Conference Agenda

Trafficking/modern slavery operates at the intersection of the economy and coercion. The theorization of trafficking chains developed in this book centers on how trafficking/modern slavery is driven by a search for profits, value, and material benefits through the coercive exploitation of the vulnerability of others. Yet, trafficking/modern slavery is not an outcome of capitalism alone but depends on situations of vulnerability that are systematically structured by colonial and gendered inequalities. The analyses show how trafficking/modern slavery has been made a crime under international law but argues that the regulation of the economy is critically important. Thus, eradicating trafficking/modern slavery depends on bodies of law other than the criminal, the drive for more sustainable models of development and the deepening of democratic institutions, especially welfare and human rights. Society as a whole – economy, violence, polity, and civil society – creates the situations of vulnerability that are exploited, so interventions need to be wide-ranging and comprehensive. The most important of these sites of intervention into trafficking/modern slavery is that of third-party profit-taking. Covering theory, law, available data and the urgent need to improve it, the book outlines in detail the policy fields and pathways that address the root cause of trafficking/modern slavery and illustrates these in a detailed analysis of sexual exploitation, the form of trafficking that most affects women and girls, as well as large proportions of migrants from lower income countries. An important theme developed throughout the book is how the alternative forms of modernity – social democratic, neoliberal, authoritarian – provide different contexts and opportunities for exploitation, situations of vulnerability, and interventions. Trafficking/modern slavery has been at the center of polarised debates in migration and gender studies. This book is a contribution to moving beyond these debates, to engage in a comprehensive analysis that neither sees criminal justice as the solution or as a distraction, but a necessary component if proportional and directed specifically at profit-takers.