enslaved labor
Coerced unpaid work
Enslaved labor is work performed by people held in bondage—human beings treated as property and forced to work without compensation or choice.
The term emphasizes the condition imposed on the workers rather than defining them by it: The plantation depended on enslaved labor.
It has largely replaced "slave labor" in historical and academic contexts, distinguishing people who were enslaved from slavery as an identity.
- convict leasingHiring out imprisoned people
- chain gangShackled convict work crew
- emancipationRelease from legal bondage
- peonageDebt-based forced labor
- manumissionFormal freeing of enslaved
debt bondage · serfdom · colonialism · plantation economy · Thirteenth Amendment · systemic racism · cotton fields · field hands · abolitionism · caste systems · human dignity · indentured servitude · human rights · freedom papers · forced migration · imperialism · restorative practices · advocacy movements
enslaved laborself-employment
Working for yourself
independent work · voluntary work · entrepreneurship · freelance work
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