Maintaining coloniality through capitalism: benevolent state-corporate interventions in modern slavery to protract colonial status quo

This article focuses on state and corporate “benevolence” in modern slavery as a form of coloniality through capitalism. This colonial/capitalist exploitation consents the (re)enactment of the status quo on the Global South by the Global North (here specified as West/North). This colonial/capitalist lens is deployed to explore the coloniality of modern slavery in its “knowledge construction” of what modern slavery acts are defined under criminal law and what is defined under administrative law. Through shaping and controlling knowledge/understanding of what is/is not modern slavery, and how best to act on it, states and corporations in the West/North can appear benevolent all while framing what criminality means in this context. Ultimately, this benevolence serves to maintain the status quo, and thus, its ongoing state-corporate harms.