TraffLab PI
Prof. Hila Shamir
Hila Shamir is a Professor of Law at Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Law and TraffLab Principal Investigator (PI). During the academic year 2023-2024, she was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and a fellow at the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School.
Shamir earned her S.J.D. and LL.M. from Harvard Law School and LL.B. from Tel-Aviv University. She teaches and researches in the fields of Employment, Labor, Immigration, and Welfare Law with a focus on issues of labor trafficking, and gender equality. Shamir has taught at Georgetown Law School, Cornell Law School, UC Berkeley, and Harvard University. She served as Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs at TAU Law (2017-2018). Shamir received an European Research Council (ERC) grant to pursue research on a Labor Approach to Human Trafficking, and established TraffLab – Labor Perspective to Human Trafficking research project (2018-2023). At TraffLab an interdisciplinary group of scholars and lawyers are researching various labor based tools to transform severely exploitative labor sectors. The TraffLab research project seeks to shift anti-trafficking policy, research and discourse, away from the predominant criminal law, border control, and human rights model, and towards a labor based approach to human trafficking that will be primarily focused on the bargaining power disparities that create vulnerability to trafficking.
Shamir is also the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, the EU Marie Curie Reintegration Grant, the Alon Scholarship for outstanding junior faculty and of research grants from the Israeli Science Foundation and the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, and a member of the Israeli Young Academy. She is a co-author of the book Governance Feminism: An Introduction (Minnesota U. Press, 2018) and co-editor of the book Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field (Minnesota U. Press, 2019), (co-authored and co-edited with Janet Halley, Prabha Kotiswaran and Rachel Rebouche).
CV
Relevant Publications:
Tamar Barkay, Jonathan Davies, Irene Pietropaoli and Hila Shamir, Anti-trafficking Chains: Analyzing the Impact of Transparency Legislation in the UK Construction Sector, Law & Social Inquiry (2024). Published online 2024:1-32. doi:10.1017/lsi.2024.6 . [Full Text]
Trafficking in Persons, 6 Law, Culture and Society, Special Issue (Guest editors Hila Shamir, Hanny Ben Israel and Maayan Niezna) (2023). [Link to Full Volume, Hebrew with English Table of Contents and Abstracts]
Hila Shamir, Hanny Ben Israel and Maayan Niezna, Introduction: Trafficking in Persons - Past, Present and Future, 6 Law, Culture and Society, Special Issue: Trafficking in Persons 9 (2023). [Hebrew]
Yuval Livnat and Hila Shamir, Gaining Control? Bilateral Labor Agreements and the Shared Interest of Sending and Receiving Countries to Control Migrant Workers and the Illicit Migration Industry, 23(2) Theoretical Inquiries in Law, Special Issue: Bilateral Agreements 65-94 (2022). [Full Text]
Inga Thiemann and Hila Shamir, A Social-Legal Analysis of Reforms in the Regulation of Sex Work: The Case Study of End Demand Legislation in Israel, 2 (1,2) International Journal of Gender, Sexuality and Law 19-47 (2022). [Full Text]
Hila Shamir, A Labor Approach to Human Trafficking: Twenty Years of International Efforts to Address Human Trafficking, 44 Iyunei Mishpat 377-482 (2021). [Hebrew] [Abstract in English]
Yahel Kurlander, Maayan Niezna and Hila Shamir, COVID-19’s Impact on Non-Israeli Workers: Vulnerability, Commodification and Hope, 2 Israeli Sociology 82-89 (2021). [Hebrew] [Full Text] Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract= 3830342
Maayan Niezna, Yahel Kurlander and Hila Shamir, Underlying Conditions: The Increased Vulnerability of Migrant Workers under COVID-19, 6 (2) J. of Modern Slavery 133-58 (2021).
Hila Shamir, Feminist Approaches to the Regulation of Sex Work: Patterns in Transnational Governance Feminist Law Making, 52 Cornell Int'l L.J. 177-233 (2019). [Full Text]
Hila Shamir, Anti-Trafficking in Israel, Neo-Abolitionist Feminists, Markets, Borders, and the State in GOVERNANCE FEMINISM: AN INTRODUCTION, co-authored with Janet Halley, Prabha Kotiswaran & Rachel Rebouche (Minnesota University Press, 2018). [Full Text]
Hila Shamir, The Paradox of 'Legality Temporary Migrant Worker Programs and Vulnerability to Trafficking in REVISITING THE LAW AND GOVERNANCE OF TRAFFICKING, FORCED LABOR AND MODERN SLAVERY 471 (Prabha Kotiswaran (ed.) Cambridge University Press, 2017). [Full Text]
Debbie Bernstein, Hila Shamir, Dlila Amir and Nomi Levenkron, Sex Work and Migration: The Case of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, 1918 – 2010 in SELLING SEX IN THE CITY: A GLOBAL HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION, 1600s-2000s 329 (Magaly Rodríguez García, Lex Heerma van Voss, and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (eds.) 2017). [Full Text]
Hila Shamir, Regulating Sex Work: Looking Favorably at the Gap Between the Law in the Books and the Law in Action, in Regulations 121 (David Levi-Faur, Yishai Blank, and Issachar Rosen-Zvi (eds.) 2016). [Hebrew] [Full Text]
Hila Shamir and Guy Mundlak, The Global Governance of Domestic Work, in Migration and Care Labour: Theory, Policy and Politics 142 (Bridget Anderson and Isabel Shutes eds., Palgrave, 2014). [Full Text]
Hila Shamir, Organizing Migrant Care Workers: Industrial Citizenship and the Trade Union Option, 153(1) International Labour Rev. 93 (2014), Co-authored with Guy Mundlak.[Full Text]
Hila Shamir and Guy Mundlak, Spheres of Migration: Separation and Infiltration of Political, Economic and Universal Imperatives in Structuring Israel's Migration Regime, 5 Middle East Law and Governance Journal 112 (2013). [Full Text]
Hila Shamir, A Labor Paradigm for Human Trafficking, 60 UCLA Law Review 76-135 (2012). [Full Text]
Janet Halley, Prabha Kotiswaran, Hila Shamir and Chantal Thomas, From the International to the Local in Feminist Legal Responses to Rape, Prostitution/Sex Work and Sex Trafficking: Four Studies in Contemporary Governance Feminism, 29(2) Harvard Journal of Law & Gender 335 (2006). [Full Text]