The Rhetoric of Slavery in the 21st Century

• Author: Paul McDermott - Ciara Herlihy - and Paul Carey
• Pages: 8-33

IRISH JUDICIAL STUDIES JOURNAL

[2019] Irish Judicial Studies Journal Vol 3(2)

8

THE RHETORIC OF SLAVERY IN THE 21ST

CENTURY

Authors: Mr Justice Paul McDermott, Ciara Herlihy, and Paul Carey

Today, it is estimated as many as 27 million people around the world are

victims of modern slavery, what we sometimes call trafficking in persons...I

think labelling this for what it is, slavery, has brought it to another

dimension...When I first used to talk about [trafficking] all those years ago,

I think for a while people wondered whether I was talking about road safety

- what we needed to do to improve transportation systems. But slavery,

there is no mistaking what it is, what it means, what it does.

1

- Hillary Clinton

Introduction

Few words are as evocative and as emotive as slavery. At first thought, the word tends to

conjure images of despairing people shackled on transatlantic ships, or performing back-

breaking work in the heat of the American Deep South. It is a subject matter that has

dominated Hollywood pictures and best seller lists in recent times, and many developed

countries, most notably the United States, are still coming to terms with their involvement

in the brutal practice of slavery.

2

Slavery of the past is a recurring theme in today’s media:

politicians vying for the democratic nomination in the US regularly call for reparations for

the descendants of slaves,

3

and many countries and institutions have ordered inquiries into

how they exploited slave labour for economic or other gain.

4

Slavery is recognised as a

crime against humanity of the highest order, and traditional slavery has today been

abolished in every country in the world, although it was not until 2007 that Mauritania

finally outlawed slavery, making it the last country in the world to do so.

5

In many ways,

the slavery narrative seems confined to the darkest eras of world history.

However, the language of slavery is increasingly being used to describe the plight of

exploited people across the world today. Research supports the surprising fact that there

are more people enslaved today than at any other time in history.

6

It has been calculated

that approximately 13 million people were captured and sold as slaves between the 15th and

19th Centuries; this stands in contrast to the International Labour Organisation’s most

recent estimate that today there are more than 40.3 million people currently living in some

form of modern slavery.

7

Modern slavery takes many forms and covers many industries.

1

‘Release of the 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report’ (US Department of State, 19 June 2012), -

2017.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2012/06/193368.htm> accessed 25 August 2019.

2

Ana Lucia Araujo, Shadows of the Slave Past: Memory, Heritage and Slavery (Routledge 2014).

3

Bhaskar Sunkara, ‘To fight racism, we need to think beyond reparation’ (The Guardian, 28 March 2019)

accessed 25

August 2019.

4

See, for example, Sally Weale, ‘Cambridge university to study how it profited from colonial slavery’ (The Guardian, 30

April 2019) it-profited-

colonial-slavery> accessed 25 August 2019.

5

Siddharth Kara, Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective (Columbia University Press 2017) 7.

6

Patterson & Zhuo however, refute this contention; see article Orlando Patterson & Xiaolin Zhuo, ‘Modern Trafficking,

Slavery and Other Forms of Servitude’ (2018) 44 Annual Review of Sociology 407, 409.

7

‘Global Findings’ (Global Slavery Index 2018) x.org/2018/findings/global-findings/>

accessed 25 August 2019.

IRISH JUDICIAL STUDIES JOURNAL

[2019] Irish Judicial Studies Journal Vol 3(2)

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Slavery in the 21st Century is often divided into subcategories, such as sex trafficking,

labour trafficking, organ trafficking, debt bondage, forced marriage and descent-based (or

hereditary) slavery. Modern slavery has been referred to as having its roots in ‘social and

economic marginalization, and driven by economic factors’, while being ‘pervasive, hidden

– and all too often accepted’.

8

Cockayne and co note that the ‘central characteristic of

slavery is the exercise by one person over another of powers attaching to the right of

ownership’, with ‘chattel slaves’ being ‘owned entirely by their slave-masters, their legal

personhood entirely commodified’.8 Chattel slavery’ is so named as slaves were treated by

their owners as mere possessions which they could sell or transfer to others. Thus for

several centuries the ‘property paradigm’ was used to ‘understand the slave–master

relationship in law’.

9

In the modern context, it has been observed that the circumstances are crucial in order to

identify whether the person is enslaved, such as the restriction on the person’s freedom of

movement, the control of the individual’s personal belongings, and the relationship

between the parties, and threats of violence are often involved.

10

Modern slavery is in part

driven by a demand for cheap labour:

High labour supply in some economies encourages a view of labour as

‘disposable’, leading some employers to think that investment in human

capital is unnecessary, encouraging coercion and exploitation. Transnational

companies rely on the disarticulation of the supply chain to insulate

consumers, and themselves, from the role of slavery in the production of

consumer goods.... Modern slavery is thought to generate some $150 billion

annually in profits to those relying upon it. Moreover, as poor and

marginalized communities in developing countries with growing labour

forces are integrated into global markets, the price of slaves may actually be

falling.

11

That mass exploitation of vulnerable people exists in every corner of the globe today is

disputed by few. From a situation in the 1980s where few non-experts were aware that

forms of slavery still exist, we have moved on to a stage where most accept that slavery is a

pressing global problem. The language and terminology appropriate for this crisis is,

however, a topic of much debate. Organisations such as Anti-Slavery International and

Free the Slaves view slavery as an overarching concept within which subcategories can be

identified. Some view the use of the term slavery merely as a rhetorical addendum to

emphasise the severity of other crimes, such as human trafficking, rather than as an

independent category. Others entirely reject the use of the term slavery in a 21st Century

context, except perhaps where it relates to those situations where traditional or chattel

slavery is still on-going. However, while jurists and scholars go to great lengths to analyse

the use of language, the media and some activists are rarely concerned with legal

distinctions when using the term ‘modern slavery’. This paper sets out to explore the

tension between the modern concept of slavery and its traditional definitions. It will first

briefly consider slavery throughout the human experience and how traditional slavery

differs from how it exists today. It will then look at the language used in international and

8

James Cockayne, Nick Grono, Kari Panaccione, ‘Introduction to Special Issue Slavery and the Limits of International

Criminal Justice’ (2016) 14 (2) Journal of International Criminal Justice 253.

9

ibid.

10

Davis Weissbrodt and Anti-Slavery International, ‘Abolishing Slavery and its Contemporary Forms’ (HR/PUB/02/4,

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

2002) accessed 25 August 2019, 7.

11

Cockayne (n 8).