modern slavery
Forced labor today
Modern slavery describes forms of severe exploitation where people cannot refuse or leave due to threats, violence, coercion, deception, or abuse of power.
It encompasses human trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage, and forced marriage.
Unlike historical chattel slavery, modern slavery is illegal everywhere but persists covertly: an estimated 50 million people live in modern slavery worldwide.
The term emerged in advocacy and policy contexts to name ongoing practices that, while technically outlawed, replicate slavery's essential features.
- human traffickingCriminal trade in people
- traffickingIllegal transport for profit
- exploitationSelfish use of others
- labor exploitationUnfair treatment of workers
- forced laborCompelled toil, no consent
bondage · servitude · chains · held captive · sweatshop · debt bondage · coercion · captivity · victims · smuggling · brothel · sex trade · wages · invisible · hidden · supply chain · domestic workers · migrants
- human traffickinghuman trafficking, trafficking, traffickers, trafficking victims, victims
- slaverybondage, chattel, thrall, Middle Passage, slaveholders
modern slaveryhistorical slavery
Legal ownership of persons
chattel slavery · transatlantic slave trade · colonial slavery · Roman slavery · serfdom
modern slaverycollective bargaining
Joint worker-employer talks
fair labor · fair employment · voluntary work · fair trade · workers' rights
modern slaveryfreedom
Absence of constraint
liberty · emancipation · liberation · self-determination · autonomy
modern, slavery, modernity, modernism, modernist, modernize, modernization, postmodern, postmodernism