Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time in the making. I started thinking and writing about the relationship between unfree labour and modern slavery in 2013 when I moved to the United Kingdom. My initial focus was on how different forms of unfree labour and labour exploitation came to be seen as modern slavery. But I hit an impasse. As a feminist who studies what the law treats as labour, I felt it was incumbent on me to address sex work and its relationship to unfree labour and modern slavery. But most of the literature on human trafficking and modern slavery treats labour and sexual exploitation separately even though many forms of work are exploitative, and gendered forms of exploitation – which include sexual violence and harassment – permeate many occupations. My challenge was to find a way to discuss sexual and labour exploitation and the different governance strategies associated with them without either treating them as essentially different or becoming mired in an unhelpful debate about whether commercial sex work is exploitative. It took me a while to figure my way out of this deadlock, which I did by treating the distinction between labour and sexual exploitation as an artefact of law and governance. This solution gave me the clue to approaching modern slavery as a construct of law and governance – hence the title of this book.
Having written a book about how ‘modern slavery’ was constructed, it is obvious that I think words and terminology matter. Thus, I want to explain my decision to use the term ‘victim’ of trafficking instead of ‘survivor’, ‘illegal’ migrant rather than ‘undocumented’, and both ‘sex work’ and ‘prostitution’ to describe the sale of sexual services. I borrowed the terms used in the legal and political debates and legal instruments I examined. My goal was to put them in their context and explore their meaning in that context.
During the book’s lengthy gestation, I had the good fortune to discuss some of my ideas with a great many people, who I would like to thank. I enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with Kendra Strauss, a feminist geographer, using the concept of legal jurisdiction in combination with feminist political economy to explain how characterising migrant domestic workers’ unfreedom in the United Kingdom as modern slavery resulted, paradoxically, in more restrictive visa conditions and constraints on their freedom. Working at Kent Law School between 2013 and 2018 not only introduced me to the concept of ‘modern slavery’ but helped to shape my approach to the topic. I benefited from a lively and convivial group of sociolegal scholars interested in critical theory, feminism, and political economy. I owe them a debt of gratitude for reminding me that theory matters and how to do it clearly.
I worked out some of my ideas in early articles, chapters, briefs, blog posts, and presentations. I am very grateful to the individuals and institutions who gave me an opportunity to discuss my ideas and receive extremely useful feedback. I want to thank: Prabha Kotiswaran for inviting me to contribute to an international workshop on ‘Shaping the Definition of Trafficking in the Palermo Protocol’ at King’s College London in May 2014; Johanna Howe and Rosemary Owens for their invitation to participate in the workshop ‘Temporary Labour Migration in the Global Era; The Regulatory Challenges’, which was held at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Oñati, Spain, in June 2015; Ruth Dukes for including me in a workshop on ‘Labour Laws and Labour Markets: New Methodologies’ at the University of Glasgow in November 2016; Amir Fuchs for inviting me to present at the workshop for the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society held at Wolfson College, Oxford, in March 2017; Bernard Ryan for his invitation to participate in a workshop on the nexus between immigration and labour law at the University of Leicester in September 2017; Karin Engels for inviting me to present my work at the Rapoport Centre for Human Rights, University of Texas, Austin, in October 2017; and Eva Kocher and the B/orders in Motion Research Factory for inviting me to share my work in progress at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt, (Oder), Germany, in January 2018. I also had the pleasure of learning about unfree labour from an amazing group of scholars from a variety of disciplines at Re:work: Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History, an international research centre at Humboldt University, where I was the guest of the director, Andreas Ecker, from December 2017 to July 2018. These conversations provided intellectual camaraderie and inspiration.
When I returned to Canada in 2018, I took up a position in the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University, which challenged me to be truly transdisciplinary and explain my ideas about law to people interested in labour who did not have legal training. I am grateful to my McMaster graduate students for their contributions in the various iterations of my unfree labour course, and the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) Enrico Henry Mancinelli Chair of Global Labour Issues for financial support and research time.
I want to give special thanks to the colleagues and institutions that invited me to present the first two chapters and part of the conclusion of the book: the Graduate Student Organizing Committee for inviting me to speak at the conference, ‘Mapping the Global Dimensions of Policy’ at McMaster University, Hamilton, in March 2019; Beth Gaze and Joo-Cheong Tham for asking me to present a seminar to the Melbourne Centre of Employment and Labour Rights at Melbourne Law School, in May 2019; Raphael Gomez for inviting me to give the Sefton-Williams Annual Lecture, Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management and Woodsworth College, University of Toronto, in March 2019; Guy Mundlak and Hila Shamir for asking me to present my work in progress to their advanced labour law seminar at Tel Aviv Law School in November 2020; Liz Oliver and Kate Hardy for their invitation to give a seminar to the Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change, Leeds Business School, in December 2020; and Rianne Mahon for her invitation to present to the Gender and Governance Group at Carleton University, Ottawa, in May 2021. These different audiences, with different interests and drawn from different disciplines, forced me to be clear about my arguments and analysis. I am also very grateful to Oxford University Press for allowing me to republish a revised version of ‘Bad for business: The construction of modern slavery and the reconfiguration of sovereignty’ initially published in London Review of International Law (Vol. 10, Issue 1, March 2022, 3–31) as Chapter 2 of this book.
Writing is an engaging, but lonely endeavour. Leila Kawar, Rianne Mahon, and Tony Porter, who read and gave me comments on earlier drafts of the Introduction and Chapter 1, deserve a special thanks as they had to wade through inchoate ideas. Lesley Erikson, a fantastic editor, gave me great advice about what to cut and how to make this book more readable and Lisa Fedorak provided a very helpful index. Judith Onwubiko, Moritz Neugebauer, Jonelle Humphrey, and Siena Mcilwraith-Fraticelli provided helpful research and good cheer along the way. Tobias Ginsberg and Gemma Smith of Cambridge University Press helpfully navigated this book through the publication process. I would also like to thank the many individuals in the United Kingdom who I interviewed for this project. Although I did not quote or name you, you offered me your insights and provided me with leads. Thank you for being generous with your time.
Three friends in particular deserve special acknowledgement for not letting me drop this book when it was tempting to do so: Anna Konik, Guy Mundlak, and Susan Russell. And finally, I would like to acknowledge and thank Millie and Bern Fudge, my parents, who cultivated an environment in which I was free to pursue what was meaningful to me and Ken Massicotte, my fellow traveller, for his company on that journey.
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