(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
"If you have a moment, I would like to tell you a little about how you can help hungry children in Africa." Such statements were phased – before the pandemic, of course – sent in the city with in the big cities of the rich countries. And how can you say no to that? No, I do not want to help hungry children in Africa. I do not even want to hear about it, not even for a moment.
On the other hand, it takes more than a moment to explain why one does not want to help support an (i) NGO industry that makes a living by educating people that children stop starving in Africa, if only there were enough kind-hearted people in the rich countries who got themselves a sponsor child.
This is roughly how the narrative of modern slavery works. Slavery, we do not like that. Then there is a shift across political wings, across bargaining tables between unions and employers, while rich philanthropists and media companies make their megaphones available for anti-slavery campaigns, and new (i) NGOs, institutions, government units and action plans emerge .
In these years, in fact, there is such a widespread consensus that modern slavery, human trafficking and forced labor must be fought by every conceivable means that it is a true mystery that the phenomenon, according to even the same popular front, is just growing and growing.
Their own nonsense
This mystery has Emily Kenway set out to solve for the gaping public in the book The Truth About Modern Slavery, which she opens with this finding: “Modern slavery is not what you think. That's not what governments and companies say it is. And that's especially not what most media outlets make it look like. "
Et continuum of different forms and degrees of exploitation.
Kenway, who writes for various media and calls himself an "activist", has previously worked for the British Anti-Slavery Commissioner in the UK. If you have any doubts about how far this corner of the rescue industry has already driven it, you can start by chewing a little on the description of The Anti-Slavery Commissioners' "advisory panel" which appears on their website. This panel is namely «a diverse set of experts from the modern slavery sector and beyond». "Modern slavery sector"? And "beyond"? Sometimes one can really wonder that people who sit and formulate that kind of thing do not stumble over their own nonsense at all.
But Kenway at one point began to wonder. Over this loose concept universe. Over the distance between the perception of reality in the rescue industry and the people it wants to save. Over the numbers being tossed around in the echo chamber of the modern slavery sectors.
«1 in 200 people are slaves», as stated in a headline in The Guardian in 2019 – without it being clear that what The Guardian referred to as «numbers» did not really cover any kind of counting in the concrete meaning of the word.
Giant umbrella
As Kenway notes, 'modern slavery' is a concept that is in itself completely unrelated to both law and statistical categories. It's a giant umbrella that describes a wealth of forms of exploitation – and it's not even the biggest problem.
The biggest problem is that the narrative of modern slavery identifies some people as victims who "do not see themselves as such, but rather perceive themselves as people who practice rational survival strategies": that the symbolic fences companies set up around 'forced labor' hides the fact that working conditions under the current economic system take place on a continuum of different forms and degrees of exploitation – that the politicians who are fighting for the fight against modern slavery at the same time are fighting for the right of people to organize themselves independently for better working conditions.
Kenway in no way belittles the fact that there are people – many people – living in unacceptable conditions in every way. That there are people who find themselves in such a vulnerable situation that their opportunities to shield themselves from the violence of others are vanishingly few. What she doubts is that the so-called struggle against modern slavery is somehow changing that reality.
As an introduction to his skin braiding of the narrative of modern slavery, Kenway also states why the conceptual reference to historical slavery is in every way misleading:
Labor
«Prohibition [against slavery] overturned one legal trade with people and it legal right to own others. What was not prohibited, however, were 'situations of exploitation in which a person could not refuse or withdraw from exploitation due to threats, violence, coercion, deception or abuse of power' "- But the prohibition of slavery created exactly the conditions for it – with the problem of how the need of cheap labor for the Cholinean powers could be met.
The so-called struggle against modern slavery in any way changes that reality.
It is the system's continuous attempt to solve this problem that we are still struggling with throughout the labor market – and which manifests itself in various forms of exploitation, the degree of cruelty of which depends first and foremost on how far different groups of people can be squeezed out of their other circumstances.
