Speaker at the 2019 International Affairs Conference

Julie Dahlstrom is a clinical associate professor at Boston University School of Law, where she teaches in the areas of immigration, human trafficking, gender-based violence, and public interest law. She also founded and directs the Immigrants’ Rights & Human Trafficking Program, which offers law students at BU the opportunity to represent noncitizen and survivor clients. Julie also founded and chairs the U and T Visa Working Group of the Immigration Coalition at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. She has written recently on immigration policy for The Hill.

Previously Julie served as a senior staff attorney for Casa Myrna Vazquez, where she represented survivors of commercial sexual and labor exploitation and engaged in systemic advocacy to remove barriers for survivors seeking to exit exploitation. She has served as a member of the Massachusetts Human Trafficking Task force and co-chair of its Victim Services Subcommittee.

Julie will discuss the expanding, evolving concept of human trafficking in the United States. What is human trafficking? When is an expansive definition of trafficking justifiable? How does trafficking relate to existing concepts—like domestic violence, sexual assault, labor exploitation, and prostitution—with which it often overlaps? Since 2000, Congress and all fifty states have passed legislation with varying definitions of the crime of human trafficking, presenting new and important challenges to protection and enforcement in the anti-trafficking field.