‘Modern slavery’ describes various forms of severe relational labour exploitation. In the realm of global value chains and global factories that are led by multinational enterprises, modern slavery encompasses practices such as forced labour and debt bondage. Multinational enterprises organise and orchestrate global value chains into global factories that are highly adaptive to market pressures and changes in the external environment. We employ the global factory framework to conceptualise when and how global value chains become more vulnerable to modern slavery. We argue that combinations of the three global value chain characteristics: complexity, appropriation arrangements, and obligation cascadence, jointly form an environment in which modern slavery can evolve and take root. The degree to which forms of modern slavery become visible and recognisable depends on the particular combination of these characteristics. External factors can moderate the relationship between these factors (e.g. involvement of non-governmental organisations) or exaggerate their effect (e.g. a pandemic).

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The business and human rights agenda is gaining momentum internationally, perhaps best evidenced through recent legislative responses to tackling modern slavery. Using a reflexive law lens, we analyse three recent laws – the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015, the French ‘duty of vigilance’ law of 2017, and the Australian Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth). The three laws, or their accompanying guidance, share characteristics in terms of reporting requirements: the supply chain; risk mapping/assessment and management; analysis of subsidiary and supply chain risk; and effectiveness. The French Act has a broader scope as it is a due diligence, rather than a reporting law and includes obligations with regard to human rights and fundamental freedoms, health and safety, and the environment. It is the only Act of the three with substantive penalty provisions. All reporting requirements in the French and Australian Acts are mandatory, but the UK Act has limited mandatory reporting requirements. We find that only 22 companies globally will be required to report under all three laws. Using a subset of this dataset, we analysed 59 French vigilance plans and UK modern slavery statements published by nine manufacturing companies. This provided some preliminary analysis of how businesses have reported under the French Droit de Vigilance and the UK Modern Slavery Act (reports under the Australian Modern Slavery Act for these companies were not published at time of writing). Overall, businesses are using less demanding measures such as introducing policies and delivering training more commonly than the somewhat more resource-intensive activities such as audits. The more onerous requirements of the French law were reflected in the content and level of detail in the vigilance plans, compared with the UK modern slavery statements. However, for some companies, there were strong similarities between the UK and French publications, indicating ‘creep’ from the French Act into UK reports or a ‘race to the top’.

Policy-making in the European Community in the area of education for migrants is driven by two conflicting pressures. On one side, the principle of effectiveness requires that the rights of free movement within the Community be supported by the best possible education for the children of migrants. However, on the other side is the importance of primary education to the member States as a political and cultural matter. This pressure is reinforced by the principle of subsidiarity. Member States have been relatively willing to support co-operative action by the Community in the area of higher education, such as in the ERASMUS exchange programmes. However, member States have been active in protecting their jurisdiction over education policy, particularly at the primary and secondary levels. As result, Community laws protecting the education rights of migrants have been most effective where two factors are present: first, that the rules are closely attached to the rights of free movement within the single market; and second, that the rules interfere as little as possible with substantive education policy. The first factor constitutes a significant weakness in Community education rights because it has created a distinction between Community migrants and those from third countries. The second factor has meant that the only Community policy on the education of migrants which could be described as an education right is the guarantee of equality of access to education within a member State.