Income-based measures of poverty are unreliable for determining who is most vulnerable to forced labour. More nuanced understandings of vulnerability are required to effectively reduce forced labour in the global economy. Español
Beyond Trafficking and Slavery editors introduce their February issue exploring the political economic contexts of slavery, trafficking and forced labour, and examining global efforts to confront their root causes.
Snowball sampling is a popular method of researching hidden populations, but its limitations make it the wrong choice for counting or describing the global population of trafficked humans.
‘Modern-day abolitionists’ frame their activities as part of a shared global struggle, but there is no single anti-slavery or anti-trafficking movement. Español
The strain of feminist thinking that promotes the rescue industry and the criminalisation of sex work springs from a small but vocal community of activists. Treating it as the voice of feminism silences competing voices, especially those outside of America and Europe.
Movies glorifying the ‘rescue’ of sex workers by men posing as clients are erotic fantasies, not daringly realistic representations of modern sex-trafficking.
Wildly different numbers circulate about the number of trafficking victims and modern-day slaves. Victims are hard to count because they are hidden and definitions are ambiguous, yet efforts to quantify them shape what we know and do about trafficking.
RasTafari reject the clear-cut distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ slavery put forward by ‘white abolitionism’, as this only gives absolution to formally slave-trading European publics where there should be none. They demand reparations because justice has not yet been served.
Ghanaian football academies have been accused of exploiting talent and promoting trafficking in search of profit, but the quest for social mobility in a time of economic liberalisation is what drives young footballers into the industry in the first place.
The conflation of indentured servitude with chattel slavery in the ‘Irish slaves’ narrative whitewashes history in the service of Irish nationalist and white supremacist causes. Its resurgence in the wake of Ferguson reflects many Americans’ denial of the entrenched racism still prevalent in their
William Wilberforce is held up as a hero of the contemporary antislavery movement, but his legacy is tainted by his participation in government repression and his opposition to labour rights.
Beyond Trafficking and Slavery editors introduce their first themed issue, which explores how slavery and trafficking have been represented—by public officials, activists, and numerous others—and their effect.
