This chapter focuses on the nebulous boundary between acceptable and unacceptable (that is, exploitative) work-based control. Along this boundary one must ask a number of questions in order to attempt to gain some definitional clarity. There are at least five key questions: 1) Is there evidence of workers consenting to exploitative or harmful employment, and does this consent matter?; 2) Is there evidence of ‘decent quality’ employment?; 3) Is there evidence of harm?; 4) Is there evidence of knowledge, intent or motives underpinning exploitation and harm?; 5) Is there evidence of exemptions, rendering exploitation and harm acceptable, and how are these justified?

Evidence of worker consent?

A focus on the labour exploitation continuum (as outlined in Chapter Two) moves one away from coerced labour to focus on various forms of work-based control (as reviewed in Chapters Four, Five and Six). This shift calls into question the idea that the presence of worker consent is enough to make exploitation and harm acceptable. As Barrientos et al (2013, 1039) argue:

The key task, given the above, is to therefore investigate the nature of consent and the blurring of the voluntary/involuntary divide. This is central both to understanding when control becomes excessive and oppressive and to understanding why workers apparently accept, and even knowingly enter, exploitative and harmful relationships.

The ILO, via its definition of forced labour (see Chapter Two), acknowledges that ambiguity exists even in relation to the idea of ‘force’. Force is not just about one being coerced at the point of entry into a particular set of working conditions but involves ‘the menace of any penalty’ (ILO Convention Number 29, 1930) and the involuntary offer of labour that may result from this. Thus, the line between free and unfree labour is blurred by the ILO, even in relation to the relatively tightly defined criminal–legal concept of forced labour.