We’ve all heard the numbers: 27 million people are currently slaves around the world. Over 400,000 modern slaves are exploited in the US.
While these numbers are staggering, they only show the surface of a global and pervasive humanitarian challenge: modern-day slavery and human trafficking.
Slavery Today, by Kevin Bales and Becky Cornell, gives a 1,000-foot view of slavery. From the historical beginnings of slavery to modern-day forced labor and exploitation, this book touches on how slavery functions as an economic system. It’s a quick read, but it rounded out my understanding of historical and modern-day slavery as two sides of the same coin.
What makes a slave? Three factors
Bales and Cornell define slavery as, “a social and economic relationship in which a person is controlled through violence or the threat of violence, is paid nothing, and is economically exploited.” Crucially, slavery involves the loss of free will and economic opportunity and independence. This definition applies to both slaves in the 1800s American South and Uighur Muslims held against their will and forced to harvest cotton in 2020.
While slavery can be defined in many ways, Bales and Cornell use this specific definition to apply to slavery both in the past and today.
Globalization has played a role in accelerating slavery
Globalization transformed the nature and form of slavery in the twentieth century. By transcending boundaries, globalization allows corporations to hire and produce anywhere in the world. As a result, slavery is more easily hidden in global supply chains. Products like electronics, clothing, cars, chocolate and jewelry may be produced or assembled by slaves. This begs the question: what is the consumer’s responsibility?
Trafficking and slavery are not the same
Although the terms human trafficking and modern-day slavery are often used interchangeably, they actually refer to slightly different phenomena. While slavery is the situation of being enslaved, as described above, human trafficking is when a person is recruited and transported by force for the purpose of exploitation.
Trafficking occurs from poor to wealthy regions
Around the world, people are generally trafficked from less wealthy to more wealthy regions. For example, the poor of the Philippines may be trafficked to Japan. Within China, people may be trafficked from poorer to wealthier regions of the country.
Slavery is a small part of the global economy
When we heard the estimates of 27 or 40 million slaves around the world today, it’s hard to imagine that contemporary slavery could ever be described as small. But as a segment of the global economy, slavery is just a sliver of overall production—one study estimates that all work done by slaves in the world each year is worth about $13 billion. It seems like a lot of money, but it’s “the same amount that spam emails cost the commercial world each year.” One reason for the low total value of slave labor is the low-value work that they do, such as agriculture and manufacturing.
Boycotts are not the answer
Near the end of the book, Bales and Cornell consider several proposed ways to slavery. For example, many recommend boycotting companies and products that use slavery in their supply chains.
However, Bales and Cornell discourage this approach. Boycotting a good from a certain region will hurt both those who make the good without slave labor and those who make it with slave labor. Those who make the product without slave labor have lower profits because they pay their workers—conversely, those who make the product with slave labor have higher profits because they aren’t paying their workers. A blanket boycott will hurt both types of producers, but it will hurt the producer who doesn’t use slave labor more because that producer started with lower profits.
Effective solutions to modern slavery exist
At the end of Slavery Today, Bales and Cornell discuss the important, although difficult, work of eradicating slavery. It is critical to attack slavery at its source. Freed slaves must be supported so that they can live independently. Much of the work of eradicating slavery is local—we must financially and politically support those who liberate slaves.
In an increasingly globalized economy, it’s more important than ever to pay attention to the connection between business and human rights. Check back in the coming months as I investigate how business violates human rights.
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