Coerced, Forced and Unfree Labour: Geographies of Exploitation in Contemporary Labour Markets

Abstract

This paper examines approaches, both within geography and more broadly, to the issue of forced labour in contemporary labour markets. Far from a vestige of pre‐capitalist social relations, unfree labour is part of the continuum of exploitation that is intrinsically related the contradictory nature of commodification and to capital as a social relation. The paper focuses on the UK, but draws attention to the ways in which relations of unfreedom in the new global division of labour dissolve clear‐cut distinctions between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ nations. The first section focuses on definitions and approaches, including those related to migration and trafficking, from supra‐national organisations such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The second section looks at geographical approaches to forced labour and examines what a spatially grounded framework can bring to analyses of unfreedom. The conclusion suggests future directions for geographical research on unfree labour, especially relating to the undertheorised relations between unfreedom, domestic labour and social reproduction.

New Zealand's turbulent waters: the use of forced labour in the fishing industry

“…According to the ILO (2013), trafficking can occur for the purpose of forced labour. Strauss (2012) positions forced labour as a subset of unfree labour. Lerche (2007: 430) issues a caution about conflating the terms human trafficking and forced labour, for it 'tends to take away the focus from the incidence of forced labour among non-trafficked migrants'.…”

“…McGrath (2013McGrath ( : 1006 suggests that each term in reality 'represents a multi-dimensional concept' and that we should approach them all in this way. While, we use the term unfree labour as an encompassing category (Strauss 2012), we use 'trafficking for forced labour' specifically to operationalize the category's core set of practices, as the ILO/EC indicators propose.…”

“…Globalization has both required and facilitated a restructuring of labour markets (Phillips and Sakamoto 2012), leading to the creation of flexible labour markets in which the distinction between developed and developing markets is progressively blurred (Strauss 2012). In the last decades of the twentieth century, manufacturers and producers in many developed countries began to reverse the longterm trend towards vertical integration and turned to outsourcing some or even all of their production.…”

“…Lerche (2007) highlights the need to 'acknowledge the fluidity of actually occurring levels of unfreedom' within labour chains. Increasingly, researchers are beginning to explore the nuances of 'free' versus 'unfree' labour and the different forms that 'unfreedom' can take Bastia and McGrath 2011;Lerche 2007;Skeldon 2011;Strauss 2012). Workers may in fact enter into unfree employment voluntarily, but then find that they lack the agency to withdraw from it (Skeldon 2011).…”

Beyond Liberalism: Marxist Feminism, Migrant Sex Work, and Labour Unfreedom

“…These macro forces mediate micro relations of coercion, abuse, and exploitation in the migration and labour process, and in the lives of migrants more generally. Whereas the classical liberal approach defines unfree labour as extreme instances of coercion and abuse at the micro level of the workplace, this Marxist feminist approach traces the connections between a whole range of troubling workplace practices and experiences that are constituted by, and constitutive of, broader macro forces and relations (see also LeBaron 2015;Strauss 2012). In contrast to the classical liberal tradition, then, unfreedom is not incidental to capitalism (Banaji 2003).…”