'Refugees welcome' Matt Brown/flickr. (CC BY 2.0)
Modern slavery has been gaining salience in British media and public awareness. This resonates with recent international trends, and renewed attention to the plight of those exposed to the harshest forms of exploitation deserves our support. But a narrow focus on ‘modern slavery’ steers the discussion away from broader systemic issues, which must be considered if we are to maximise the effectiveness of actions aimed at lowering national and global inequalities.
What happens if we consider the modern slavery campaign, Brexit, and migration and development policies all at the same time … and then connect the dots? It becomes apparent that national workers and (willing or unwilling) labour migrants are linked together into global hierarchies that generate a large supply of cheap and vulnerable labour. This pool of vulnerable workers is internally diverse and contains multiple groups struggling with different constraints. They all deserve attention. And yet official campaigns and policies obfuscate the picture by focusing on narrow issues with high media-shock potential and compartmentalising connected problems.
