Call for Papers: 'Care Work, Intimate Labour, Migration, and Exploitation'

Guest Editors: Marie Segrave, Siru Tan, and Lubna Jebin

The Anti-Trafficking Review calls for papers for a special issue themed 'Care Work, Intimate Labour, Migration, and Exploitation'.

There is ongoing work that has drawn attention to the intersections of domestic/care work, migration, violence, and exploitation. The COVID-19 pandemic and stay-at-home orders exposed some persistent and critical issues related to risks and harms, including the reliance on migrant women to provide various forms of care work, and the continued failure to protect this group of workers. In the context of growing ageing populations across many countries, this reliance on care labour will only increase, and there is urgency to carefully interrogate state systems that enable the exploitation of care workers, and those that seek to protect them.

This special issue of Anti-Trafficking Review will aim to document existing and emerging aspects of domestic/care work and intimate labour from across the globe. We are interested in research that explores the intersections of care work, gendered labour, and violence. This can include work examining aspects of marriage migration that may be interrogated under the purview of gendered violence, domestic and family violence or human trafficking. It may also extend to examinations of domestic work, nursing, in-home care and aged care, invisible care work, sex work and in some cases, child domestic labour. We encourage papers that consider the consequences of siloed responses to gendered violence within the private and public sphere, and the implications of system responses and/or system inaction and silencing of harms. The special issue will seek to interrogate siloed definitions of harm, including the recognition of trafficking, slavery, and gendered violence that can all intersect with care work and intimate labour in their different iterations. We invite contributions that examine both paid and unpaid care labour and the various ways in which the legal, social, economic and policy settings both sustain and produce conditions that enable exploitation to persist. We welcome papers that explore interventions to protect workers, as well as strategies for resistance, organising, cross-sectoral learning, and rights advocacy by those involved in domestic/care work and intimate labour and solidarity among different groups of workers

Some of the questions that contributors may consider include:

• How does a focus on intimate labour help to further understandings of risks and harms that cut across the traditional public/private divide?
• How have terminologies and classifications (for example, domestic work, care work, intimate labour, reproductive labour, marriage migration) shaped dominant understandings and perceptions of risks and harms? How are public perceptions and policy responses shaped and articulated in relation to these categorisations?
• What are the limitations of current policy and response systems to risks and harms in domestic/care work and intimate labour, and the consequences of these practical and conceptual boundaries? What are the experiences of workers who are the intended recipients of such support and assistance measures?
• What new or recent policy interventions have been developed to address risks and harms to the (migrant) labour force in domestic/care work and other forms of intimate labour, and what have been the impacts of these interventions?
• What can emerging critical analyses offer in terms of new understandings of intimate labour and how this may be translated or applied across policy, law, research, and other settings?
• What is the role of family and domestic violence in contributing to and/or entrenching harms and risk in domestic/care work and other forms of intimate labour?
• What are the intersections of the different forms of violence and harms experienced by migrant and local workers in domestic/care work and other forms of intimate labour?
• How do workers in domestic/care work and intimate labour settings organise and resist state and employer violence? What are some opportunities for cross-sectoral learning, solidarity, and mutual support among workers in different areas of domestic/care work and intimate labour (for example, domestic workers, nurses, sex workers, and others)?

This is a critical time to push these conversations amid national and international commitments and policy responses that fail to account for exploitative and abusive conditions and experiences that sit across the persistent divides of public/private; paid/unpaid.

We seek to bring together scholarship and practitioner engagement with the ongoing challenges to interrogate these issues and both the failures and opportunities within various national and international frameworks and contexts to advance a safer and more just experience of care work globally.

Deadline for submissions: 1 December 2025

In addition to full-length research, conceptual or case study articles, we also welcome short, non-academic pieces that respond to the above prompts. We particularly welcome contributions by current and former care workers and intimate labourers and practitioners working with them, as well as policymakers and other relevant stakeholders.

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

Word count for short pieces: 1,200–1,500 words, including footnotes and author bio.

We advise those interested in submitting to check out the journal’s submission guidelines and email their abstract to the editorial team at atr@gaatw.org.

Special Issue to be published in September 2026.