Show Notes
Meet Elene Lam, the founder and executive director of Butterfly, an Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network. The tragic deaths of six Asian women in Atlanta have highlighted the intersectional reasons why they were targeted and killed. Perceived as foreigner persons, migrants engaging in immoral and illegal work, fetishized women, and those contributing to the spread of the coronavirus, Butterfly advocates for the full decriminalization of sex work, for full status for migrant sex workers, for immigration laws to allow sex work to be recognized as work, and for no cops at workplaces, among other calls to action. Listen to Elene explain why her organization is part of an alliance of 25 sex worker organizations bringing a Charter challenge to the criminal laws affecting sex work, among other legal reforms.
More from Migration Conversations
Meet filmmaker and artist Sook-Yin Lee, graphic artist Chester Brown and experts Dr. Chris Bruckert and Dr. Ummni Khan. Following a screening of the film Paying For It, this panel discussed the book behind the film, and how how law circumscribes love, intimacy and our relationships. Sponsored by the Greenberg Chair for Women and the Legal Profession, this event took place in September 2025.
Meet Ardi Imseis, law professor and lawyer who represented Palestine before the International Court of Justice in the Advisory Opinion on Israel's Illegal Presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Professor Imseis is also the author of The United Nations and the Question of Palestine. He talks about the advisory opinion and what it means for international law and how we can harness it for the continuing BDS movement.
Join this intimate conversation between Adelle Blackett, Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law at the Faculty of Law, McGill University and Canisia Lubrin, award winning poet and writer who teaches at the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA program. They talk about Canisia's debut fiction Code Noir and the enduring legacies of the colonial law that created the material conditions of slavery.
We speak with Reakash Walters as she provides an analytical toolkit for those who want to work with and not merely represent marginalized peoples and communities. She shares her research co-conducted with a former prisoner and how her friendship with him brings to light how Black friendship is criminalized in Canada. An important conversation about participatory law, and how lawyers can be part of community struggles in respectful ways.
We speak with four lawyers who intervene in the courts on behalf of community organizations. What is an intervention and why is it an important entry point for community organizations to converse with the courts. With Sandra Ka Hon Chu, Rosel Kim, Annamaria Enenajor and Naseem Mithoowani, we talk about four case studies they worked on, the importance of incremental change, and how the long game is important to have in sight.