Modern Slavery: The Harms of State-Corporate Benevolence and the Role of Academic Activism

This chapter approaches modern slavery from the perspectives of critical criminology, state-corporate harm, and academic activism. The modern slavery literature is dominated by accounts that center on individual “traffickers” or organized crime “rings” or “gangs” operating in the “informal” economy and outside the public and private sector. This focus distorts the discourse on modern slavery by failing to acknowledge the role of states and corporations in its production. This chapter conceives modern slavery as a product of harmful state-corporate practices. In terms of the state, such harm occurs through states’ active facilitation of coloniality/(neoliberal) capitalism, failure to develop and enforce laws (especially when penalties are available and violations are proven), and use of such laws to (re)frame themselves and corporations as “benevolent”—as morally good and leading the effort to “end” modern slavery. As a result of this state work, corporations, in turn, profit from the manufacture and sale of goods produced through modern slavery with impunity. By examining this often overlooked “symbiotic” interaction between states and corporations, we re-center the discussion on modern slavery to identify where the harms of large-scale exploitation truly lie. The chapter adds to the existing literature by placing the harms produced by the state-corporate relationship at the center of modern slavery.