Despite international instruments on trafficking and forced labour that stipulate the importance of ensuring rightsholders can access effective remedy, instances of remediation for harms including forced, bonded, and child labour, as well as trafficking, have been rare. While remedy is also a common feature of strategies to address modern slavery adopted by nation states and multinational businesses, in practice workers who have been subject to severe forms of labour exploitation in global value chains (GVCs) continue to face significant obstacles to securing redress from those who have violated, or contributed to violation, of their rights.

Obstacles to remedy are multifarious and well-documented (OHCHR, 2016; ICAR et al., 2013). GVCs are complex, involving multiple actors and crossing multiple jurisdictions, rendering it challenging to assign accountability and secure appropriate remedial measures, and most legal systems have not adapted to the reality of service and production within GVCs. Even where powerful (‘lead’) companies in the value chain shape the terms of supply and working conditions and are in the same jurisdiction in which the harm arising from their actions or omissions has occurred, remedial action is often stymied by labour law systems that only allow claims against direct employers. Where claims of joint employment or accessorial liability are possible under labour law, such claims are infrequent because of the stringency of tests of control or contribution, and the costs of such litigation (Marshall et al., 2023). In rare cases where litigants are successful in their legal claims, they often struggle to secure enforcement of any court order. Where the lead company that is influencing working conditions in the value chain is in another jurisdiction to where the harm has occurred, the chances of such claims succeeding are even lower (Fudge and Mundlak, 2023). Key principles underpinning private international law – such as those pertaining to jurisdiction and choice of law – largely operate to the benefit of businesses rather than those affected by their activities.

Chapter 5 shifts focus to the impacts of the regime complex – particularly financial and technical assistance (utility modifier and capacity-building mechanisms) coupled with policy advising (social learning mechanism) – on the removal of barriers to geothermal development in Indonesia. The chapter provides a political economy analysis of the domestic actors and interests involved in the energy sector in Indonesia, and then recounts the history of geothermal development in Indonesia with a focus on the impacts of the clean energy regime complex on the dynamics of barriers to geothermal development. This analysis reveals that the clean energy regime complex, through financial and technical assistance combined with policy advising, is critical to impacting geothermal development in Indonesia by filling gaps in financing for high-risk exploration and early-stage development. This chapter provides insights on how the regime complex impacted domestic politics and geothermal barriers despite the absence of a legally binding framework. It also sheds light on the narrow pathway of change in the face of domestic political barriers and energy security concerns affecting political will.

The construction sector holds great economic importance worldwide. It is recognized as the ‘biggest non-agricultural industry in the capitalist world’ (Srivastava and Sutradhar, 2016: 2). It stands as the foremost consumer of raw materials globally, and it was forecast to achieve growth of 4.2 per cent annually from 2018 to 2023 in terms of market value (Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition and International Finance Corporation, 2018). Furthermore, its interdependence with various sub-sectors – such as cement, iron, steel, and brick production, and service sectors such as education, finance, or health – makes it an important part of numerous global value chains (GVCs). Indeed, major construction companies often serve as lead firms in both product value chains and human supply chains (Gordon, 2017; Crane et al., 2019; Barkay et al., 2024).

This interdependence between the construction sector and numerous sub-sectors involves both vertical and horizontal intersections within diverse value chains. The scale of the processes, phases, and stakeholders involved in the construction process within these diverse value chains – such as design, production, conversion of raw materials into manufactured products, and on-site construction – highlights the sector's economic significance (Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition and International Finance Corporation, 2018: 2). Nevertheless, the sheer number of processes, combined with ‘the fixed-term, project-based nature of relationships along the supply chain’ contributes to a highly fragmented and multi-tiered structure in the sector (Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition and International Finance Corporation, 2018: 2). Construction projects are not only characterized by significant variability in type and scale, ranging from buildings to major civil engineering projects and large-scale infrastructures, but are also at the mercy of ‘local conditions, purpose, regulations, codes, and resources that evolve with time’ (Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition and International Finance Corporation, 2018: 6). Therefore, to understand the complexities of labour exploitation within construction projects, a highly nuanced analysis of GVCs is required.

The campaign to address severe forms of labour market exploitation in markets around the world has led activists, unionists, policymakers, and legislators to explore the role of corporations in driving human trafficking and modern slavery (LeBaron, 2020). Based on the understanding that lead firms are not merely complicit actors but active contributors – through their purchasing and sourcing practices – to violations of workers’ human rights and labour standards, the focus on corporations seeks to expand corporate responsibility to working conditions throughout global value chains (GVCs) (Anner, 2015). In this chapter, we compare two labour governance models that have developed in the quest to combat modern slavery.

To better comprehend the structural aspects of efforts to eradicate modern slavery within GVCs and the dynamics created around them, as well as the measures pursued and their implications, we further develop and employ our analytical concept of ‘anti-trafficking chains’. This term refers to the provision of anti-trafficking services by both non-profit and for-profit entities to multinational corporations (MNCs), mirroring the logic and structure of supply chains (Barkay et al., 2024). The comparative analysis presented here focuses on two types of anti-trafficking chains: one that has proliferated following the enactment of State Anti-Trafficking laws in various countries and another that emerged from the deployment of the Worker Social Responsibility (WSR) model. This analysis seeks to discern the extent to which State Anti-Trafficking laws provide the expected hardening of soft-law anti-trafficking tools and to identify the conditions under which anti-trafficking chains may transform corporate behaviour and serve as drivers of change in human trafficking in GVCs. To this end, this chapter offers a structural analysis of the governance models behind State Anti-Trafficking laws and WSR and of the power dynamics created by each.

Medieval English law set the killing of a husband by his wife apart from most other homicides, because it was perceived as particularly serious and disruptive of the social order. Husband-killers were burned, not hanged, as a spectacular demonstration of condemnation and concern for this social problem. As this chapter shows, however, husband-killing also presented legal problems. There was a doctrinal puzzle in terms of the unclear extent to which this offence should be assimilated to treason, as opposed to homicide: the later distinction between ‘high treason’ against the king, crown or government, and ‘petty treason’ against a domestic superior did not come into being as neatly as sometimes assumed. There were also struggles on a procedural level, as attempts were made to fit husband-killing into common law modes of prosecution, prompting some creative strategies on the part of those seeking to secure a conviction.

Introduction

The question of how trade governance is – and should be – linked to labour standards has long been debated among academics, policymakers, and activists (Servais, 1989; McCrudden and Davies, 2000; Barry and Reddy, 2006). Especially the insertion of labour-related requirements into the relevant trade instruments as a means to improve workers’ rights in the global economy has been the subject of controversy (Alston, 1993; Bhagwati, 1995; Tsogas, 1999). While largely absent from the multilateral trading framework, such requirements have been included in numerous bilateral and regional trade agreements (ILO, 2013, 2016, 2019a; Corley-Coulibaly et al., 2023b) as well as unilateral trade instruments, such as trade preference schemes and import ban legislation (Tsogas, 2000; Addo, 2015; Velluti, 2020). Forced labour, a form of modern slavery, has been a key issue addressed by these instruments (Compa, 1993; Ehrenberg, 1995; Plouffe-Malette and Bisson, 2019) and, until recently, together with prison labour the only labour-related subject matter for which dedicated import ban legislation has been enacted (Bade, 2000; Fanou, 2023; Lopez and Alghazali, 2023).

This raises the question of which implications such forced labour-related clauses in trade instruments entail for addressing forced labour issues in contexts related to global value chains (GVCs). With trade in GVCs constituting 70 per cent of overall trade in 2020 (OECD, 2020), the regulation of trade can have important implications for GVC governance (Corley-Coulibaly et al., 2023). Trade instruments typically involve policy levers, including economic incentives and disincentives, that can impact actors involved in GVC governance, such as states, companies, and civil society actors (Aissi et al., 2018). However, little is known about the extent to which, and the conditions under which, they have contributed to tackling forced labour in GVCs in an effective manner, that is, in a way that tackles the underlying causes of forced labour and has enduring impact.

This chapter explores the complexity of the relationship between Australia’s rule of law claims and its historical and contemporary treatment of First Nations. It argues that there is a constitutional legitimacy crisis within the modern Australian state, sourced in its original denial of the legal existence of First Nations of the land alongside the denial and weaponisation of the ‘rule of law’ against them. The chapter traces these two strands of rule-of-law history in the broader context of the various rule-of-law debates that persevere in the Australian legal system, and the more immediate contemporary debate as to how to ‘recognise’ First Nations in the Australian Constitution. The objectives underpinning the proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice (a representative advisory body) are examined, as well as the reasons for its failure at referendum, which resonate with the claims of equality and rule of law that underpinned the Australian state’s origins, and the origins of its ongoing constitutional crisis.

The Law of Global Value Chains

Global value chain (GVC) analysis captures how firms become the dominant organizational form in the coordination of global social relations of production (Baglioni et al., 2017: 315), breaking with state-centric approaches to understanding economic development. Changing patterns of global production and the prevalence of outsourcing mean that industrial capacity is owned by producers in developing countries but controlled to a significant extent by lead firms located in developed economies (Gereffi, 2018: 255). From this starting point, GVC analysis focuses on how global lead firms ‘drive’ the actions of other firms in the chain (Gereffi et al., 2005; Gibbon et al., 2008). These dynamics of ‘drivenness’ are undergirded by a legal infrastructure, which plays a crucial role for the governance and coordination of the chain and for the generation and distribution of economic value (The IGLP Law and Global Production Working Group, 2016; Danielsen, 2005). A key part of this legal infrastructure are mechanisms of contractual governance, which both ensure control over value chains and formalize power asymmetries among the different actors. For instance, suppliers might be pushed to assume disproportionate financial risk, while lead firms can disengage from their contractual relationships at their discretion (Anner, 2020; Hering, 2021). Yet implicit in the capacity of lead firms to control and drive the chain through mechanisms of contractual governance is also their potential to act as regulators of the production process, possibly guaranteeing labour, social, and environmental standards by pressuring suppliers. Lead firms export legal frameworks that eventually shape the law on the ground, functioning as proxies of legal homogenization and isolating economic activities from the contingent exercise of national public authority (Ferrando, 2014). This opens a door for a possible re-internalization of ‘externalities’ of production – of aspects of the production process that have nothing to do with product quality standards, such as labour rights and environmental standards. In other words, while the fragmentation of global production initially enables divorcing value accumulation from liability for wrongdoing, the ‘drivenness’ of value chains by lead firms entails at least the theoretical possibility that such firms assume broader forms of regulatory capacity with regard to distanced stakeholders – workers along the supply chains and various local communities.

For over a decade, scholars have documented forced labour among low-wage migrant workers in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia (Blaydes, 2023; Fernando and Lodermeier, 2022; Iskander, 2021; Parreñas, 2021). A broad understanding within this literature is that among the root causes of this phenomenon in the GCC are abuses perpetrated during workers’ recruitment from their home countries, such as extortionate fees, misinformation, and coercion. Recruitment is conducted by intermediary firms in workers’ home countries, known as ‘recruiters’ or ‘recruitment firms’. Eighty per cent of low-wage migrant workers in the GCC migrate through these channels (Mendoza, 2012).

Yet, despite the proliferation of this method, the scholarship on forced labour in the GCC contains few studies on recruitment and even fewer that include interviews with the recruiters themselves (Gardner, 2012; Kern and Müller-Böker, 2015). This gap in the literature is particularly notable since scholars of forced labour have renewed their focus on recruitment as a driver of forced labour of migrant workers globally (Crane et al., 2021; Crane and LeBaron, 2018), including as a structural feature of contemporary global capitalism (Crane and LeBaron, 2018; Mantouvalou, 2023; Shamir, 2012) and with colonial origins (Buckley et al., 2023; Iskander, 2021; Wright, 2021). Within this scholarship, a growing number of studies suggest that the recruitment of low-wage migrant workers should be understood as a ‘human supply chain’, a concept developed by Jennifer Gordon as an analogy to product global value chains (GVCs) (Gordon, 2017; Buckley et al., 2023; Farbenblum and Nolan, 2020; LeBaron, 2020; Pittman, 2018; Hernández-León, 2021; Milkman, 2020).

According to this framing, employers are seen as lead firms at the top of the human supply chain, mirroring the portrayal of lead firms at the top of product supply chains within the GVC literature (Gordon, 2017). Empirical studies have shown that many product supply chains are, in fact, lead firm- or buyer-driven – meaning that the lead firm holds the greatest bargaining power, as well as the greatest ability to influence the terms of its contracts with suppliers (Gereffi, 2018).