Racial Capitalism and the Contemporary International Law on Slavery: (Re)membering Hacienda Brasil Verde

Abstract

Refusal of abject commodification undergirds contemporary international law definitions of slavery and their growing linkage to international economic agreements through injunctions against the use of forced labor. Yet there are screaming silences in ongoing attempts to grapple with the prevalence and significance of contemporary slavery in the global economy. This contribution to the special issue on racial capitalism in international economic law calls for a reckoning with the past in the international law on contemporary slavery. By foregrounding resistances to erasure, and squarely addressing the significance of race to the perpetuation of slavery, this article seeks to harness their promise for a reconstruction of a contemporary law of slavery that understands racialization as offering an essential social justice challenge to the decommodification of labor.