Call for Papers: 'Solidarities Beyond Silos'

Call for Papers: ‘Solidarities Beyond Silos’

The Anti-Trafficking Review calls for papers for a special issue themed ‘Solidarities Beyond Silos’

Guest Editors: Ella Cockbain and Joel Quirk

 

Most accounts of the modern history of anti-trafficking start in the mid-1990s. For the first two decades, there was much optimism that major gains were just around the corner. It is now increasingly apparent that dominant anti-trafficking paradigms are subject to fundamental challenges and complications that are not easily resolvable.

This special issue of Anti-Trafficking Review attempts to chart a different path. It builds upon and expands a recent feature on solidarities in openDemocracy’s Beyond Trafficking and Slavery. Rather than offering yet another critique of anti-trafficking’s limitations, we want to develop alternatives that decentre anti-trafficking. This does not mean ignoring extreme exploitation but instead involves closer attention to collaborative attempts to address its relationship to broader abuses of power and vulnerability. Extreme exploitation is understood here as being both nested within and connected to everyday structures of marginalisation and oppression.

Our primary focus here is solidarity and cross-movement organising. Appeals to solidarity have been foundational to the most important social movements of the last two centuries: labour rights, gender equality, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, disarmament, disability rights, environmental justice. However, these historical coalitions have been increasingly fractured by newer models of organising that create narrow specialisations, or silos.

Different civil society organisations have increasingly learnt to stay in their respective lanes and narrowly prioritise ‘their’ issues.  This is at least partly a function of dominant funding models, which incentivise topic specialisation, avoidance of controversial issues, and depoliticisation of demands. Many organisations in specialised silos lack political power because they have no grassroots support. Meanwhile, those at the coalface of community organising are often burnt out and operate on shoestring budgets.

We are at a pivotal moment globally, with numerous groups under attack and far-right politics in ascendancy. Those leading the assault on progressive, inclusive politics rely on divide and conquer strategies, creating scapegoats and pitting marginalised and disadvantaged communities against one another. Yet, many movements struggle to escape the margins and secure a receptive audience or policy relevance. We believe solidarity across silos is a powerful remedy. It resists this division by spotlighting the interconnectedness of struggles and helps build critical mass. It means thinking and acting in ways that connect struggles for justice across topics and geographies.

This is not a new project. Numerous actors, sectors and movements have been working on ways to tackle interpersonal and systemic exploitation for a very long time. Our goal is not to invent something new, but to focus attention on longstanding strategies and models that have been too often been overlooked and erased within anti-trafficking circles. In our analysis, this requires two distinct moves: 1) building out and 2) disaggregation.

Building out means finding common ground and shared causes and constituencies across siloed topics. It does not mean rebadging even more things as trafficking or slavery: so many things have been thrown into the box marked ‘modern slavery’ that it has become overloaded and incoherent. This is why we also need disaggregation. Instead of focusing primarily on different issues as subcategories of trafficking or slavery, we need to approach them on their own terms and then build out to related fields. It should be clear, for example, that intersections and alliances focusing upon commercial child sexual exploitation are  distinct from similar endeavours focusing upon forced labour in corporate supply chains.

Our ultimate goal here is to shrink anti-trafficking, rather than to expand it further. To support this goal, we are seeking contributions which explore intersections between attempts to mobilise for rights and justice and against violence and exploitation across any combinations of the following areas:

• Anti-fascism
• Anti-poverty
• Children’s rights
• Disability justice
• Domestic workers’ rights 
• Drug users’ rights 
• Labour rights and the trade union movement
• LGBTQI+ rights
• Migrants’ rights
• Peacebuilding, disarmament, and post-conflict justice
• Police and prison abolitionism or reform
• Racial justice and reparations for enslavement
• Sexual and reproductive rights and freedoms
• Sex workers’ rights
• Women’s rights

We are not expecting any single contribution to cover everything. Focusing on a few key intersections is the most likely strategy. Solidarity has a deep history and many people across the globe have extensive experience and insights about how they understand and practice solidarity. Others have similarly called for a shift from a ‘politics of rescue to a politics of solidarity’ as a means of resisting exploitation. Yet, recent examples suggest at least some mainstream anti-trafficking professionals see cross-movement work as a cynical means of shoring up shrinking funding streams rather than a genuine commitment to shared learning and collective action.

The primary goal of this special issue is to create a platform to share research and reflections on what solidarity beyond silos means in practice. We are seeking applied examples from different contexts, rather than abstract theories. We want to look to the present and lessons from the past. We want to learn where solidarities already exist, where and how they are being built, and what lessons might contribute to larger political and strategic conversations. We also welcome contributions which grapple with the challenges of solidarity, be it due to external threats from reactionary forces seeking to divide and conquer, or internal discord from infighting and expectations of ideological perfection. We are interested in both long-term strategy and short-term tactics, including where the lines blur between solidarity and instrumental alliances (who are the ‘strange bedfellows’ here?).  

We encourage contributors to focus on a specific case study or comparative case studies, but are also interested in any empirically grounded research into solidarity in action. Below, we outline some questions of particular interest. Again, we are not expecting any one contribution to cover everything.

• What attempts were made to build solidarities across silos in this case study?
• What were the main strategic and tactical calculations involved and why?
• What approaches to building solidarities proved effective, under what conditions, to what ends and from whose perspective?
• What were the main challenges encountered and how were they navigated?
• Were there any ‘strange bedfellows’ involved? What tensions arose and how were these handled?
• What were the main factors enabling or impeding solidarity across silos?
• What lenses shaped the solidaric approach to questions of violence, abuse and exploitation? What did they bring into focus? What did they obscure?
• Where do you see gaps and priorities for building solidarity?
• Where are the gaps in research and practice and how might they be addressed?
• What does solidarity look like given the current rollback on progressive rights and protections? What adaptations and forms of resilience does this necessitate?

 

It may sometimes be necessary to talk about trafficking, but we want to try and imagine a world where anti-trafficking no longer sets the terms of political and policy engagement.

 

Deadline for submissions: 1 December 2026

 

As well as full-length reflexive case studies, empirical research studies on solidarity, and occasional conceptual pieces, we also welcome short commentaries and reflections that respond to the above prompts in a blog style format. For shorter pieces, we encourage potential contributors to contact the guest editors ahead of writing, for advance feedback and support. We are also open to reviews of empirically oriented books on solidarity.  We are especially keen to hear from people with lived experience of the issues in question and those working directly with impacted communities on support, advocacy, policy and/or research.

Word count for full article submissions: 5,000 - 8,000 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 email the editorial team at atr@gaatw.org.

Special issue to be published in September 2027.