Surrogate selves: notes on anti-trafficking and anti-blackness

Abstract

This essay explores the discursive production of black captivity across the African diaspora in the afterlife of slavery. I take as my objects of analysis the contemporary anti-trafficking and anti-slavery movements, features of the increasing hegemony of human rights discourse for formulating problems of social justice and their remedies. I argue that configuring black captivity - in this case, the experiences of Nigerian women migrants to Western Europe - through these hegemonic discourses extend, rather than ameliorate, the global structural antagonism of anti-blackness. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.