Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 16:27:34 +0200
Trans-Atlantic slavery and contemporary human trafficking
<https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/karen-bravo> Karen Bravo
10 October 2014
Are we learning from the past or exploiting it? It is easy to obscure the
similar economic rationales and incentive structures, as well as the
participation of 'legitimate' enterprises and institutions, in both
trans-Atlantic slavery and contemporary trafficking in humans.
References to 'modern-day slavery' and comparisons to 'old slavery' are
embedded within the anti-human trafficking discourse. However, the
approaches we use to relating current human trafficking to the
trans-Atlantic slavery of Africans are exploitative and superficial, and do
not lend insight for combating human trafficking.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade formally ended in the nineteenth century, and
since then states and international institutions have committed to legally
enforcing a global prohibition against slavery. Nevertheless, slavery is
said to have re-emerged worldwide in the form of 'human trafficking.'
Today's industry is said to be worth billions. Growing numbers of victims
are described as enslaved by modern day human traffickers. Tricked by
employment schemes, kidnapped, or sold by parents or other authority
figures, men, women, and children around the world are deprived of freedom
while being physically and psychologically violated. The scope of
contemporary human trafficking is not known: however estimates
<https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/ronald-weitzer/miscounting-huma
n-trafficking-and-slavery> range from four to 27 million worldwide and
victims are assumed to be located in every country in the world.
Maybe the world and human-to-human exploitation has not changed as much as
we would like to believe since the era of trade in African slaves? Are we,
like those consumers of Caribbean sugar in the eighteenth century, equally
dependent on the abhorrent exploitation of others?
Comparisons with trans-Atlantic slavery tend to fall within the following
categories:
1. The emotional exhortation to action
In the most common use of the comparison, Trans-Atlantic slavery is used as
an emotional and historic touchstone. Contemporaryhuman trafficking is
compared with earlier slavery in order to stimulate the audience to action.
The visceral image makes the call more powerful, and the audience is more
likely to support the analyses of the speaker.
2. Diminution of the horror of trans-Atlantic slavery
This category builds upon the emotional exhortation to action. Here, the
speaker once again evokes the touchstone of trans-Atlantic slavery, assuming
the audience's revulsion at the slave trade, but implicitly or explicitly
diminishing its horror. The message, in effect, is "as horrible as you know
the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery were, an even greater horror is
fully-fledged in our time, in our country, in our lives."
3. Assumption of the mantle of righteousness
The speaker invokes her country's past actions against and continued
condemnation of trans-Atlantic slavery. The mantle of righteousness confers
authority upon the individual spokesperson or country. It works to delay or
prevent questions regarding the methodologies proposed or used to combat
modern trafficking. After all, who would [and why would they?] question the
activities of a country or person with such an impeccable anti-slavery
lineage, and proven methods of combating the scourge? This turns the
tables, and the historically victimized - African countries whose
territories were sources of trans-Atlantic slaves - become contemporary
victimizers.
4. Distancing our enlightened times
In distancing our modern times from the centuries of the trans-Atlantic
slave trade, the speaker assures us of our own virtue and progress. She
distracts us, so that we lose track of the structural and systemic
similarities between contemporary human trafficking and trans-Atlantic
slavery. As a result, today's polity believes that it is not complicit in
or a beneficiary of the modern traffic in humans. In addition, because the
modern traffic in humans is presented as an aberration in our enlightened
times, we do not understand that we should question the systemic structures
and assumptions that undergird our society, economy, and political systems.
5. Mythic slaying of the dragon
The speaker, using triumphalist rhetoric, acclaims the historic abolition of
trans-Atlantic slavery. The speaker then declares the wisdom of
abolitionist techniques as the path to eradicating modern trafficking.
However this invocation of the past denies the reality that trans-Atlantic
slavery did not end with abolition. (For example, as a result of the
continued necessity to secure cheap labor and the racial hierarchy that had
sustained trans-Atlantic slavery, the much-celebrated abolition of the slave
trade in the British Empire was followed by the introduction of indentured
servitude to Britain's Caribbean colonies.)
Together, these approaches serve to hide the fact that that the structural
apparatus facilitating exploitation remained in place after its legal
abolition. In doing so, it obscures the similar economic rationales and
incentive structures, as well as the participation of 'legitimate'
enterprises and institutions, in both trans-Atlantic slavery and
contemporary trafficking in humans.
The integral connection of contemporary human trafficking with the global
economic system thus remains unexamined by the listener. Yet, analysis of
the economic roots and structure of the two forms of exploitation reveals
that modern trafficking in human beings is as much an interconnected and
central component of contemporary economies as the trans-Atlantic trade and
slavery were in former times.
The discursive methodologies we use demonstrate how deeply ingrained images
and interpretations of trans-Atlantic slavery are in the fight against human
trafficking. It was a revolting, tragic, and never-to-be-repeated error in
human history. However, such depictions ignore the fact that, at the time,
the exploitation of trans-Atlantic slave trade victims was widely considered
normal and mundane. They thus obscure the Atlantic slave trade's essential
similarity to the mundanity and visibility of the victimization found in
contemporary human trafficking.
<https://www.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/wysiwyg_imageupload_lightbox
_preset/wysiwyg_imageupload/537772/Fri%20-%20%20Bravo.JPG>
https://www.opendemocracy.net/files/imagecache/article_xlarge/wysiwyg_imageu
pload/537772/Fri%20-%20%20Bravo.JPGImage from University of Oxford Archive,
c. 1930We should learn from the past, and not merely exploit it for
emotional gain.
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)