Projects per year
Personal profile
Research interests
Sam is interested in the use of sociological, anthropological and policy perspectives to address, especially in African contexts, the interplay between human and child rights, power, class, ethnicity, (un)freedom, inequality, the legacies of slave trade and colonization under conditions of globalisation. Over the last decade, he has pursued this overarching interest through studies on child labour and child work, migration, land grabs, mining, prostitution, forced labour, precarious labour, trafficking, ‘modern slavery’ and contemporary abolitionism. These studies largely underpin Sam’s rights advocacy, media engagements and academic publications which bring into focus the different ways in which moral panics, melodrama and sensationalism about ‘lost’ or ‘broken’ childhoods, trafficking and ‘modern slavery’ coupled with racist and pejorative stereotypes efface understanding of the historical and structural causes of human insecurities and instead produce responses which undermine the rights of (often) the most marginalised populations in quite remarkable ways.
Sam is currently working (as Co-I) on a five year long European Research Council funded project, Modern Marronage: The Pursuit and Practice of Freedom in the Contemporary World (ERC ADG 788563). He leads the project's arm in Ghana, which examines parallels between top-down efforts to impose “civilized” marital relationships on newly emancipated slaves in the US historically, and top-down efforts by contemporary abolitionists to impose “correct” parent-child relationships and childhoods on Ghanaian families and children thought to be at risk of 'modern slavery' today.
Keywords
- trafficking
- Child Labour
- migration
- Africa
- mining
- modern day slavery
- abolitionism
- human rights
- precarity
- Children
- Ghana
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
Projects
- 2 Finished
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Decolonising Trafficking and Modern Slavery Writing Workshop
O'Connell Davidson, J. N., Martins Junior, A. & Okyere, S.
3/02/20 → 17/03/22
Project: Other
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8119 British Academy WW2020427 - Julia O'Connell Davidson
O'Connell Davidson, J. N., Okyere, S. & Martins Junior, A.
31/01/20 → 31/12/21
Project: Research
Research output
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Anti-trafficking and anti-smuggling campaigns in West Africa as new racialised migration deterrence efforts
Okyere, S. & Olayiwola, P., 15 Sept 2022, White Supremacy, Racism and the Coloniality of Anti-Trafficking. Taylor & Francis Group, p. 17-32 16 p.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter in a book
1 Citation (Scopus) -
Introduction: International Child Protection and Its Discontents
Okyere, S., 19 Feb 2022, International Child Protection Towards Politics and Participation. Palgrave Macmillan, p. 1-27 (Palgrave Studies on Children and Development).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter in a book
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Policies and politics around children’s work in Ghana
Okyere, S., 31 Mar 2021, Institute of Development Studies.Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report
Open AccessFile17 Downloads (Pure)