The British curriculum sanitises the history of slavery by isolating it as an aberration of evil. Slavery built the west. Acknowledging that is the first step to undoing its damage.

Discussions of migration are becoming increasingly dystopian. Based upon either exclusion or exploitation, new neoliberal arguments for open borders are not about freedom, but institutionalised domination.

European colonisers maintained their workforce with forced labour after slavery was abolished, claiming work would do Africans good. This opened up new dangers to an already vulnerable population.

Almost all central and east European Roma migrants to western Europe are not trafficked. They seek opportunities denied at home and escape from the racism perpetuating their marginalisation.

Economic crisis has pushed Indian tea workers to seek employment outside the plantations, forcing them to re-engage with the caste hierarchy from which their ancestors attempted to escape. 

The history of slavery is central to racism, activism and democracy in Mauritania. Much of what happens next will reflect the decisions of former slaves.

France is the only European slave-trading nation to legally recognise slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity, but questions of racial discrimination and colonial exploitation remain unresolved.

Brazil’s government has taken important steps to combat racial inequalities over the past two decades. Afro-Brazilian populations nevertheless remain socially and economically excluded, continuing patterns that began with legal slavery.

The US prison regime functions through a racial chattel logic. Its animating force is not economic exploitation but rather racialized social reorganization and neutralization.

Most humans have not been, and still are not, recognised as persons: gender and race remain prerequisites for recognition as an individual.