Interview with Professor Jacqueline Bhabha: Research on Migration, Women, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, and More

Interview with Professor Jacqueline Bhabha: Research on Migration, Women, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, and More

I interviewed Professor Jacqueline Bhabha. We had a great conversation, and I learned a lot about her research projects as well as her work with her old nonprofit for rural working women in India, called the Alba Collective. Professor Bhabha engages with and teaches students as part of the Chan School of Public Health at Harvard. Her bio reads:

“Jacqueline Bhabha is FXB Director of Research, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, and an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She received a first class honors degree and an M.Sc. from Oxford University, and a J.D. from the College of Law in London.

From 1997 to 2001 Bhabha directed the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago. Prior to 1997, she was a practicing human rights lawyer in London and at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. She has published extensively on issues of transnational child migration, refugee protection, children’s rights and citizenship. She is the editor of Children Without A State (2011), author of Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age (2014), and editor of Human Rights and Adolescence (2014).

Bhabha serves on the board of the Scholars at Risk Network, the World Peace Foundation and the Journal of Refugee Studies. She is also a founder of the Alba Collective, an international women’s NGO currently working with rural women and girls in developing countries to enhance financial security and youth rights.” (bio and photo from Harvard Directory)

Could you talk about how you personally got involved in the fields of global health and human rights? What interests you about these topics and/or their intersectionality?

I have been involved in the field of human rights all my life. I’m a human rights lawyer by training, and so actually law, rather than medicine, is my access point to human rights. I’ve worked on a wide range of human rights-related issues, often at the intersection of gender migration and youth, broadly speaking. I’ve worked on issues to do with gender discrimination, women, migration, trafficking, exploitation, and the intersections of these. But I’ve also studied children, adolescents, and unaccompanied migration. So, I’ve looked at a range of issues related to a human rights framework and a rights-based approach. I think they are valuable additions to how we think about social change and social justice.

The other general point to make is that I am very much a kind of scholar-activist. So I really am interested in scholarship and research in so far as they contribute to policy and practice. I’m not a pure researcher, so I’m interested in obviously understanding things and answering questions. I don’t know the answers to some things I research, but I’m interested in the intersections between learning, thinking, writing, research, policy, and practice.

My engagement with health is twofold. I would say for one, that when you work on human rights issues, health is always an essential element. For example, I was looking at issues to do with the trafficking of young women and the mechanisms for addressing that to help people have better alternatives to the situations they find themselves in. The health-related concerns–physical, mental, emotional–are part of how you’re thinking about solutions. So, this is part of the subject matter of what I’ve worked on.

Then also, just more pragmatically, some years ago, I was asked to head up research in the center that I now work in at the Chan School of Public Health at Harvard. That’s a center focused on health and human rights.

The health dynamic, the intersection of health and human rights, and the way they completely interlace with each other became central to my job description, my job, and my entity. So then, I learned a lot a lot more about health. Those became relevant conceptually, substantively, organizationally, and practically. Again, this is about health and human rights being thrown at each other.

I read about your research project called “Human trafficking and Migrant farmworkers: Opportunities for migrant health clinics.” Can you please elaborate on this as well as the motivations for conducting this research?

A lot of the motivation is the broader concern about social justice. But, I also think that my perspective on trafficking is–and I’m not unique in this at all–quite critical of what is often a dominant perspective.

In one of the books I’ve written, I have a whole chapter on trafficking. In this, I think of trafficking as an epiphenomenon, in a way. In other words, I think of trafficking as something that relates to many other fundamental problems of inequality, poverty, lack of opportunities, etc. The mainstream view of trafficking is that there are innocent victims who get picked up by evil perpetrators who pick them up in order to move them and capture them to exploit them for the sole purpose of exploitation. The conception is that innocent and vulnerable victims are prey to this sort of predatory behavior. Of course, there are elements of that that are true, but it’s a kind of mischaracterization of the phenomenon as a whole.

As I see it, it’s a complex and varied phenomenon with not one particular instance. The general commonality of situations of trafficking is a situation where people have very few options and very few exit strategies from very harsh lives. So, movement is often seen as one option, one strategy for improving one’s life. It’s where people don’t have clear legal mechanisms for moving that they have to use other mechanisms. That’s where trafficking comes in. It’s very important to correct the view that there’s just a predatory and vulnerable constituency because that dichotomized framework then really leads to what has been the dominant perspective, which is to criminalize.

People always say that we have to have higher penalties and make the costs of trafficking more expensive to deter traffickers so they get really long sentences, severe penalties, etc, and that that will reduce the crime. My perspective is that you also actually have to address the demand for exit. People need to exit from impossible situations. People need options, whether it’s to escape a forced marriage, destitution, conflict, or violence. They need to have better options than to agree to a situation where they’re going to be trapped, which is what many people do.

This is a more complex view of trafficking. All the work that we’ve done on trafficking incorporates this sense that people have to really look at the drivers of what is responsible for people making choices. We have to look at the big-picture drivers. Very often, the people who get picked up and criminalized as traffickers are actually the little people–the small guy who recruited somebody. But, the small guy recruiting somebody is part of a much bigger industry of big building conglomerates that want vulnerable workers on their building sites who they can exploit. They want people in their sweatshops who will wait to work for minimum wages. They want domestic servants with very few rights to work in wealthy households. It’s very often the people who get convicted and are labeled as traffickers who are actually the small middlemen who are acting on behalf of much more powerful entities.

So, essentially, a lot of my work (and the work of others) aims to push against a very simplistic, easy way of just demonizing traffickers, which often ends up becoming a form of immigration control. People often say “Oh, we’re trying to rescue these poor migrants and stop them from being moved by these horrible traffickers.” But, in reality, the migrants themselves want ways to be able to move.

As part of the Harvard School of Public Health, how do you engage graduate students in your research and activism? Do you also engage with undergraduate students?

Over the many years that I’ve been teaching at the university, I’ve taught both groups. I tend to work more now with graduate students, but I have a few undergraduates whose theses I supervise, or who I work with in other ways. Also, a small number of undergraduates get admitted into my classes, but I mainly work with graduate students.

I work with grad students across many different departments, because the kinds of things I teach are cross-cutting. I have law students, medical students, policy students, students in education, students in social science, anthropologists, historians, and students who are working in particular areas of the world (ex: the Middle East, South Asia, or Latin America). So it’s many different disciplinary constituencies.

In terms of the students from the School of Public Health, I work with them in two academic ways. One, I teach them in my classes. And two, when they have projects–like a thesis or independent study or something–I work or supervise them, if there’s a good fit. Sometimes we even co-author articles. I have had many wonderful, close collaborations with students, many of whom have become friends and colleagues.

Can you please discuss your work founding your NGO, Alba Collective? I read that you work with international and rural women and girls in developing countries to enhance financial security and youth rights, but I’d love to hear about this initiative in your own words?

That was some years ago. At that stage of my life, I decided that I really wanted to get back to something that was more grassroots-oriented, outside the academy. I wanted to go back to really working with people on the ground.

I’ve always had very close links to India–my own background and for a range of other reasons. But also, I love being there and I speak some relevant languages. So, the Alba Collective brought together different strands of my life: my interests and close ties to India; my interest and commitment to working with women in particular; and a real interest and passion for women’s work, handicrafts, and beautiful, exquisite things that are made by poor women but sell for virtually nothing because they are not finished.

Think of women embroidering or weaving in India, Mexico, Thailand, Laos, or any country in the world. There are many, many millions of women who spend hours and hours–often while they’re breastfeeding or doing other chores/jobs–stitching, knitting, sewing, or producing something. These skills or often inherited and fantastic skills, and they have often been transmitted through the female line. The end product is often very beautiful work, but it’s embedded in cheap materials because they can’t afford to buy beautiful textiles. The color combinations may be very “uncool” from the point of view of a consumer. The finish-off, the seams, or the way it’s put together might be quite crude. So, the net result is that very time-consuming and extremely skilled handicraft work sells for nothing and is actually doing much worse than stuff made by machines.

So, the idea of our NGO, which we eventually closed, was that we had a collective of women. The idea was to try to treble the earnings of these women who had incredible skills in a particular part of India (Gujarat) by linking the work they did to high-end designers plugged into the design world. So, the materials they used, the products, the fabric, the colors, and the finishes, would be really exquisite. So, they would justify the price that handmade work should command. The basic thought was that if you have this exquisite thing, that is hand embroidered, it’s very different from something made by a machine. But, if everything around that hand embroidery is crappy, then you can’t get the price that you get for something that’s entirely exquisite.

We got pretty far getting our products bought by Barneys and MoMA and a few other nice places for quite good prices. But, it turned out that this was a complicated business proposition, and I certainly wasn’t the right person to do it. It was a passion of mine for some years, but in order to follow through, you also need to be good at business, which isn’t one of my strengths.

I absolutely loved the initiative though. It got me into rural India for many months and years. I made many friends and wonderful contacts, and through that, I then did other work on rural girls’ education. It was also really rewarding.

When you’re trying to get women who live in very poor settings with very little access to regular electricity/running water to work with very delicate materials that have to be kept clean and delivered on time, it’s very hard for them to prioritize their own schedule. It’s especially difficult when they’re juggling a mother-in-law who’s ill and many children and men who make demands.

So, we learned a lot. We got the opportunity to interact, face to face, with a lot of these women. We became close friends. I have many pictures of us together, working together, and sleeping together. We just spent a lot of time together.

What are your goals for how you hope to see your research develop, specifically within the next few months or during the summer?

Apart from getting my classes ready and finishing up some writing projects, I’m really working on developing one project on migrant solidarity. This is really based on an expansion of work that I’ve done in the past on migration-related issues. I’ve worked a lot on what I call “distressed migration.” This is a concept that I use to describe refugees, but also other forced migrants. It’s broader than refugees–it includes all people who feel that they have no option but to leave their homes. It’s a capacious category. I spent most of my life looking at how government policies, laws and practices do or don’t facilitate human rights for forced migrants and distressed migrants.

Over the recent past, I, together with all my colleagues, have realized that many local communities into which large numbers of migrants arrived, show enormous solidarity. Just think of Western Europe during the Syrian refugee crisis, some of the Greek islands, or Mexico with the caravans. There are all these images where local people are just welcoming refugees. They’re welcoming outsiders, incredibly generously, giving food, water, affection, clothing, and shelter responses to Ukrainians, for instance. However, over time, that solidarity and generosity dissipate and sometimes even turn into negative emotions, in the worst-case scenario. We see all too often xenophobia, racism, and other causes for exclusion. So, my colleagues and I are interested in that transition. Our hypothesis is that the move from solidarity to hostility has nothing to do with human nature. Humans seem to be inherently fearful of the other and exhibit animosity towards outsiders and people who look or sound different. Rather, we argue that it’s a predictable product of the government’s failure to think of the needs of local people.

Let’s say you are on the small island of Lesvos in Greece (which has about 90,000 people) and you have over a million people arriving on your island over a period of time. But, you only have one hospital. The million people who arrived have very acute needs, though. Local governments, the national Greek government, and the EU government wouldn’t anticipate the predictable need for more health care, more education, and more shelter. Over time, that initial generosity, where so many poor local people went to the water and helped people and shared their food, is going to dissipate.

And so, our project is looking at the need to nurture rather than destroy solidarity. We look at how governments should do that, and what policies governments should be developing to preempt what is predictable. This is because migration is not a crisis. Migration is a new “now.” It’s a new “here.” This is where we are. We’re always going to have a lot of migration. That’s how our world is. It’s just like how we’re always going to have climate change. It’s not a crisis, it’s a reality.

So, we need to anticipate those needs, and we need governments to preempt in a similar way that the EU did for Ukrainians (even though they haven’t done the same for a lot of other groups for a whole range of reasons). We need to preempt the needs of local people. It’s not good enough for people to say, “Oh, it’s just because of the racist media.” or “It’s just because of politicians who weaponize migration for their own ends.” That’s not a good enough answer.

A better answer is that governments need to be encouraged or forced by electorates, local people, and policymakers to think about local people’s needs as well. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s a good thing. It’s not being selfish, it’s being wise. That’s our project. We’ve done work along those lines in Poland looking at Ukrainians, and in Greece looking at Syrian and Afghan refugees.

Now, we want to expand that work to Colombia looking at Venezuelan arrivals, and Central America looking at the many different communities that have moved to Mexico from Central America and beyond. We also want to use that, in a way, to contribute to thinking about the US border. That’s the plan.

What advice do you have for those interested in fields similar to your areas of interest? Do you have blogs, podcasts, or summer opportunities that you recommend students explore?

First of all, I think it’s great when people are interested in this field because there’s so much need for committed and smart people to work on these issues. It’s a very, very rewarding and demanding field, personally, emotionally, and intellectually. I’m always thrilled when young people are interested in moving into this area of work. I always encourage them and say that however daunting it might seem to get opportunities and internships or to get into law or medical school, don’t be daunted. If you really want to, you will succeed.

There’s such a plethora of wonderful books, writing, movies, exhibitions, music, and operas. Migration is an area that has touched so many people and even issues, like those to do with women, gender, and health. If I have to give you one recommendation, I would say a book that I absolutely love which is translated into English. The book is called “Go Went Gone” by Jenny Erpenbeck. She’s from East Germany, and she writes in German, but her books are translated.

She’s a fantastic writer. This book is about the response of a middle-aged German man to migration into Berlin. It’s just fantastically moving.