Examining The Continued Practice and Impact of Modern-day Slavery

Slavery. Depictions of shackles, ships and old time movies come to mind but the truth is it did not end with the abolition during the 19th century. Rather, it developed and changed forms to allow for its harmful continuation. According to statistics released by the UN’s International Labour Organisation, it is estimated that 40.3 million people are living in some degree of modern slavery. The modern world proposes modern problems requiring modern solutions and often these solutions can be found in the opposite ends of the world in the form of cheap, often child labour.

Today, slavery is rife with links to developed powerhouses of the world with child labour and exploitation scandals plaguing both the industry and fashion field. Late August, 2019, Amazon was under fire after leaked documents showed China’s infamous Foxconn to be recruiting school children to work in factories to produce Amazon’s Alexa devices. The children were drafted from local schools as “interns” with school staff being paid to accompany them to pressure the children to take on more work. When confronted, Foxconn - who also supply Apple with their iPhones, Sony with their Playstations and assemble PCs for industry giants Dell and Acer, admitted to employing school children to work night shifts as well as overtime to meet exacting targets for Amazon’s smart-speaker products.

With increasing globalisation and climate change, more and more people are leaving their homes in order to source a better future for themselves and their families. On arrival, they are often treated as second class citizens; many unable to work legally or have no right to legally leave their employers, even in abusive situations. Many migrants are unable to speak the language and have no one offering any support. All of this makes them perfect targets for traffickers. In order to reduce slavery and the way it preys on vulnerable individuals, we must change the overwhelmingly negative attitude towards migrants.

The majority of individuals enslaved work in the private sector. They clean our homes, produce our clothes, harvest our produce and work in construction. An estimated 4.9 million people of people forced into labour are sexually exploited.

Slavery is a disgustingly profitable business. Annual figures suggest slavery generates around £120 billion in profits, and of that around £37.5 billion is generated in developed countries, including the EU. Modern migration allows for a steady stream of accessible, naive people to be preyed on by global supply chains in major industries.

Slavery expert Siddharth Kara believes that modern day slave traders earn up to 30 times more than 18th and 19th century slave owners would. Kara estimates the price of a slave to be around $450. A forced labourer can generate $8,000 in annual profit for exploiters, while sex traffickers earn an average of $36,000 per victim annually.