Dr. Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, an associate professor in the USF Department of Sociology & Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, has been recognized by the American Sociological Association’s Section on Race, Gender, and Class.
She is co-winner of the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book award for her second book, “Second-Class Daughters: Black Brazilian Women and Informal Adoption as Modern Slavery.”
ISLAC and the Institute on Black Life co-sponsored a recent book launch for Dr. Hordge-Freeman at USF. (Photo by Rebecca Sohl)
“This award is incredibly gratifying because it recognizes the ten years of work and collaboration that so many individuals, organizations, and women have poured into this project,” she said. “As I was writing the book, it was difficult for me to replay the recordings and process the transcripts because doing so required me to be constantly engaged with deeply emotional and troubling material. The recognition means that I was successful at translating my participants’ riveting experiences to a broader audience. More importantly, I hope the award will help create more urgency to address labor exploitation and gendered forms of racial oppression around the world.”
The book, explained Hordge-Freeman, examines the lives of mostly Black Brazilian women who were taken into wealthier families under the guise of “adoption” only to then be treated like slaves–unpaid domestic workers.
“The book traces the long shadow cast by Brazil’s legacy of slavery –it was the very last country in the Americas to formally abolish slavery,” she said. “Beyond detailing my participants’ exploitation as adopted daughters, the book argues that the women become ensnared in this exploitative practice due both to structural reasons (illiteracy, lack of financial resources, isolation from social networks) and affective considerations (moral justifications and emotional manipulation),” she said.
Hordge-Freeman explained that she did not originally set out to write a book about this topic, but that the idea sprang to life while collecting data for her first book, “The Color of Love: Racial Features, Stigma, and Socialization in Black Brazilian Families,” published in 2015.
“I repeatedly met women who were being referred to as ‘filhas de criação’ (informally adopted daughters) but who were not at all treated like their adoptive family members. These women, in some cases, slept on the floor while their ‘families’ slept in beds. They were unable to read while their ‘siblings’ became lawyers and professionals. My observations of these stark differences became the motivation for me to write this book,” she said.
Dr. Hordge-Freeman’s research endeavors were made possible with funding from USF Women in Leadership and Philanthropy, as well as a Fulbright and the American Sociological Association Funds for the Advancement of the Discipline.
She explained that once she started conducting research on this topic in earnest, she was surprised by how easily she met or was referred to Black Brazilian women who were, had been, or had known ‘filhas de criação.’
She said their presence was not a secret, but rather it was “hidden in plain sight.”
“Another surprise is the role of emotions or how what I term ‘affective captivity’ persuaded women to remain in these families,” she said. “The term affective captivity refers to the way that women in this study were not only deprived of education and financial resources, but they were further socialized to feel morally obligated and emotionally attached to and dependent on their adoptive families. The affective attachments that they developed to these ‘adoptive families’ played a significant role in perpetuating their exploitation.”
Hordge-Freeman explains that, oftentimes, mainstream approaches to human trafficking tend to ignore the significance of race as a factor impacting who is being exploited, why, and how their exploitation is experienced.
“Among practitioners working in anti-human trafficking, I have often heard some dismiss race because of the notion that ‘trauma is trauma.’ This approach can be harmful because it ignores how the racialized nature of exploitation may have distinct origins and consequences for women of color. My work explicitly addresses the interlocking ways that race, class, and gender collide to perpetuate the exploitative system of informal adoption (criação). I am passionate about sharing insights from this study to enhance the important work of those who work with trafficking survivors,” she said.