Rights as Usual

This blog post by João Victor Gianecchini is part of a Blog Series on Colonization in, of and through Business and Human Rights published on Rights as Usual.  João Victor Gianecchini is a Master’s student at the University of São Paulo (Ribeirão Preto Law School), and Scholarship holder at the Centre for Artificial Intelligence at the University of São Paulo (C4AI/USP).

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Despite the formal abolition of slavery (almost) globally, modern slavery continues to be a deeply rooted social issue worldwide. Data on abusive labour exploitation disclosed by the International Labour Organization, Walk Free Foundation and International Organization for Migration show that approximately 50 million people are trapped in modern slavery worldwide, 17.6 million of those being exploited through the imposition of forced labour in the private economy, tainting worldwide supply chain products with labour victimisation.

In this blog post, I critically discuss the development of an agenda against modern slavery through the lens of a decolonial framework. I will suggest a decolonial critique of modern slavery scholarship (1); and propose a decolonial agenda for addressing modern slavery, focusing on corporate practices deriving from enforced self-regulation, compliance and human rights due diligence (HRDD) in contexts marked by a legacy of social injustice (2).

At first glance those could be thought of as different issues. Nevertheless, current vulnerability, especially in post-colonial societies, is connected to a colonial legacy that cannot be overlooked when one thinks about modern slavery. Taking this context into account, I propose a normative and descriptive turn, shedding light on the maintenance of colonial legacies, expressed through the exploitation of slavery by corporations, as the main causes of the vulnerabilities leading to forced labour, using the Brazilian experience as an example.

Decolonial critique of modern slavery scholarship: the role of race in modern slavery studies

Scholars have identified that anti-slavery initiatives are often ineffective because they lack an understanding of evidenced-based exploitation practices. They do not address the structural origins of exploitation such as historical and cultural problems. As Gurminder Bhambra puts it “without taking the shared colonial past into active consideration, we will not be able to adequately grasp our postcolonial present or account for (and address) the inequalities that structure our shared world”.

Not understanding the colonial legacies and the continuity of exploitation remains a crucial problem today. The continuity of exploitation can be seen in recent initiatives, such as the “Global Slavery Index”, which shows an increase in the number of victims worldwide. It is also evident from the deepening of systemic social injustice, inequality and the heightening of precarious work conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic; and the associated social and economic crisis, as discussed in a 2023 ILO report. The responsibility of businesses for the exploitation of modern slavery can be seen through the data on forced labour prevalence within supply chains, which account for more than half of the workers in this condition.

Not just legislation, but also policy and scholarship have been developed, at first, by the Global North. One of the first and most influential pieces of research on this matter was developed by Kevin Bales. In his book Disposable People, he argues that one of the key differences between ‘new’ and ‘old’ slavery is that where race was significant to the latter, ethnic and racial differences are unimportant or less important in contemporary slavery. As he puts it, “modern slavers are colour-blind”, and the common denominator in vulnerability to slavery today “is poverty, not colour”. But this analysis is debated. As O’Connell Davidson puts it “race vanishes from their analysis of modern slavery”. This leads to the question of whether it is the case that race cannot be considered as a determinant, or an underlying factor responsible for proneness to victimisation. On the other hand, one could also argue for the need of a post-colonial agenda for modern slavery research, one that encompasses a decolonial agenda to provide a research scholarship that encompasses colonial legacies of social injustice.

Proposing a so-called decolonial agenda for modern slavery calls for applying a spectrum of approaches and actions whereby the centre ceases to be the locus of production of ‘truth’— that is knowledge-informed practices. Although race and colour can no longer be seen as determinants of the victim profile, which led to its substitution for poverty as the main cause of modern slavery exploitation, recent literature has challenged this assumption, mainly by questioning the role of racism as an “underlying determinant” responsible for causing socially produced vulnerability to exploitation. To promote a decolonization of modern slavery scholarship should be to think the locus of race in the promotion of vulnerability to exploitation, i.e., the social legacies of colonisation leading to proneness to victimization.

Through a decolonial critique, I aim to challenge Bales’ assumption by using data from Brazil and other contexts. When analysing data from the Brazilian Radar of Contemporary Slavery created by the Secretary of Labor Inspection, we see that almost 70% of the victims rescued by labour inspectors are members of the Afro-Brazilian communities and 15% are immigrants. The great majority of survivors of modern slavery are thus members of ethnic minorities which have been historically vulnerable due to colonial legacies that are still present nowadays. And most importantly, these colonial legacies still influence the maintenance of vulnerable social groups which are more prone to be exploited through the imposition of forced or degrading labour conditions.

While it could be simply viewed as a “reframing” of the modern slavery concept, this critique of the partial rupture between “old” (colonial) and “modern” (contemporary) slavery has its own implications. While in the past countries from the Global North were seen as responsible for slavery and trafficking, recently the normative and policy framework puts blame onto the countries in which this practice is most detected. Not just governments but also international organizations exert pressure through calls for stricter legislation and policies to eradicate the so-called modern slavery.

It is true, however, that more recently the responsibility of corporations for their complicity in human rights violations has gained momentum, mainly since the publication of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights under which, in order to meet the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, companies are meant to conduct risk assessments and human rights due diligence. Recent studies show the complicity of multinational corporations with human rights violations through the creation of business models which rely on the exploitation of forced labour at the bottom of the supply chain. So, it makes sense to ascribe responsibility to corporations situated in the Global North.

A decolonial agenda for addressing modern slavery

In practice, however, these due diligence requirements can harm small businesses from the Global South. They apply to companies located upstream in the supply chain but could create an “overcompliance” issue, leading to the elimination of small but rather sustainable players from the market.

This means that local businesses from the Global South, which can be sustainable and “clean” could struggle to comply with formal requirements deriving from these pieces of legislation, such as the UK Modern Slavery Act, California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, the German Lieferkettengesetz, and possibly the future EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). These could serve, thus, as sources for imposing market domination by large businesses, which are historically involved in complicity scandals involving human rights violations but are also known for investing millions of dollars in compliance expenditures even though there is no evidence that these programs are successful in detecting or reacting to labour and environmental problems in global supply chains. This phenomenon is known as “overcompliance”, which can be used by large and rich corporations to eliminate smaller players which do not possess the same resources to comply with high market self-regulatory arrangements and legislative standards.

A decolonial agenda for addressing modern slavery should use evidence-based practices from the Global South on how to run businesses sustainably, instead of just proposing new market products, such as due diligence requirements, which appear as magical solutions for contemporary problems. Such agenda should consider historical continuities of abuse, the continuum of exploitation and the development of new projects aimed at tackling the root causes of modern slavery.

Multidimensional and cross-sector solutions should pay attention to the legacies of vulnerability to forced labour exploitation, which affects victims and marginalised populations increasing their chances of being trapped in modern slavery. Through this perspective, businesses should not just profit from cheap, precarious labour, but instead help provide conditions for overcoming root causes in the context of exploitation, such as inequality, race or ethnic-based marginalisation, lack of education and high prevalence of informal labour. To eradicate or at least reduce modern slavery exploitation, tackling the colonial legacies should be the priority.