‘Human trafficking’, according to Free the Slaves, is the process through which a person ‘is moved from one place to another for the purpose of enslavement’, a definition eagerly seized upon by Western political leaders since it allows them to present their efforts to control borders as part of a moral struggle for human rights and against slavery. But what are the similarities between what is described as ‘trafficking’ and the transatlantic slave trade to which it is routinely compared? There are no modern equivalents of the many fortresses and castles that dotted the western coast of African slave trading regions, in which captured people were held in dungeons, sometimes for long periods, before being loaded and shackled on slave ships. Today, whether queuing outside recruitment offices or waiting for a boat owner to take them across the Mediterranean, those who may or may not end up in highly exploitative and heavily restricted conditions are invariably people who actively want to migrate, and generally have excellent reasons for wishing to do so.
The transatlantic slave trade relied upon overwhelming physical force at every stage of movement. What is dubbed ‘trafficking’ does not. In fact, attention to people’s motivations for moving provokes a very different kind of comparison between past and present. It suggests that contemporary migrants who are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse have more in common with those who sought to escape from New World slavery, than those transported into it.
Keeping chattel slaves in
Though legally constructed as property, those held in chattel slavery remained human beings with wills of their own. This presented slaveholders with a unique set of problems that they did not face with their inanimate property. To enjoy their property rights, slaveholders needed to closely control the mobility of the enslaved. At the same time, it was not in their interest to literally imprison slaves, as a slave held permanently captive in a dungeon would not be a productive asset. Physically constraining them by means of balls, chains and other such instruments also was often impractical, as slaves were often needed to run errands or transport produce, among other tasks.
