Interrogating the State's Roles in Today's Slaveries

• In Event: 339 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Paper Session. Can Comparative Historical Sociology Save the World? (4) Modern Slavery

Abstract

The state maketh and un-maketh;
It giveth and it taketh away
It makes members and non-members,
Exploiter, exploited, and exploitable
In accordance with law.
And is, itself, exploiter, exploited, and exploitable.
In accordance with law.

Today’s slaveries include, among other forms of exploitation, the trafficking of human beings for labor and sex: child labor and child sexual exploitation, the indentured servitude of adult men and women, and of girls and boys and, in the United States, the post-incarceration in-country exile of citizens convicted of felonies.
In this paper, I contend that the state is no innocent onlooker. Instead, on multiple levels, states participate in and profit from today’s slaveries.
The state’s role arises from, for example, (i) foundational concepts such as doctrines supporting and protecting the sovereignty of state actors (borders, jurisdiction, scope and source of sovereignty); (ii) economic and political policies such as the tension arising from the state’s simultaneous conflicted flirtation with and resistance to globalization; and (iii) organizational principles such as the implementation and policing of the concepts of belonging and non-belonging, among others, provide fertile ground for the development of modern forms of slavery and/or slavery-like exploitation.

Author

• Karen E Bravo, Indiana University