Week 1: Introducing the global challenge of forced and precarious labour

Modern slavery has recently emerged as a major source of popular fascination and political preoccupation. This rapid promotion to the front ranks of global conversations regarding exploitation has had profound consequences. Not all of these consequences have been positive or desirable. High profile campaigns against ‘modern slavery’ typically focus upon a relatively small number of ‘aberrant’ and ‘exceptional’ cases, which are assumed to stand apart from other ‘lesser’ abuses or ‘normal’ practices. This separation between the ‘exceptional’ and ‘everyday’ is central to the appeal of modern slavery as a political cause, because it concentrates attention on individual cases of the ‘worst of the worst’. Governments and corporations feel comfortable supporting campaigns against exceptional cases of modern slavery – rather than broader campaigns for migrant or workers’ rights – because this focus on exceptional cases effectively pushes larger global systems of exploitation, violence, discrimination and privilege into the background.

It is for this reason that someone like Ivanka Trump, whose ‘Trump’ branded products are made by precarious and vulnerable workers in places such as Indonesia, feels entirely comfortable denouncing modern slavery and human trafficking as an ‘ugly stain on civilisation.’ The ‘stain’ of modern slavery does not directly challenge the systems of labour exploitation that generate tremendous profits for the Trump brand. Targeting exceptional cases is not only very difficult in practical terms, it also tends to create an informal separation between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ cases. When slavery is the threshold against which all other categories of labour are measured, then systems of exploitation viewed as ‘bad but not all that bad’ may appear as unremarkable or even desirable. There are currently hundreds of millions of ‘free’ labourers across the globe who routinely endure terrible wages, precarious conditions, unsafe and unhealthy workspaces, sexual harassment and assault, and bullying and abuse. They may well be formally ‘free’ to leave, in the sense that they can quit their jobs and seek other options, but their precarious status is nonetheless likely to make it very risky for them to quit, and their alternative options may be no better. Despite their predicament, campaigns against modern slavery tend to exclude precarious ‘free’ labourers from their orbit of concern.

Both migrants and workers are widely understood to be deserving of certain types of rights. However, there remains significant disagreement regarding what those rights look like. On the one hand, we have the argument that all migrants deserve protections as migrants, and that all workers deserve protections as workers. On the other, we have the argument that there are some migrants and workers – usually a much smaller subcategory – who should be the focus of protection efforts. Campaigns against modern slavery specifically target some workers and migrants as deserving of protection: those who are forced to work, or to continue to work. The much larger group of precarious workers who do not meet this threshold are left out of the equation. And since these thresholds are hard to satisfy, the vast majority of migrants and workers get pushed to the margins.

This selective focus upon a small number of migrants and workers has been crucial to the overall fortunes of ‘modern slavery’ as a political cause. Governments and corporations who would be challenged by political campaigns seeking adequate protections for all vulnerable migrants and workers have determined that there are all kinds of political advantages to specifically focusing upon a much smaller number of individual cases of exceptional abuse: ‘modern slavery’. This is why campaigns targeting modern slavery have flourished at a time when governments have become increasingly hostile to migrants, and have greatly reduced their commitments to protecting workers, thereby further strengthening the power of corporations over workers.

Campaigns targeting modern slavery have flourished at a time when governments have become increasingly hostile to migrants.

This course aims to do things differently. Rather than focusing on individual criminals or ‘bad apple’ employers, we are instead interested in exploring how and why systems of labour exploitation operate, and what strategies are likely to be most effective in changing their overall design. Instead of concentrating our energies upon a subcategory within a larger population, this course is more interested in reflecting upon the rights and protections enjoyed by all migrant workers, sex workers, supply chain workers, and other workers. It is for this reason that we have structured this course around the central theme of forced and precarious labour in the global economy, since this larger canvas directs our attention towards the broader legal, political, economic and social systems which create conditions that enable and encourage patterns of labour exploitation and abuse. This means focusing upon issues such as ‘governance gaps’ in making supply chain workers vulnerable, the role of tied visas in making migrant workers vulnerable, and the role of laws which criminalise commercial sex in making sex workers vulnerable.

It is also important to emphasise that the course does not include all of the ever increasing number of practices which have recently been defined as forms of modern slavery or human trafficking. This is mostly for practical reasons. We cannot cover everything in an introductory course of this type, so a decision has been taken to specifically focus on key examples of global labour systems. We do not engage with other practices such as wartime abductions, forced marriage, or organ trafficking. We also do not specifically address questions relating to child labour, since this would require a new conversation which would further expand upon a curriculum that already covers a great deal of ground. Unless otherwise indicated, the primary focus here is adult workers.

The classroom