Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Center for Contemporary South Asia

Jocelyn Bell — Reimagining within-movement conflict: Ideology and the anti-sex trafficking movement

Thursday, December 1, 2022

12:00pm - 1:00pm EST

Leung Conference Rm, 280 Brook St

Multiple internal ideological conflicts shape the anti-sex trafficking movement (ASTM). Despite the conflict, this movement sustains some type of solidarity to address the forced sexual exploitation of an estimated 3.8 million adults and 1 million children globally (International Labour Office 2017). Jocelyn Bell (Sociology, 6th year) explores how movements manage internal conflicts while movement actors, particularly networks of actors, interact with each other. Studying within-movement conflict allows us to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the makeup of a social movement and how it transforms. Jocelyn seeks to answer the question: how do social movement organization (SMO) networks manage ideological conflict that is internal to the movement, particularly a transnational social movement like the ASTM?

Jocelyn spent six months in India interviewing anti-trafficking professionals who work within anti-trafficking, survivors of trafficking, as well as allies of the ASTM. During the seminar, she will share preliminary insights from the field regarding the data and the method of data collection as well as prospective changes for her second round of data collection.

Graduate Student Seminar