Modern Slavery in the Global Economy

Abstract

This chapter seeks to clarify the most relevant tensions at stake in the notion of “modern slavery,” considering it less as a discrete set of phenomena than as a controversy around the legitimate modes of perception and representation of various practices of human bondage and exploitation in the global economy. The first section presents the main conceptual steps taken from the abolition of chattel slavery to the umbrella term “modern slavery”; the second section presents an immanent critique of the ongoing classification struggles around “modern slavery”; the third and final section considers the so-called “root causes” and their frameworks.