spouse. During the migration or trafficking situation, families learn to cope without their departed member; however, they are often plagued by worries about them, sometimes for many years. Upon return, some families are supportive of the individual while others may place blame or shame on them for loss of wages or activities that they engaged in during their migration or trafficking experience. Despite these well-known dynamics, trafficking literature focuses primarily on migrants and survivors and not their family.

The aim of this special issue of Anti-Trafficking Review will be to explore the experiences, needs, and roles of those in the immediate environment of migrants and survivors of trafficking – their parents, siblings, spouses, children, extended family, and community.

We hope that the issue will contribute to a better understanding of family dynamics in the context of migration, trafficking, and precarious work and the development of programmes to address migrants’, survivors’ and workers’ needs as part of their family and community.

Contributors are invited to engage with, but need not limit themselves to, the following topics:

• Care for the family as primary motivation for migration and trafficking, including analyses of people’s vulnerability to exploitation resulting from gendered expectations of them as breadwinners.
• The role of domestic violence and problematic relationships (involving drinking, gambling, or absconding husbands, for example) in driving migration and trafficking.
• Weak welfare state provisions (such as non-existing or inaccessible healthcare, childcare and elderly care) and family debt as motivations for migration and trafficking.
• The role of family members who facilitate trafficking, including their motivations and the impact of familial involvement in trafficking on victims and criminal justice processes. This could include explorations of family involvement in forced marriage cases.
• Family experiences of their child, wife, husband, sibling, etc. being trafficked. Impact of trafficking on victims’ children.
• How victims stay in touch with their families throughout the trafficking process, including the impact on parenting and relationships, and remittances they send (if any).
• Evaluations of family reunification visas, processes, and cases.
• The way migrants and survivors are accepted by their family and community upon return, including analyses of family rejection and stigma and discussion of the availability of holistic services for family members.
• Emerging issues that involve family relationships, such as surrogacy, illegal adoption, and orphanage trafficking as forms of exploitation.

Deadline for Submissions: 1 July 2024

In addition to full-length conceptual, research-based, or case study thematic papers, we invite book reviews, collaborative interviews, and short, blog-style articles related to the issue’s theme. We particularly encourage contributions from service providers, advocates, people with lived experience, and their family members.

Word count for full article submissions: 5,000 - 7,000 words, including footnotes, author bio, and abstract.

Word count for short article submissions: 1,200 - 1,500 words, including footnotes and author bio.

We advise those interested in submitting to check out the journal’s style guide and submission guidelines and/or email the editorial team at atr@gaatw.org with any queries. 

Special Issue to be published in April 2025.