Alternative paths
How we can tackle modern slavery
The organisers of the Business and Modern Slavery Research Conference Dr Mike Rogerson and Professor Robert Caruana share their insights into what governments and organisations can do to end this extreme form of labour exploitation.
What is modern slavery?
Modern slavery can be distinguished from many ‘sweatshop’ and ‘bad labour’ contracts, as a more extreme form of labour exploitation (where typically no labour contract exists). It can commonly involve a range of coercive practices ranging from threats and actual violence to deception, wage theft, dept manipulation, document confiscation and other practices. These all aim to extract very low cost or free labour from vulnerable people or people made vulnerable at specific points (e.g. migration).
Looking at modern slavery through a business and management lens
Modern Slavery is a huge challenge to overcome, with global estimates of up to 50 million people falling victim to it. Through business and management studies we can examine and offer insight into the different business models that modern slavery perpetrators deploy. We can look at how perpetrators move illicit money through the angle of finance and accounting. Human resources management and organisational behaviour researchers can investigate how criminals recruit and deploy ‘workers’. We can find out how slavery practices feature in and around supply chains?
Modern Slavery Research Conference 2024 – why is it important to come together to study modern slavery?
We used the term ‘alternative paths’ in the name of our conference to make a statement about our current observations on the study of modern slavery. First, that the field of business and management, historically silent on the topic of slavery (only a handful of articles until now), has started to actively acknowledge the importance of modern slavery, indicating an alternative path being taken. This captures changes in industry with major corporations and organisations increasingly focused on the challenge that modern slavery presents. Second, our fellow researchers have almost all begun their research journeys in more ‘mainstream’ areas. They have become highly engaged in the challenge of modern slavery, and they have taken an alternative path.
Reaching agreement in a conference with diverse themes
A consensus is getting louder that our research needs to have an impact outside of our circles. Lara Bianchi’s keynote speech stood out for her engagement with people affected by modern slavery. Her research is in the UK agriculture sector, specifically those picking soft fruits such as strawberries in Lincolnshire. As difficult as the research is to conduct, there needs to be more of it. Unfortunately, the structures and institutions around academic researchers do little to promote those kinds of projects. While we still need the “top-down” view of how organisations address modern slavery, we certainly need a lot more of the “bottom-up” research characterised by really understanding what is going on at the heart of the issues. This is underpinned, as Lara emphasised, by the recognition that the subjects of our research are human beings – holders of rights – who should not only be labelled as slaves or victims.
Why is the conference something we wanted to host?
Our Business School has strong recognition by policymakers and non-governmental organisations, in the UK and internationally, for research strengths in sustainability and human rights issues in practical organisational and societal contexts. With landmark legislation such as the UK Modern Slavery Act and the growing ubiquity of corporate modern slavery statements, our niche but expanding global community of researchers has its finger on the pulse of an increasingly salient agenda in business and society. It was a great opportunity for the School to host our gathering and cement itself as one of the few institutions in the world devoted to this area of study.