Preliminary Programme

There is a broader understanding that immigration policy and insecure immigration status in particular are known to provide an environment conducive to exploitation by employers. The lack of, or highly conditional access to legal work and/or welfare for asylum seekers therefore often renders them susceptible to severe exploitation. The literature has particularly explored how “illegal” and precarious status in host countries produce a cheap and precarious migrant labour force. In this context, unpacking the punitive aspect of the Rohingya refugees’ everyday lives in urban Malaysia, my paper asks how their ambiguous refugee status affect their precariousness? How does it make them particularly vulnerable in their informal labour engagement?
Malaysia does not have a legal, policy or administrative framework for responding to refugees. As asylum-seekers and refugees in Malaysia lack a lawful access to work, they are often forced to interact with the labour market in manifold ways that renders them vulnerable to employment-related abuse and exploitation, including non- and partial payment of wages, verbal abuse, arbitrary dismissal, physical abuse, sexual harassment and workplace raids. By restricting the rights and freedoms of refugees and asylum seekers, the state follows a discretionary practice of control. It crackdowns on the undocumented refugees in times of economic downturn and engage them in prosperous times, while preventing longer-term integration. The state routinely scapegoat refugees particularly the Rohingyas in times of crisis, for instance, in times of Covid-19 pandemic. the experiences of many regular contract migrants in Malaysia also suggests that the abuse and violence facing the migrant workforce is not exclusive to “illegality”. What follows from this blurring of boundaries between “legal” and “illegal” status is often the deterioration of labour conditions, as various forms of inequalities and unfreedom are made an integral feature of restricted, yet legally sanctioned labour arrangement. Based on insights from such scholarship, and drawing on ?eldwork among the Rohingya refugee community in the Malaysia, this paper seeks to further disentangle the nexus between legality, labour mobility and exploitation. (Show less)

Commentators on the slave trade and on domestic slavery have assumed that both required the existence of a predatory warrior class within African societies. Studies of the slave trade have focused on hierarchical societies where monarchies controlled the slave trade and facilitated systems of domestic slavery. The Diola of Senegal provide an important case study of the organization of the slave trade and the control of domestic slave labor without the coercive power of the state. This paper will explore the ways in which the authority of spirit shrines and shrine elders regulated participation in the slave trade and the control of unfree labor during the 18th and 19th centuries. Spirit shrines regulated who could be seized as captives, when they could be sold as slaves, and how they were to be treated. The enforcement of these regulations was associated with specific illnesses seen as originating with spirit shrines linked to community welfare. Enslaved persons who remained within Diola communities were also placed under the control of spirit shrines and shrine elders. Elders performed rituals designed to intimidate “strangers” – a term applied both to slaves and clients. In other cases, “strangers” were said to be seized by the spirits associated with specific shrines, forcing them to become priests. This forced strangers to settle permanently in the community. The spirits would pursue anyone who tried to run away from their ritual responsibilities. Thus, you could have slaves without rulers or a ruling class. (Show less)

This paper focuses on the im/mobilization of Yucateco and Chinese prisoners of war as a source of indentured labour for Cuban plantations in the second half of the nineteenth century. The history of indentured labour in nineteenth-century Cuba has mainly focused on the trafficking of Chinese immigrants. Between 1848 and 1861, Mexican Yucateco prisoners of war – men, women and children – were made captive and sold by Mexican authorities also as indentured labourers to be sent to Cuba to work in plantations. As their number was significantly lower in comparison to Chinese indentured labourers, they have received a lesser amount of attention from historians. However, Cuban sources show that Yucateco indentured labourers were considered as integrative to Chinese ‘coolie’ labour. Furthermore, new research regarding the origin of Chinese indentured labourers shows that in the 1860s the bulk of Chinese indentured labourers were Punti captives from the Punti-Hakka wars taking place in southern China. Male Punti were sold by Chinese authorities to the Cuban ‘coolie’ trade market, while females were sold as prostitutes in Macao. This paper provides an integrative view of indentured labour in Cuba by considering Chinese and Yucateco indentured labourers under the same light. In this paper I argue that punitive im/mobilization was integral to Cuban plantation economy and a form of labour coercion that transcended race, ethnicity, gender and nationality. The involvement of the Chinese and Mexican governments and authorities in the provision of prisoners of war further highlights the role of multinational states in the ‘coolie’ trade. (Show less)

It is the peculiarity of the Holy Roman Empire that, due to its central European position, it was at war with Western powers on the one hand and with the Ottoman Empire on the other. Thus, depending on the front, very different rules applied with regard to the treatment of prisoners of war.
First of all, the lecture aims to illuminate the different initial conditions that arose in the West as well as in the South-East of the Empire for prisoners of war in the early modern period from the end of the 17th century onwards, since soldiers of the troops of the "Most-Christian King" on the one hand or of the "Turkish Great Lord" on the other were taken prisoner and thus subjected to certain forms of a logic and discourse of ransom and / or forced labour. However, it becomes apparent that the dichotomy between prisoners of war from the Islamic world here and from the Christian world there falls short. Rather, forms of exploitation that always arose from economic or utilitarian points of view must also be taken into account.
As a second point, we have to focus on the fact, that in the Holy Roman Empire of the 18th century, there was a harsh persecution and strict coercive labour for vagrants, which could also mean forced labour for women and children. Especially in times of war, the various scenarios of violence allowed harsh enforcement of forced labour or forced recruitment when this seemed necessary. Therefore, we can find cases, where the transgression of boundaries in the application of forced labour can be found for women and children. Since this lead sometimes to discussions, we can trace these developments. Finally, we will end with having a focus on the transfer of those affected and caught in a network of human trafficking in the Holy Roman Empire.
Thus, this contribution will not only examine the phenomena as such, but also their contexts of justification in a transcultural perspective, in order to understand which forms of coercion were used, which alternatives to forced labour existed, but especially how gender, age but also the transfer of persons played a role in this context. (Show less)