This chapter analyses the growing use of ethical certification schemes as a strategy to fight forced labor in the contemporary global economy. It draws on a large primary dataset from the Global Business of Forced Labour study, collected from 2016–2018, which sheds light into the business models of forced labor in the cocoa and tea industries as well as the effectiveness of ethical certification in combatting forced labor. Drawing on data that demonstrates that ethical certification schemes are failing to create worksites that are free from exploitation, I argue that ethical certification labelling is misleading consumers about the labor conditions involved in the goods they are buying. I explore the contradictions of selling "ethical" products that give the impression that goods have been made through labor standards that they are known to fall short of. I explore the challenge of modernizing historically successful strategies to combat slavery made-goods for use in the present.

Over the last two decades, fighting modern slavery and human trafficking have become a cause célèbre. Yet, large numbers of researchers, nongovernmental organizations, trade unions, workers, and others who would seem like natural allies of the fight against modern slavery and trafficking are hugely skeptical of these movements. They object to anti-slavery and anti-trafficking framings of the problems, and are skeptical of the "new abolitionist" movement. Why? In this Introduction, we explain how our edited book tackles key controversies surrounding the anti-slavery and anti-trafficking movements and scholarship head-on. We have assembled champions and sceptics of anti-slavery to explore the fissures and fault-lines that surround efforts to fight modern slavery and human trafficking today. These include: whether efforts to fight modern slavery displace or crowd out support for labor and migrant rights; whether and to what extent efforts to fight modern slavery mask, naturalize, and distract from racial, gendered, and economic inequality; and whether contemporary anti-slavery and anti-trafficking crusaders’ use of history are accurate and appropriate.

Abstract

Introduction by Alessandra Mezzadri

As explained in the general introduction, the contributions included in this volume explore the potential of bringing Marx in the Field through three different lenses. The first lens implies analysing some key categories and tropes in Marxian analysis that are crucial for the study of our global present (e.g. Jan, Hanieh). The second lens entails, instead, exploring how Marxian main categories and concepts may appear concretely in the field, in ways that may seem fairly distinct – yet analytically and logically compatible – with those historically sketched by Marx in his work (e.g. Bernstein, Selwyn). Indeed, learning from Jairus Banaji (2010), when researching and ‘doing’ political economy, we should always distinguish logics from history. Finally, the third lens involves an engagement with actual methods of enquiry – either those deployed by Marx to study, for instance, accumulation and/or exploitation (e.g. Toffanin, Stevano), or those one could deploy today to produce an analysis consistent with Marx's method (Mtero et al., Harriss-White). In effect, as we have seen towards the end of this volume, all contributions adopt at least two out of these three lenses to explore the usefulness of Marx for historical and contemporary field research. Many, then, also analyse how Marxian analysis could/should be ‘contaminated’ with insights from other theoretical traditions (e.g. Mezzadri, Lombardozzi).