TRANSNATIONAL LABOUR
INTERMEDIATION WORKSHOPS
September 21 - 9 AM EST
October 6 - 9 AM EST
In 2017, the International Labour Organization estimated that 24.9 million people were in forced labour. Supply chains and labour chains that facilitate cross-border working have been identified as two of the vectors that make forced and other forms of unfree labour a global problem. Both supply chains and labour chains frequently rely on processes of transnational labour intermediation. The growing pressure globally to address the problem of forced and unfree labour, that result from processes of transnational labour intermediation, has resulted in array of legal instruments designed to address forced labour and labour exploitation in supply chains.
The international and interdisciplinary research workshops will bring together about 20 researchers to exchange findings and frameworks on transnational labour intermediation and forced labour. The aim of the workshops is to explore the relationship between transnational labour mediation and forced labour, paying particular attention to intersecting social relations and statuses that make certain groups such as women or undocumented migrants vulnerable to labour exploitation; and map and evaluate existing forms of regulation that have been designed and implemented to eradicate forced labour in the context of transnational labour intermediation.
OUTCOME OF TRANSNATIONAL LABOUR
INTERMEDIATION WORKSHOPS:
EVENT SPEAKERS
Dr. Shelley Marshall
Shelley Marshall is Associate Professor and the Director of the Business and Human Rights Centre at RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia).
Dr. Marshall’s research focuses on business and human rights and corporate accountability, regulatory pathways out of poverty and precarious work, and varieties of capitalism and corporate governance.
Dr. Marshall has undertaken empirical research on these topics in diverse countries, including Bulgaria, India, Indonesia, Australia and Cambodia. Her leadership in the Australian Corporate Accountability Network as well as partnerships with International Labour Organisation, Oxfam Australia and CORE UK have enabled her to produce research which has had a strong policy influence.
Dr. Marshall holds a Ph.D. in Regulatory Justice and Diplomacy at the Australian National University (Australia), a M.S.C. in Development Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK), a B.A. in Social Theory and Political Science and a Bachelor of Law from the University of Melbourne (Australia). Dr. Marshall is a Vice Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University and an Australian Research Council DECRA Research Fellow.
For more information and publication please visit Dr. Marshall's website: https://shelleymarshall.net/labour-regulation-of-global-supply-chains
Dr. Manoj Dias-Abey
Dr. Manoj Dias-Abey is a Lecturer in Law at University of Bristol Law School (UK).
Dr. Dias-Abey is a socio-legal scholar broadly interested in the law of work, migration, social movements, and political economy.
Dr. Dias-Abey has been a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for the Study of Law & Society at UC (Berkeley) and is an alumnus of the King’s College Transnational Law Summer Institute (UK). At the University of Bristol, he's involved in the Centre for Law at Work, the Food Justice Network, and Migration and Mobilities Bristol (MMB), where he convenes the research challenge on Trade, Capital, Labour. Outside Bristol, he is a member of the Moving Labour Collective, a global community of academics interested in critical labour research, open to both trade unionists and activists.
Dr. Dias-Abey holds a Ph.D. in Law from Queen’s University, LL.M., LL.B., and B.A. from the University of New South Wales (Australia). He was also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace at Queen’s University (Canada).
Dr. Siobhán McGrath
Dr. Siobhán McGrath is an Assistant Professor and lecturer in Human Geography, Economy & Culture, and Politics-State-Space at Durham University (UK).
Working within labour and development geography from a political economy perspective, Dr. McGrath’s research focuses on work, labour and employment, particularly forced labour (and related concepts such as unfree labour and human trafficking), degrading conditions of employment, precarious work, and unregulated work characterized by workplace violations, and labour within Global Production Networks (GPNs).
Dr. McGrath’s recent and current projects focus on initiatives to address forced labour and trafficking in supply chains. Dr. McGrath also serves on the International Advisory Board of the journal Antipode and the Associate Board of the journal Work, Employment and Society.
Dr. McGrath holds a Ph.D. from the University of Manchester's Institute of Development Policy and Management (UK), an M.A. in Economics from the New School for Social Research (USA), a B.A. in International Studies from the School for International Training (USA).
Dr. Fabiola Mieres
Dr. Fabiola Mieres is a researcher in labour standards and migration, as well as a Technical Officer in Labour Migration at the International Labour Organization (ILO).
As an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Mieres’ main areas of expertise include the political economy of migration, labour recruitment, forced labour in global supply chains, multi-stakeholder initiatives, temporary labour migration, and migrant workers in the rural economy and agriculture.
Dr. Mieres is part of the Research Cluster at the Labour Migration Branch of the ILO. Previously, Fabiola held postdoctoral research positions at the Industrial Labor Relations School at Cornell University and the Department of Geography in Durham University (UK), as well as research positions at FLASCO Argentina and Di Tella University. Dr. Mieres a Global Project Coordinator for the Building and Woodworkers’ International and also worked as an economist for Ernst & Young (EY) in the Buenos Aires office.
Dr. Mieres holds a Ph.D. in Politics and an M.A. in International Political Economy from the University of Manchester (UK), an M.A. in International Studies from Di Tella University (Argentina), and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires.
Dr. Rutvica Andrijasevic
Dr. Rutvica Andrijasevic is an Associate Professor in International Migration and Business, at the School of Management, University of Bristol (UK).
Dr. Andrijasevic’s area of expertise is labour migration, with an interest in how cross-border mobility came to occupy a vital place in political struggle over citizenship and labour market access.
Dr. Andrijasevic’s current research investigates the globalisation of Chinese firms and studies the way in which “Chinese” modes of production and management are engendering new migration flows in Europe. Dr. Andrijasevic has also advised and provided evidence to international stakeholders including the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, Amnesty International, the Home Office and Human Rights Watch..
Dr. Andrijasevic holds a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies at University of Utrecht (Netherlands), and an M.A. in Gender and Culture at Central European University (Hungary).
Dr. Geraldina Polanco Sorto
Dr. Geraldina Polanco Sorto is an Assistant Professor in the School of Labour Studies and the Department of Sociology at McMaster University.
As an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Polanco’s research bridges the discipline of sociology with other areas of interest that focus on citizenship studies, work & employment, cultural & migration studies, gender and ethnic relations, globalization, ethnography, and industrial relations.
While teaching in areas such as labour studies research methods and migrant workers in a global world, Dr. Polanco has also recently published her work in the Journal of International Migration and Integration, and Global Studies in Culture and Power.
Dr. Polanco Sorto holds a Ph.D. and a B.A. (Hons.) in Sociology from the University of British Columbia, and an M.A. in Sociology from Concordia University.
Fay Faraday
Fay Faraday is an Assistant Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University (Canada) and a practicing lawyer. Fay is also a scholar in residence and faculty affiliate with York University’s Global Labour Research Centre.
Mrs. Faraday’s research focuses on labour and employment, migrant workers, intersectional equality rights, human rights, Charter of Rights and Freedoms, constitutional law, public law, ethical lawyering, social justice and political activism, race, and gender. Fay’s current project explores migrant labour by examining trafficking, modern slavery, and systemic gendered economic coercion on migration.
Since graduating as a gold medalist, Fay continues to teach, supervise, and research at Osgoode Hall Law School while actively practicing social justice law and providing strategic & policy advice at Faraday Law. Fay also serves as the Discrimination and Harassment Counsel for the Law Society of Ontario (LSO) and the Co-Chair of the Equal Pay Coalition.
Mrs. Faraday holds a M.A. in Legal History and a B.A. in History & Political Theory from the University of Toronto and a LL.B. from Osgoode Hall Law School, York University.
Dr. Marlea Clarke
Dr. Marlea Clarke is an Associate Professor and Undergraduate Director in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria.
Dr. Clarke specializes in comparative politics and the global south, researching African politics (South and Southern Africa focus), political economy of development, labour and social movements, employment, precarious work and labour market restructuring, globalisation & democratisation, feminist political economy, and labour & migration.
In addition to teaching, Dr. Clarke remains Research Associate with the Institute of Development and Labour Law at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), where she worked as a researcher and educator from 1996-2003. Dr. Clarke’s most recent project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), focuses on the labour standards in clothing production networks in sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr. Clarke holds a Ph.D. and a M.A. from York University (Canada) and B.A. from the University of Calgary (Canada).
Dr. Jill Hanley
Dr. Jill Hanley is an Associate Professor at the School of Social Work, McGill University (Canada) and Scientific Director of the Sherpa Research Institute on Migration, Health and Social Services.
Focusing on closing the gaps between policies and practice concerning the social rights of migrant populations, Dr. Hanley’s work focuses on promoting access to social rights at the individual, family, and community level by exploring healthcare for a continuum of precarious status migrants, homelessness and housing insecurity for migrant women, labour rights among temporary foreign workers, and community responses to human trafficking.
A central goal of Dr. Hanley’s research is to strengthen community groups and to inform policy change. In addition to engaging in policy dialogue with a number of community organizations, Dr. Hanley is a co-founder of Montreal’s Immigrant Workers’ Centre and is the Director of the PhD program at the McGill School of Social Work.
Dr. Hanley holds a Ph.D. from the Université de Montréal, an M.A. from Tufts University, B.A. and B.S.W. from McGill University. Dr. Hanley also completed post-doctoral studies from both the Université de Montréal and the Université Libre de Bruxelles.
Guy Mundlak
Dr. Guy Mundlak is a Professor of Labor Law and Industrial Relations at The Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel-Aviv University (Israel).
Focusing on the impact of law on the labor market and the welfare state, Dr. Mundlak’s research focuses on labor law, industrial relations, discrimination at work and equal opportunities, the international law of work, interdisciplinary perspectives on work, and immigration law.
Dr. Mundlak holds a S.J.D. from Harvard Law School, Harvard University (USA) and LL.B. from the Faculty of Law, at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel).
Dr. Moritz Neugebauer
Dr. Moritz Neugebauer is an Assistant Lecturer at the Kent Law School, University of Kent (UK).
Utilizing a socio-legal approach to his research, Moritz focuses on the ‘crisis of labour law’ and the future of work, with internal critiques of the ontological and political horizon of existing socio-legal theory.
Moritz holds a Ph.D. in Law from the University of Kent (UK), a LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex (UK), an M.A. in Human Rights from Birkbeck, University of London (UK), and B.A. in International Relations from Technische Universität Dresden.
Beth Lyon
Beth Lyon is a Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, Cornell University (USA).
With an expertise in tax law, Beth’s research focuses on the rights of domestic and international farmworkers, language access to justice, and provisions of legal services to rural minorities.
At Cornell Law School, Beth founded the Farmworker Legal Assistance Clinic, and co-founded the Low-Income Taxpayer Law and Accounting Practicum. She also serves as Cornell Law School’s Associate Dean for Experiential Education and Clinical Program Director.
Beth holds an M.S. and J.D. from Georgetown University (USA) and a B.A. from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (USA).
Dr. Hila Shamir
Dr. Hila Shamir is a Professor of Law at The Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel-Aviv University (Israel).
Dr. Shamir teaches and researches in the fields of Employment, Labor, Immigration & Welfare Law, with a particular focus on human trafficking, gender equality, informal work, welfare state privatization, globalization, law & social theory, and feminist legal thought.
Dr. Shamir has taught at Georgetown Law School, UC Berkeley, Cornell Law School, and at the Harvard University Department of Government. Dr. Shamir received a European Research Council (ERC) grant to pursue research on a Labor Approach to Human Trafficking. Dr. Shamir is a member of the Israeli Young Academy and served as a law clerk to Justice E. Mazza of the Israeli Supreme Court prior to her graduate studies.
Dr. Shamir holds a S.J.D. and LL.M. from Harvard Law School, Harvard University (USA) and LL.B. from the Faculty of Law, Tel-Aviv University (Israel).
To access Dr. Shamir’s website, “Traff-Lab: Labor Perspective to Human Trafficking”, please visit:
https://www.trafflab.orgDr. Genevieve LeBaron
Dr. Genevieve LeBaron is a Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at The University of Sheffield (UK).
Drawing from international theory to understand labour, human trafficking, slavery, and labour standards in the global economy, Dr. LeBaron investigates the business of forced labour and its role & dynamics within domestic and global supply chains.
Dr. LeBaron was elected to the College of the Royal Society of Canada in 2020. She was included in the 2018 UK Top 100 Corporate Modern Slavery Influencers, and the 2017 Global Top 100 Human Trafficking & Slavery Influence Leaders lists. With her research widely covered in the media, and having completed numerous research grants, Dr. LeBaron also held the Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery Fellowship at the Gilder Lehrman Centre for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, part of the MacMillan Centre at Yale University, where she continues to lead the Yale Modern Slavery Working Group, based at the Centre.
Dr. LeBaron holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and M.A. in Political Economy from York University and a B.A. in Political Economy from The Evergreen State College. Genevieve completed a post-doctoral fellowship at The University of British Columbia.
To access Dr. LeBaron's website, please visit: https://www.genevievelebaron.com
Dr. Tonia Novitz
Dr. Tonia Novitz is a Professor of Labour Law at the University of Bristol Law School (UK).
Dr. Novitz research interests encompass the legal regulation of workers' organizations and their activities, international and EU trade, migration and the protection of human rights. Tonia is currently engaged in research on the relationship between labour and trade with particular attention to the role of temporary migration within trade in services. She is also engaged in analyzing the relevance of sustainable development norms for workers.
Dr. Novitz has participated in an EU Horizon 2020 project on Sustainable Market Actors for Responsible Trade (SMART). She is chair of the steering committee of the Labour Law Research Network (LLRN), the UK representative on the advisory board of International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW), a member of the executive committee of the Industrial Law Society, as well as a Vice President of the UK Institute of Employment Rights. She is an honorary member of Old Square Chambers (based in Bristol and London).
Dr. Novitz holds a PhD in Law from Balliol College, University of Oxford (UK) and LL.B. from the University of Canterbury (UK). Tonia has held fellowships at the International Institute for Labour Studies (Geneva), the European University Institute (Florence), the University of Melbourne and the University of Auckland
Dr. Dalia Gesualdi-Fecteau
Dr. Dalia Gesualdi-Fecteau is a Professor in the Department of Legal Sciences and a Research Chair on the Effectiveness of Labour Law at the Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada).
Dr. Gesualdi-Fecteau’s areas of expertise center around labor law, equal treatment, minimum employment standards, new forms of employment, atypical work, and migrant workers.
Fluent in both English and French, Dr. Gesualdi-Fecteau became a member of the Quebec Bar in 2003 and worked as a lawyer at the General Directorate of Legal Affairs of the Labor Standards Commission from 2005 to 2012. When completing her Doctorate in Law from the Université de Montréal (Canada), she received the prize for the best doctoral thesis in social science from the Université de Montréal (2016) and the prize for the best doctoral thesis from the Association of Henri-Capitant (2016). Dr. Gesualdi-Fecteau is also a co-researcher for the On the Move Partnership and for the Center for Interuniversity Research on Globalization and Labor.
Dr. Gesualdi-Fecteau holds an L.L.D. and an L.L.B. from the Université de Montréal, an L.L.M. from the Université du Québec à Montréal, and a higher certificate in French Law from Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France).
For more information and access to publication click here:
https://professeurs.uqam.ca/professeur/gesualdi-fecteau.dalia/.Charline Sempere
Charline is a doctoral student in the Department of Politics and International Relations and Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her current doctoral research explores the relationships between the vulnerability of workers to Forced Labour and Gender. The project investigates, from a Feminist Political Economy perspective, how and why women workers are disproportionally affected by labour exploitation across the supply chains of agricultural and hospitality industries in the French economy. The study will pay special attention to the 'everyday' experiences of research participants, uncover the agency of female workers and elucidate their capacity to challenge the political economic processes that explain their disproportionate vulnerability to forced labour.
Besides, Charline is a doctoral researcher in the Re:Structure Lab on the project: Restructuring Business Models and Supply Chains to Promote Fair, Equitable Labour Standards and Worker Rights in the Face of the Pandemic which is led by Prof. LeBaron, Jessie Brunner and Luis C. deBaca in collaboration with Humanity United, The Freedom Fund and research centres at the universities of Stanford and Yale. Prior to that, Charline graduated from the University of Sheffield where she undertook and completed a Masters in Global Political Economy and a Masters in Social Research at the Sheffield Methods Institute.
Prizes: ILO and IOM “From Research to Action Seed Grant fellowship" awarded to undertake PhD research 2021-2022: Gender and Forced Labour: Understanding Women’s Disproportionate Vulnerability to Exploitation in France’s Domestic Supply Chains.
Doctoral researcher selected for the “#ThinklistNext21 by the Centre for Business, Organisations & Society Bath University" as a member of the future generation of thinkers that will advance understanding and move the dial on issues of responsible business.
ESRCWhite Rose Doctoral Training Partnership (WRDTP) 1+3 Pathway Scholarship 2019-2023 awarded to undertake research in the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield.
Bethan Reeves Memorial Prize awarded for the best record of academic attainment across all masters courses for the academic year 2017/2018 University of Sheffield, Politics department.
Laya Behbahan
Laya Behbahani is a PhD student at the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. She completed her BA(Hons) and MA at the School of Criminology at SFU before completing further course work at Yale University, University of Vienna, BCIT and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Laya is also a Sessional Lecturer in Labour Studies and previously worked at the Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling Section of the UN Office in Vienna, Austria, while serving as a researcher at the Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business at the Schulich School of Business.
Her research focuses on the narrativisation of unfree labour experiences in the Gulf States of the Middle East. Her research explores the role of the kafala in shaping the experiences of the migrant work force. She has also collaborated on projects entailing the application areas of corporate responsibility and business models of forced labour in the United Kingdom.
Laya is a 2020 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar and the recipient of the Edward W. Said Memorial Scholarship, the COGECO scholarship and the Muslim Awards for Excellence Scholarship.
Dr. Yahel Kurlander
Dr. Yahel Kurlander is a Sociologist of the labor market who specializes in migration, agriculture and gender. Kurlander received her PhD from the Department of Sociology at Haifa University. Her PhD analyses agricultural labor migration from Thailand to Israel and deals mainly in patterns of the recruitment industry in light of a bilateral agreement between Israel and Thailand (1983-2013). In the course of her PhD work, she was a visiting scholar (2013-2015) in the Geography Department in the Economic Geography Unit of the University of Zurich. She is a Lecturer in Sociology at the Department of Multi-Disciplinary Studies and Human Services, Tel-Hai Academic College. Kurlander is an avid activist and passionately partakes in groups fighting for gender and migration issues.
Research at TraffLab: Prior to becoming a post-doctoral fellow in March of 2020, Kurlander was a TraffLab Research Fellow, bringing her unique insight as a labor market qualitative sociologist. As a post-doctoral research fellow at TraffLab, Kurlander will research intersectional perspectives of women labor migrants employed in men-dominated occupations, focusing on the agricultural sector in Israel as a case study. This project builds an expands a labor approach to trafficking to assess, understand and analyze the vulnerability of women migrant workers working in male-dominated labor sectors to severe forms of labor market exploitation and human trafficking
For more information and access to publication click here to her personal website:
Remi Edwards
Remi Edwards is a doctoral researcher based at the University of Sheffield. Her research, funded by the Economic & Social Research Council, focuses on the role and power of workers in the governance of agricultural supply chains. Through a comparison of the US tomato industry and the Costa Rican banana industry, she is exploring the ways in which workers come to have power in this space and how it affects their outcomes using a critical political economy framework.
She has also worked as a research assistant at Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute where she worked on a project on corporate commitments to living wages in the garment industry, culminating in a primary-authored report and co-authored publication in New Political Economy. She also works as a research assistant at ReStructure Lab, a collaboration between Sheffield, Yale and Standard Universities focused on producing research-based briefs on how to restructure supply chains to reduce prevalence of forced labour.
She holds two first-class Masters degrees in Global Political Economy (with Special Commendation) and Social Research, and a first-class Bachelor degree in International Relations & Politics.
