Dr. Annie Isabel Fukushima is Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Director of the Office of Undergraduate Research, and Associate Professor in the Division of Ethnic Studies with the School for Cultural & Social Transformation at University of Utah. Prior to joining the faculty of University of Utah, Dr. Fukushima was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Rutgers University (2013 – 2015) with the Institute for Research on Women and the Department of Women and Gender Studies. She received her Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in Ethnic Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies. She is the co-lead for the Institute of Impossible Subjects project, "Migratory Times." She is also the Project Lead & Co-Principal Investigator for the Gender-Based Violence Consortium.
She is the author of the award-winning book Migrant Crossings: Witnessing Human Trafficking in the US (Stanford University Press, 2019). https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=29061 Fukushima's book Migrant Crossings received the American Sociological Association (ASA) Asia and Asian America Section Book Award: Asian America (2020).
Migrant Crossings examines the experiences and representations of Asian and Latina/o migrants trafficked in the United States into informal economies and service industries. Through sociolegal and media analysis of court records, press releases, law enforcement campaigns, film representations, theatre performances, and the law, Annie Isabel Fukushima questions how we understand victimhood, criminality, citizenship, and legality.
Fukushima examines how migrants legally cross into visibility, through frames of citizenship, and narratives of victimhood. She explores the interdisciplinary framing of the role of the law and the legal system, the notion of "perfect victimhood", and iconic victims, and how trafficking subjects are resurrected for contemporary movements as illustrated in visuals, discourse, court records, and policy. Migrant Crossings deeply interrogates what it means to bear witness to migration in these migratory times—and what such migrant crossings mean for subjects who experience violence during or after their crossing.
"Migrant Crossings brilliantly dissects our understandings of the plight of Latina and Asian women trafficked into informal economies of sex and service. Combining original analysis of court cases, news accounts, and police reports with the author's experience as a volunteer counselor, Fukushima reveals a legal system that requires a survivor's story to fit the model of 'perfect victimhood' in order to cross into visibility and be deemed worthy of asylum."
—Evelyn Nakano Glenn, University of California, Berkeley
"Migrant Crossings critically examines the framing and impact of the U.S. anti-human trafficking movement. Annie Fukushima explores how our work in the movement is often at odds with our stated objectives and reveals how an individual's experiences are shaped by a racist, misogynistic, and colonialist history. A deeply important read for all of us working to realize the promise of human rights."
—Jean Bruggeman, Executive Director, Freedom Network USA
"Migrant Crossings offers a deeply insightful analysis of the structures of human trafficking. It illustrates linkages between labor migration and human trafficking while convincing readers that vulnerability to human trafficking belongs in a historical continuum of U.S. racial exclusion."
—Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, author of Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work
As an interdisciplinary scholar, she is committed to praxis, therefore she has worked at all levels of organizations, where her expertise is nationally recognized; she has served as an expert witness for human trafficking cases in courts in California, Colorado, and Utah, provided expert reports for immigration cases submitted to USCIS, and a consultant for national and local organizations in California, Massachusetts, and Washington.
She has authored multiple community based studies studies and scholarly articles that focus on: domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, labor, and migration.
She is the project lead for the University of Utah's Gender-Based Violence Consortium.