This paper addresses how states improve their responsiveness to violence against women in developing countries with little political will and few resources to do so. One key to engendering justice and improving responsiveness is building specialized institutions within the state that facilitate the implementation of laws addressing violence against women. Why and how do states engage in institution-building to protect marginalized populations in these contexts? I propose that developing countries are more likely to create and maintain specialized institutions when domestic (...) and international political and legal frameworks make the state more vulnerable to women’s demands, and when civil society coordinates with the state and/or international organizations to take advantage of this political opportunity. This coordination brings necessary pressure and resources that would be difficult, if not impossible, to deliver otherwise. This inter-institutional coordination is necessary for building and maintaining new state institutions and programs that help to monitor the implementation of laws, develop public policies, provide services for victims, and improve responsiveness of the justice system. This fills an important lacuna in the literature, which focuses on women’s state institutions as an important catalyst for responsiveness to violence against women, but does not explain how these institutions are initially constructed. (shrink)

Advocacy and scholarship addressing sex trafficking as a human rights issue has become a transnational effort, but there has been less attention to sub-national efficacy. Through analyzing progressive justice system responses to domestic violence in Duluth, Minnesota that have been adopted worldwide, this paper demonstrates how to effectively apply these local advances in order to address sex trafficking on a global scale. This paper makes a theoretical contribution to understanding the intersections between domestic abuse and sex trafficking. A key empirical (...) finding is that a coordinated community response is crucial for advancing domestic abuse training, monitoring, and legislation—and this coordination can also be productively utilized for improving responsiveness to victims of sex trafficking across a diverse range of socio-legal and economic contexts. (shrink)

In September 2014, students and Hong Kong citizens took to the streets demanding universal suffrage. Cell phones and video cameras in hand, amateur student filmmakers were some of the first to capture the police tear-gassing young people that brought the city to its feet. Young people were positioning themselves as storytellers and knowledge producers on the streets. How has this restructured hierarchy of knowledge production often found in university education in Hong Kong? How too has being active participants and/or passive (...) observers of the events of the Umbrella Movement translated into a pedagogy of experience in student’s daily lives, and how has this knowledge returned to the classroom? Specifically, I am interested in ways that young women who are not Cantonese first-language speakers understand their role in the movement and the kinds of knowledge they produced. Through interviews with these diverse students, and visual data from the footage they shot during the protests, we gain a rare g... (shrink)

In September 2014, students and Hong Kong citizens took to the streets demanding universal suffrage. Cell phones and video cameras in hand, amateur student filmmakers were some of the first to capture the police tear-gassing young people that brought the city to its feet. Young people were positioning themselves as storytellers and knowledge producers on the streets. How has this restructured hierarchy of knowledge production often found in university education in Hong Kong? How too has being active participants and/or passive (...) observers of the events of the Umbrella Movement translated into a pedagogy of experience in student’s daily lives, and how has this knowledge returned to the classroom? Specifically, I am interested in ways that young women who are not Cantonese first-language speakers understand their role in the movement and the kinds of knowledge they produced. Through interviews with these diverse students, and visual data from the footage they shot during the protests, we gain a rare glimpse into the multicultural world gathered beneath the umbrella of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, and how a new generation of young female filmmakers are using video to share their changing perspectives on democratic reform, education, and everyday life. (shrink)