The global economy runs on forced and precarious labour. This course explores how this economic engine operates and how worker and migrant rights can be strengthened.
Drawing upon numerous articles published by Beyond Trafficking and Slavery, the course explores how vulnerable workers – whose conditions are frequently compared to slavery – are exploited in order to generate goods and services further up the economic chain. It examines how different kinds of labour exploitation have been classified – as modern slavery, human trafficking, or forced labour – and considers some of the effects of using the language of slavery to describe various abuses which are happening today.
The main focus of the course is the ways in which global economic systems and political interests both manufacture and protect different forms of vulnerable, precarious, and forced labour. Drawing upon examples from across the world, the course specifically focuses on labour in three major categories: supply chain work, migrant work, and sex work. It also considers the limitations of popular approaches and ‘solutions’ focusing upon the politics of rescue, and contrast these popular approaches with alternatives based upon models of worker rights, collective organising, and decent work.
