This volume started taking shape during the year of the fifth anniversary of the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015, which also coincided with the 20th anniversary of the Palermo Protocol (UNODC, 2000). The Act is the first piece of legislation making use of the term modern slavery, and arguably has contributed to establishing the UK as the leader in what seems to be an irreversible and criticised shift from the human trafficking to the modern slavery paradigm (Bunting and Quirk, 2017; Bravo, 2019; Lazzarino, 2019). Also prompted by this changing context, the editors of this volume felt it was time to take stock of what the landscape of tackling what is now increasingly referred to as the field of modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT) looked like.

With this collaborative book project, the editors aimed to answer a broad range of questions in relation to MSHT. They wanted to gain a better picture of what new interventions were being trialled in policing and policy, including the impact that the UK Act was having in prosecuting traffickers and supporting victims, for example. Other aspects of interest were recruitment upstream in source contexts, and the role of business in tackling exploitation and trafficking along supply chains. The editors also wanted to explore which services were available to survivors, to what extent they were user-centred, and how their effectiveness was evaluated. At the discourse level, the volume wanted to target the role of ideologies, and national and international political agendas in the construction of the problem of MSHT. To this end, the editors decided to structure this work along the journey of victims/ survivors of MSHT, into and within the UK, from recruitment through representation to (re)integration, in diverse fields of trafficking and exploitation, and from an array of disciplines and angles. By offering a plethora of contributions that cover different moments of the victim journey, and doing this from different perspectives, professional roles and positionings, the editors wanted to equip readers with tools to enable them to build up their own, better informed, views of the victim’s journey.

The volume attempts to unpick many of the complexities of MSHT, in the UK and beyond. It brings together expertise from academics, practitioners, and consultants to offer novel insights and grounded suggestions for better public awareness, policies and practices in a diverse and fractured landscape.