Fifteen Eighty Four

Modern slavery is regarded as a global problem of epic proportions. The 2021 Global Estimates on Modern Slavery contends that on any given day there are 50 million people in situations of modern slavery, of whom 27.6 million are in forced labour. Although there is a growing literature challenging these figures, my book, Constructing Modern Slavery, is not concerned with how many modern slaves there really are. This does not mean I think that labour exploitation and labour abuse are not real problems. They are and there is an urgent need to address them. But I argue that labelling these practices as instances of modern slavery does not help to eradicate them. Instead, my concern is with law’s role in constructing modern slavery as a global problem.

Modern slavery is an amalgam of legal concepts, such a slavery, forced labour, and human trafficking, defined in international law. What unites these concepts is a shared characteristic – they are all forms of unfree labour: one person deprives ‘another person of their freedom for profit’. Constructing Modern Slavery explains how modern slavery’s legal expression – how it is defined in law, and the legal domains and jurisdictions to which it is assigned – shapes what we ‘see’ when we see modern slavery and how we go about getting rid of it.

The book provides a genealogy of modern slavery by tracing the evolution over time of its component legal concepts and how they came together under a single umbrella. It grew out of my puzzlement with developments in the United Kingdom. When I moved to Kent in 2013, I encountered a lively debate about how to define and combat modern slavery. In Canada, where I had been living and working, ‘modern slavery’ was used occasionally as a political rhetoric to vilify instances of exploitation. I was, however, familiar with the term ‘unfree labour’, used as an analytic concept for work relations in which direct physical, political, and legal compulsion is used to acquire and exploit labour. In the United Kingdom, modern slavery became a quasi-legal concept with the enactment of the Modern Slavery Act, 2015.

I was curious about how modern slavery became the predominant legal lens for characterising unfree labour in the United Kingdom. I traced the UK’s Modern Slavery Act’s origins to the 2000 United Nation’s Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children. While doctrinal legal scholarship is essential for identifying the origins of modern slavery’s legal components, it can’t explain why a specific definition was crafted or why it was lodged in one legal domain (criminal law, for example) instead of another (for instance, human rights). To answer these questions, I had to move from legal analysis to study the social world.

Researchers in political science and sociology have shown that how the problem of modern slavery is framed influences the legal solutions that are developed to resolve it. Frames are the mental structures we use to make sense of the world; they tell us how different pieces of information connect, what is right and wrong, and suggest solutions to correct perceived wrongs.  How modern slavery is framed is crucial for understanding how different forms of exploitation are conceptualised within public policy. I drew on social-political literature to place key legal concepts in their cultural, political, and economic context and to trace their use and evolution over time. By bringing this research into conversation with legal analysis the book shows how social and political context shapes legal meaning and how legal concepts and technicalities, in turn, shape how we see our world.

‘Modern slavery’ covers a wide range of different kinds of exploitation, including chattel (“old”) slavery, sex trafficking, child sex trafficking, forced labour, forced marriage, the compelled sale of organs and body parts, debt bondage, domestic servitude, and the unlawful recruitment and use of child labour. Constructing Modern Slavery focusses on a subset of modern slavery – forms of unfree labour associated with international labour migration and transnational supply chains – to offer insight into the relationship between unfree labour and capitalism. By investigating attempts to address forms of unfree labour linked to international migration and global supply chains, the book reveals the extent to which antislavery initiatives are linked to the fading legitimacy of contemporary neoliberal capitalism.

Although Constructing Modern Slavery describes how international and transnational legal instruments define the main legal categories of unfree labour, it explains how a nation-state must implement them and give them meaning. I focus on the United Kingdom because it was the first country wholeheartedly to embrace the language of modern slavery in 2013, when it introduced draft modern slavery legislation. The book shows how the language of modern slavery activated a repertoire of aggrandising historical tropes, portrayed modern slavery as a moral issue that transcended party politics, and heralded a revitalised vision of British global sovereignty as the United Kingdom was on the cusp of leaving the EU.

By evoking William Wilberforce’s long parliamentary campaign against the slave trade, first the Coalition and then the Conservative governments under Theresa May and Boris Johnson reminded people of Britain’s golden past when it led the world morally and economically. The modern slavery agenda had a key driver in the person of Theresa May, who as home secretary and prime minister, made eliminating modern slavery her personal cause. An elite antislavery network set the terms of the policy debate in ways that downplayed other elements of the government’s agenda, such as labour-market deregulation and creating a hostile environment for illegal migration, which increases the vulnerability of all (citizen and migrant) workers to modern slavery. It also linked the United Kingdom’s post-EU role to its former glory. Invoking the abolitionist campaign to end slavery reinforced a narrative of moral authority, liberty, and the British commitment to human rights, while obscuring its role is the slavery trade, anti-Black, racism, and the coercion of colonialism.

As the political turmoil after the covid pandemic became entwined with the deteriorating state of the United Kingdom’s Brexit economy, fighting modern slavery began to slip down the political agenda while getting tough on illegal migrants rose. As Prime Minister, Boris Johnson initially celebrated the United Kingdom’s battle against modern slavery as an example of the superiority of Global Britian. Later, however, his Home Secretary (Priti Patel) blamed the Modern Slavery Act for encouraging illegal immigrants to come to the United Kingdom and permitting child rapists to claim to be victims of slavery to avoid or delay deportation or removal. Alleged victims are regarded as a key source of illegal migration, which the government blamed as the source of Britain’s economic woes. This narrative distracts from the impact years of austerity, Britain’s ‘lightly’ regulated labour markets, and the effect Brexit had on most people’s standard of living.

The Sunak government subsequently abandoned any attempt to use the fight against modern slavery to establish moral hegemony and, instead, has increased its vilification of illegal migrants, including those who also happen to be victims of modern slavery. In his push to stop illegal migration, then Prime Minister Sunak confirmed that his government would ‘remove the gold plating in our modern slavery system’. It’s not yet clear what the Labour government will do.

Constructing Modern Slavery shows how the solving the global problem of modern slavery has been harnessed to a range of different political agendas, most of which have boosted domestic criminal law powers and treated many forms of migration as illegal activities. As the economic luster of global neoliberalism has begun to fade and nativist protectionism has emerged to replace it, the fear is that fighting people smuggling will replace combatting modern slavery on the political agenda.