SYMPOSIUM INTRODUCTION IDENTIFYING A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY DIALOGUE BETWEEN STATELESSNESS AND SLAVERY ALICE ECKSTEIN ∗ Researchers working on slavery or statelessness will know there are overlaps in condition and population between stateless persons and those living in conditions of slavery, as well as common problems in carrying forth work focused on these communities. These overlaps are easy enough to identify, and the dangers presented by one status to fall into the other are similarly apparent. A stateless person is likely to experience restricted access to financial services, education, healthcare and legal services, as well as limitations on regular movement across borders. These restrictions create vulnerability to exploitative labour practices, including slavery. Those people who are living in slavery, or who have exited slavery, may have moved across borders or lost documentation as part of their exploitation. They risk their ‘citizen’ identity and the state’s protections, and may thus be exposed to the risk of becoming stateless. Listing similarities and common or overlapping risk factors aside, what knowledge and practices can be shared among scholars working on these two separate violations of human rights? Where and how can researchers identify similar challenges and resources, as well as collaborate on a common research agenda? This symposium brings together researchers and scholars working in various ways on responses to slavery to offer their perspectives on challenges and paths forward that may resonate with those engaged in understanding statelessness. These range from the challenge of effective measurement, to tracking legislation, to the activation of local communities and the lived experiences of survivors. Working as Programme Manager on Modern Slavery, I hoped in coordinating this symposium to identify areas where slavery researchers can consider their own work and present it here to the statelessness research community. I was fortunate in engaging contributors who have richly engaged with these questions. Either enslaved or stateless people may come from social, ethnic or otherwise racialised groups who face social and economic discrimination that overlaps with their stateless or enslaved status. The central concern of engaging with other scholars of race, gender and colonial studies forms the basis of Dr Jane Gordon’s contribution. Some scholars in her area of work may imagine the field of modern slavery (or contemporary enslavement) research to engage with a different type of human right abuse than was practiced in the colonial era. Gordon argues that slavery still exists today in a racialised form, which inherently stems from the modern trans-Atlantic slave trade featured by global capitalism. Similarly, Gordon ∗ Alice Eckstein is Programme Manager for the Modern Slavery Programme at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research in New York.