Kent Law School research student Maayan Niezna has been awarded a scholarship in an annual competition run by the Modern Law Review.
Maayan was nominated by Dr Thanos Zartaloudis, Co-Director of Postgraduate Research at Kent Law School, in recognition of the quality of her scholarship. Her doctoral thesis involves an interrogation of the different legal frameworks that address unfree labour of migrant workers.
Maayan is exploring whether a ‘labour approach’ that focuses on structural causes for vulnerability, can better explain and resolve, the economic exploitation of migrant workers. She said: ‘My research project address two aspects of this question – the conceptual and the contextual. The conceptual part asks whether the legal terms describing unfree labour (slavery, servitude and forced labour) can be applied in a meaningful and consistent way in the context of temporary low-skilled migrant workers, and if so, under what conditions. The contextual discussion follows, and is based on qualitative empirical research focused on Israel. It identifies specific initiatives, programmes or policies which can be said to reflect a labour approach, and assesses their short-term and long-term impact.’
Maayan expands on this approach to her research in a post she has written for the Law School’s Countercurrents blog.
The MLR awards scholarships each year for doctoral research students at UK universities on any subject broadly within the study and practice of law.
Before coming to Kent, Maayan was a Visiting Research Fellow at TraffLab, a five year interdisciplinary research project on human trafficking funded by the Economic Research Council and led by Dr Hila Shamir at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law. She holds an MSc in Human Rights from LSE, and a LLB degree in Law and Philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has worked on issues related to trafficking and slavery at the Office of the National Anti-trafficking Coordinator, Israeli Ministry of Justice; UNHCR-Israel, and the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants.