Facing the folk devils of modern slavery policy

Abstract

Much British crime and immigration policy over the last decade has been justified as a response to the problem of modern slavery perpetrated by ‘evil’ foreign national organised criminals profiting from the exploitation of vulnerable people. Social scientists, by contrast, have drawn attention to the hallmarks of a moral panic. We report here on findings of the first interview-based study of modern slavery offenders in the UK. Our findings reveal a diversity of motives among a disparate sample, only a minority of whom profited substantially from crimes organised internationally by illicit enterprises. Few participants bore much resemblance to the folk devil politicians have evoked to obscure the social, legal, and political factors that render some of the world's most destitute people vulnerable to severe exploitation when their rights are no longer fully protected by Western governments.