As an aside as I read these articles at the weekend:
2016 article by Julie Bindel for Feminist Current, 2016 includes identification of issues at University of Sussex:
'The shocking tale of John Davies, pro-prostitution academic & trafficking denier, recently jailed for fraud'
(extract)
"Davies spent many years, first as a DPhil candidate and then as a Visiting Research Fellow, at the Centre for Migration Research at the University of Sussex in England. In 2007 the University awarded Davies a doctorate. During his time at the Centre, Davies travelled the world, attending conferences, often as a speaker, presenting as an expert on trafficking.
At various times the Sussex Centre has given home to students and visiting research fellows who define trafficking simply as “facilitated migration” or argue “trafficking is a myth.” Passing through its doors have been sex industry apologists including Jo Doezema, a key campaigner for the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), an international pro-prostitution organization that campaigns for blanket decriminalization of all aspects of the sex trade; Nicola Mai whose research on trafficking usually concludes that concern about it comes from a “moral panic;” Laura Agustín, author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, who has compared feminist abolitionists to, “those nineteenth-century middle-class women who took it upon themselves to ‘help, control, advise and discipline the unruly poor, including their sexual conduct.'”
Olsi Vullnetari, Benjamin Davies, and Julie Vullnetari were all post graduate students at the Sussex Centre. Julie Vullnetari is Davies’ former partner, and assisted him in his field research in Lyon, France. Like Davies, she holds a DPhil in Migration Studies from the University of Sussex. In his acknowledgement section, Davies thanks Vullnetari for her “outstanding work as the cultural advocate” and dedicates the book to her. Julie Vullnetari, who was once previously UNIFEM consultant on trafficking in South Asia, was arrested with Davies in Croatia in 1995 on suspicion of baby trafficking. (Only Davies was charged.) Julie is the sister of Olsi Vullnetari. Olsi, who was awarded a Master’s Degree in Migration Studies in 2004 from the Centre for Migration Research at Sussex, was also a regular speaker at international conferences about migration issues. He also ran a lucrative consultancy business writing expert court reports on behalf of Albanian asylum seekers.
John Davies and his son Benjamin, the Vullnetari siblings, Agustín, Doezema and Mai hold similar opinions about the trafficking of women into the sex trade: Trafficking (or “migrant sex work”) is often a choice that women from poor countries make in order to earn lots of money and avoid working in factories.
Like Agustín, John Davies considers anti-trafficking campaigners to be more dangerous than the actual traffickers. In 2006, Davies spoke at an academic conference in Oxford, UK, as a PhD candidate from the Sussex Centre for Migration Research at the University of Sussex. The title of his paper was “Force and Deception: the Tools of the Anti-Traffickers.”
Davies’ book based on his PhD research, “My Name is Not Natasha: How Albanian Women in France Use Trafficking to Overcome Social Exclusion (1998-2001),” was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2009. A review copy landed on my desk from the publisher, and I decided to Google him to see if any further accusations had been made about him. By pure chance, a local newspaper report came up that outlined a case against Davies that was being heard that week in court. Davies was accused of sexually abusing two girls, aged six and eight, during the years 1980–81. The trial lasted eight days at the end of which he was cleared.
An academic named Nicola (Nick) Mai had also been awarded a PhD at the Sussex Centre for Migration Research at Sussex University. The year that Davies’ book was published, and he was cleared in court, the British parliament was deciding whether to introduce a clause in the 2009, s. amendment of the the Sexual Offences Act 2003 by adding a section that would make it an offence in England and Wales to pay for the services of a person in prostitution who has been coerced into providing sexual services. Unsurprisingly, the suggestion that the state should criminalize any form of sex buying brought the polarized arguments out into the open. Mai, then a researcher at the University of North London, was completing his publicly funded research project entitled, “Migrant Workers in the UK Sex Industry” in which he concluded that very few (six per cent was his estimate) people in prostitution were trafficked or coerced into selling sex. He was a supporter of the International Union of Sex Workers (IUSW), a bogus union founded in 2000 by a couple of radical anthropologists who believed that the rights of people involved in prostitution could only be won through collective organizing. Mia had engaged members of the IUSW in his research.
The IUSW is far from the left wing, pro-worker organization its founders intended it to be. Some former members have told me that it is more of a mouthpiece for pimps and punters; and rather than warning them to “beware” as did its founders, the IUSW today welcomes sex industry bosses as members with open arms." (continues)
www.feministcurrent.com/2016/06/10/john-davies-pro-prostitution-academic-trafficking-denier-jailed/
Julie Bindel's book, 'The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth' published 2017
www.feministcurrent.com/2017/09/27/julie-bindels-pimping-prostitution-destroys-sex-trade-myths-unforgiving-detail/