BTS: From Project to Publication

BTS began to connect with people in the field and look for new ways to share its message.It also changed from a carefully planned publishing project to something more like a trade magazine focused on forced labor.

Our main content stayed focused on specific themes. Over the years, we created special features on universal basic income, rethinking child work, sex workers’ rights, organizing precarious workers in the global south, philanthrocapitalism, border outsourcing, the criminalization of migration, and border violence on the English channel. As we learned more, our original focus on trafficking became less important. We challenged ourselves to find new perspectives.

By year five, we really started to succeed. The forced labor and human trafficking team at Humanity United, a philanthropic foundation in California, recognized the value of our work and offered to support our project. This funding and security allowed BTS to achieve goals that hadn’t been possible before.

This included hiring more staff, starting with the wonderful Emily Kenway, and later Melissa Pawson, who did an excellent job following in her footsteps. It also meant setting up more debates.