Migrants and Slaves: Human Trafficking in the Libyan Territories from the Nineteenth Century to the Present In the fall of 2017, the world was shocked when CNN released footage of twelve male Nigerian migrants being sold at auction outside of the capital city of Tripoli. The question of slavery has been widely debated in Middle East Studies, with scholars such as Chouki El Hamel, and W. G Clarence-Smith arguing that racial bias enabled the enslavement of free black Muslims on a mass scale in North Africa and other parts of the Middle East until the mid-nineteenth century. However, these perspectives have not adequately addressed the relationship between the long history of racial bias and its connection to the treatment of migrants and refugees in the region today. In addition, there is almost no scholarship on slavery in the Libyan context. Our paper addresses the issue of human trafficking and slavery with special attention to the role of radicalized thought in the Libyan territories from the nineteenth century to the present. Specifically, in our project, we will be looking at Italian colonial documents, missionary correspondences and the Arab press, in order to show the role of Islamic slavery in the Libyan territories until its abolishment in the 1930s and the intellectual justifications for the institution. We will then address the connection between historic institutions of slavery and modern human trafficking and enslavement since the collapse of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's government in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. We argue that modern human trafficking is substantially different from Islamic slavery in its organization but both practices have been made possible by underlying racial bias. In conclusion, this project, by closely examining slavery in the past and present, sheds new light on the rarely-studied issue of forced labor in the Libyan context.