Navigating the Legal Landscapes of Modern Slavery and Immigration: Lawyers in the Anti-Trafficking Space

Regarded as a heinous crime with serious, long-term consequences for victims, modern slavery is high on the political agenda and has been a focus of government action in recent years. Many victims of trafficking do not have a right to remain in the UK, leading to a dangerous lack of support. For these victims, access to an immigration lawyer is usually the only path to stability. Underpinned by cause lawyering theories, this book exposes the real-life professional and personal impact of being an immigration lawyer representing victims of trafficking.

It explains strategies used by lawyers to achieve good legal outcomes for their clients, but also the ways they seek to shape the law itself and their motivations for doing so. Interviews with immigration lawyers who represent victims of trafficking are drawn on throughout this book, alongside analysis of complex legal cases. At a time when so-called ’do gooder’ lawyers have themselves been under the spotlight, this book goes behind the headlines to examine the role of immigration lawyers who advise and represent victims of trafficking, navigating immigration law and modern slavery frameworks within the constraints of a legal aid market ill-fitted to the complex cases of their clients.

Of interest to academics, legal practitioners, and students both within and beyond the UK, this book spans different disciplines: law, politics, sociology and social policy.

Samantha Currie is Senior Lecturer at Liverpool Law School, University of Liverpool, UK.