DISPOSABLE

PEOPLE
New Slavery
in the Global Economy

KEVIN BALES

UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley / Los Angeles I London
 CONTENTS

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
photographs follow page 1^4
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England 1. T he N ew Slavery / i
© 1999 by the Regents of the University of California 2. Thailand: Because She Looks Like a Child / 34
3. Mauritania: Old Times There Are N ot
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Forgotten / 80
Bales, Kevin.
4. Brazil: Life on the Edge ! 121
Disposable people: new slavery in the global economy / 5. Pakistan: W hen Is a Slave N o t a Slave? / 14^
Kevin Bales,
p. cm. 6. India: The Ploughman’s Lunch / ipy
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-21797-7 (alk. paper). 7. W hat Can Be Done: / 242
I. Slavery.2. Slave labor. 3. Poor—Employment.
4. Prostitution. I. Title. Coda: Five Things You Can D o to Stop Slavery / 26^
HT867.B35 1999
3o6.3'62~dc21 98-47869
CIP Appendix i: A N ote on Research M ethods / 26^

Appendix 2: Excerpts fro m International Conventions

Manufactured in the United States of America
on Slavery / 275
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
Notes / 27P

T he paper used in this publication meets the minimum Ackncmledgments ! 28p

requirements of a n si/ n is o 239.48-1992 (r 1997) {Permanence o f Paper). 0
Index ! 2p I
 1
THE NEW SUVERY

THE FRENCH COUNTRYSIDE IN SUMMER lives up to its reputation. As we sit out­

doors in little village about one hundred miles from Paris, the breeze
brings us the scent o f apples from the orchard next door. I have come
here to meet Seba, a newly freed slave. She is a handsome and ani­
mated young woman of twenty-two, but as she tells me her story she
draws into herself, smoking furiously, trembling, and then the tears
come.

1 was raised by m y grandmother in M ali, and when I was still a little

g ir l a woman m y fa m ily knew came and asked her i f she could take me
to Paris to care fo r her children. She told m y grandmother th at she would
p u t m e in school and th at I would learn French. B ut when I came to Paris
I was not sent to school, I had to work every day. In their house I did all
the work; I cleaned the house, cooked the meals, cared f o r the children,
and washed and fe d the baby. Every day I started work before 7 A .M . and
finished about i i P.M .; I never had a day off. M y mistress d id nothing;
she slept late and then watched television or w ent out.
One day I told her th at I wanted to go to school. She replied th at she
had not brought m e to France to go to school but to take care o f her chil­
dren. I was so tired and run-down. I hadproblerns w ith m y teeth; svme-
times m y cheek would swell and the pain would be terrible. Sometimes

1
 2 / THE NEW SLAVERY THE NEW SLAVERY / 3

I hud stomuchuches, but when I wus ill I still hud to work. Sometimes less developed than the average five-year-old’s. For example, until she
when I was in pain I would cry, but m y mistress, would shout a t me.
was freed she had httle understanding of time—no knowledge of weeks,
1 slept on the floor in one o f the children's bedrooms; m y food was their
months, or years. For Seba there was only the endless round o f work
leftovers. I was not allowed to take food fro m the refrigerator like the
and sleep. She knew that there were hot days and cold days, but never
children. I f I took food she would beat me. She often beat me. She would
learned that the seasons follow a pattern. If she ever, knew her birthday
slap m e all the time. She beat m e w ith the broom, w ith kitchen tools,
she had forgotten it, and she did not know her age. She is baffled by the
or whipped m e w ith electric cable. Sometimes I would bleed; I still have
idea o f “choice.” Her volunteer family tries to help her make choices,
m arks on m y body.
but she still can t grasp it. I asked Seba to draw the best picture o f a per­
Once in i p p 2 I was late going to get the children fro m school; m y mis­
son that she could. She told me it was the first time she had ever tried
tress and her husband were furious with m e and heat and then threw me
to draw a person. This was the result:
out on the street. I had nowhere to go; I didn ’t understand anything, and
I wandered on the streets. A fte r some tim e her husband foun d m e and took
m e back to their house. There they stripped m e naked, tied m y hands be­
hind m y back, and began to whip me w ith a w ire attached to a broomstick.
Both o f them were beating m e a t the same time. I was bleeding a lot and
screaming, but they continued to beat me. Then she rubbed chili pepper
into m y wounds and stuck i t in m y vagina. I lost consciousness.
Sometime later one o f the. children came and untied me. I lay on the
floor where they had left m e f o r several days. The pain was terrible but
no one treated m y wounds. When I was able to stand I had to sta rt work
again, but after this I was always locked in the apartment. They contin­
ued to beat me.

Seba was finally freed when a neighbor, after hearing the sounds
of abuse and beating, managed to talk to her. Seeing her scars and If Seba’s case were unique it would be shocking enough, but Seba is
wounds, the neighbor called the poHce and the French Committee one o f perhaps 3,000 household slaves in Paris. N or is such slavery
against Modern Slavery (CCEM), who brought a case and took Seba unique to that city. In London, N ew York, Zurich, Los Angeles, and
into their care. Medical examinations confirmed that she had been across the world, children are brutafized as household slaves. And they
tortured. are just one small group o f the world’s slaves.
Today Seba is well cared for, Hving with a volimteer family. She is re­ Slavery is not a horror safely consigned to the past; it continues to
ceiving cotmsehng and is learning to read and write. Recovery will take exist throughout the world, even in developed countries like France
years, but she is a remarkably strong young woman. What amazed me and the United States. Across the world slaves work and sweat and
was how far Seba still needs to go. As we talked I realized that though build and suffer. Slaves in Pakistan may have made the shoes you are
she was twenty-two and intelligent, her imderstanding of the world was wearing and the carpet you stand on. Slaves in the Caribbean may have
 4 / THE NEW SLAVERY THE NEW SLAVERY / 5

put sugar in your kitchen and toys in the hands of your children. In perhaps $150. The “recruits” have become slaves—not through legal
India they may have setvn the shirt on your back and polished the ring ownership, but through the final authority of violence. T he local police
on your finger. They are paid nothing. act as enforcers to control the slaves. As one young woman explained,
Slaves touch your life indirectly as well. They made the bricks for “Here the brothel owners send the police to beat us . . . if we flee they
the factory that made the T V you watch. In Brazil slaves made the go after us, if they find us they kill us, or if they don’t kill us they beat
charcoal that tempered the steel that made the springs in your car and us all the way back to the brothel.”^
the blade on your lawnmower. Slaves grew the rice that fed the woman T he brothels are incredibly lucrative. The girl who “cost” $150 can
that wove the lovely cloth you’ve put up as curtains. Your investment be sold for sex up to ten times a night and bring in $10,000 per month.
portfolio and your mutual fund pension own stock in companies using The only expanses are payments to the pohce and a pittance for food. If
slave labor in the developing world. Slaves keep your costs low and re­ a girl is a troublemaker, runs away, or gets sick, she is easy to get rid
turns on your investments high. of and replace. Antonia Pinto described what happened to an eleven-
Slavery is a booming business and the munber of slaves is increasing. year-old girl when she refused to have sex with a miner; “After decapi­
People get rich by using slaves. And when they’ve finished with their tating her with his machete, the miner drove around in his speedboat,
slaves, they just throw these people away. This is the new slavery, showing off her head to the other miners, who clapped and shouted
which focuses on big profits and cheap lives. It is not about owning their approval.
people in the traditional sense of the old slavery, but about controlling As the story o f these girls shows, slavery has not, as most of us have
them completely. People become completely disposable tools for mak­ been led to beheve, ended. To be sure, the word slavery continues to be
ing money. used to mean all sorts o f things,'* and all too often it has been applied as
an easy metaphor. Having just enough money to get by, receiving
On more than ten occasions I woke early in the morning to fin d the corpse wages that barely keep you ahve, may be called wage slavery, but it is
o f a'young g ir l floating in the w ater by the barge. Nobody bothered to bury not slavery. Sharecroppers have a hard Hfe, but they are not slaves.
the girls. They ju s t threw their bodies in the river ro be eaten by the fish.^
Child labor is terrible, but it is not necessarily slavery.
We might think slavery is a matter of ownership, but that depends
This was the fate of young girls enslaved as prostitutes in the gold on what we mean by ownership. In the past, slavery entailed one person
mining towns o f the Amazon, explained Antonia Pinto, who worked legally owning another person, but modem slavery is different. Today
there as a cook and a procurer. W hile the developed world bemoans slavery is illegal everywhere, and there is no more legal ownership of
the destruction of the rain forests, few people reahze that slave labor is human beings. W hen people buy slaves today they don’t ask for a re­
used to destroy them. Men are lured to the region by promises of ceipt or ownership papers, but they do gain control—and they use vio­
riches in gold dust, and girls as young as eleven are offered jobs in the lence to maintain this control. Slaveholders have all of the benefits of
offices and restaurants that serve the mines. W hen they arrive in the ownership without the legalities. Indeed, for the slaveholders, not hav­
remote mining areas, the men are locked up and forced to work in ing legal ownership is an improvement because they get total control
the mines; the girls are beaten, raped, and put to work as prostitutes. without any responsibility for what they own. For that reason I tend to
Their “recruitment agents” are paid a small amount for each body. use the term s\2cve.holder instead of slaveorower.
 6 / THE NEW SLAVERY THE NEW SLAVERY / 7

In spite of this difference between the new and the old slavery, I of the racism o f segregation. But sometimes it takes a child’s simplicity
rh in W everyone would agree that what I am talking about is slavery: the to cut through the weight o f custom. The intensity of that moment
total control of one person by another for the purpose of economic ex­ stayed with me, though it was years before I began to understand what
ploitation. Modern slavery hides behind different masks, using clever those two sets o f parents were feeling. As I grew up I was glad to see
lawyers and legal smoke screens, but when we strip away the lies, we such blatant segregation coming to an end. The idea that there might
find someone controlled by violence and denied all of their personal still be actual slavery—quite apart from segregation—never crossed
freedom to make money for someone else. As I traveled around the my mind. Everyone knew that in the United States slavery had ended
world to study the new slavery, I looked behind the legal masks and I in 1865.
saw people in chains. O f course, many people think there is no such O f course, the gross inequalities in American society brought the
t h i n g as slavery anymore, and I was one of those people just a few slavery o f the past to mind. I realized that the United States, once a

years ago. large-scale slave society, was still suffering from a botched emancipa­
tion program. Soon after Abraham Lincoln’s celebrated proclamation,
J i m Crow laws and oppression took over to keep ex-slaves from eco­
nomic and political power. I came to understand that emancipation
First Come, First Served was a process, not an event—a process that still had a way to go. As a
I first encountered the vestiges o f the old slavery when I was four years young social researcher, I generally held jobs concerned with the residue
old. W hat happened is one of my strongest memories. It was the 1950s of this u n f i n i s h e d process: I studied bad housing, health differences be­
in the American South and my family was having dinner in a cafeteria. tween the races, problems in integrated schools, and racism in the legal
As we started down the serving line I saw another family standing be­ system. But I still saw all this as the vestiges of slavery, as problems that
hind a chain, waiting as others moved through with their trays. With were tough but not intractable.
the certainty o f a four-year-old, I knew that they had arrived first and It was only after I moved to England in the early 1980s that I be­
should be ahead of us. The. fairness o f first come, first served had been came aware of real slavery. At a large public event I came across a small
drummed into me. So I unhooked the chain and said, “You were here table set up by Anti-Slavery International. I picked up some leaflets in
first, you should go ahead.” The father of this African American family passing, and I was amazed by what I read. There was no flash-of-fight
looked down at me with eyes full o f feeling, just as my own father experience, but I developed a gnawing desire to find out more. I was
came up and put his hand on my shoulder. Suddenly the atmosphere perplexed that this most fundamental human right was still not as­
was thick with unspoken emotion. Tension mixed with bittersweet ap­ sured—and that no one seemed to know or care about it. Millions of
proval as both fathers grappled with the iimocent ignorance o f a child people were actively working against the nuclear threat, against apart­
who had never heard o f segregation. N o one spoke, until finally the heid in South Africa, against famine in Ethiopia, yet slavery wasn’t even
black father said, “That’s OK, we’re waiting on someone; go ahead.” on the map. T he more this realization dug into me, the more I knew
M y parents were not radicals, but they had taught me the value of I had to do something. Slavery is an obscenity. It is not just stealing
fairness and equal treatment. They beHeved that the idea of our equal­ someone’s labor; it is the theft of an entire fife. It is more closely related
ity was one of the best things about America, and they never approved to the concentration camp than to questions of bad working conditions.
 8 / THE NEW SLAVERY THE NEW SLAVERY / 9

There seems nothing to debate about slavery: it must stop. My ques­ feel I can trust; it is also the number that fits my strict definition of slav­
tion became: W hat can I do to bring an end to slavery? I decided to use ery. T he biggest part of that 27 million, perhaps 15 to 20 million, is
my skills as a social researcher, and I embarked on the project that led represented by bonded labor in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
to this book. Bonded labor or debt bondage happens when people give themselves
into slavery as security against a loan or when they inherit a debt from a
relative (we’ll look at this more closely later). Otherwise slavery tends
How Many Slaves? to be concentrated in Southeast Asia, northern and western Africa, and
For several years I collected every scrap o f information I could find parts of South America (but there are some slaves in almost every coun­
about modern slavery. I went to the United Nations and the British Li­ try in the world, including the United States, Japan, and many Euro­
brary; I trawled through the International Labour Office and visited pean countries). There are more slaves alive today than all the peo­
h u m a n rights organizations and charities. I talked to anthropologists ple stolen from Africa in the time o f the transatlantic slave trade. Put
and economists. Getting useful, reliable information on slavery is very another way, today’s slave population is greater than the population of
difficult. Even when shown photographs and affidavits, nations’ officials Canada, and six times greater than the population of Israel.
deny its existence. Human rights organizations, in contrast, want to These slaves tend to be used in simple, nontechnological, and tradi­
expose the existence o f slavery. They report what they are told by the tional work. T he largest group work in agriculture. But slaves are used
victims o f slavery, and it is their business to counter government denials in many other kinds of labor: brickmaking, mining or quarrying, pros­
with evidence o f widespread slavery. W ho and what can we believe? titution, gem working and jewelry making, cloth and carpet making,
M y approach was to pull together all the evidence I could find, and domestic service; they clear forests, make charcoal, and work in
country by country. When someone gave reasons why a number of shops. Much o f this work is aimed at local sale and consumption, but
people were in slavery, I took note. W hen two people independently slave-made goods reach into homes around the world. Carpets, fire­
stated they had good reasons to think that there was a certain amount works, jewelry, and metal goods made by slave labor, as well as grains,
of slavery, I began to feel more convinced. Sometimes I found that re­ sugar, and other foods harvested by slaves, are imported direcdy to
searchers were working on slavery in two different parts o f the same North America and Europe. In addition, large international corpora­
coimtry without knowing about each other. I looked at every report I tions, acting through subsidiaries in the developing world, take advan­
could find and asked, “What can I feel sure about? Which numbers do tage of slave labor to improve their bottom line and increase the divi­
I trust?” Then I added up what I had foimd, taking care to be conserva­ dends to their shareholders.
tive. If I had any doubts about a report, I left it out of my calculations. But the value o f slaves lies not so much in the particular products
It’s important to remember that slavery is a shadowy, illegal enterprise, they make as in their sweat, in the volume of work squeezed out of
so statistics are hard to come by. I can only make a good guess at the them. Slaves are often forced to sleep next to their looms or brick

numbers. kilns; some are even chained to their work tables. All their waldng
M y best estimate o f the number o f slaves in the world today is 27 million. hours may be turned into working hours. In our global economy one of
This number is much smaller than the estimates put forward by some the standard explanations that multinational corporations give for clos­
activists, who give a range as high as 200 million, but it is the number I ing factories in the “first world” and opening them in the “third world”
 10 / THE NEW SLAVERY THE NEW SLAVERY / 11

is the lower labor cost. Slavery can constitute a significant part o f these part because they originally had to be shipped thousands of miles from
savings. N o paid workers, no matter how efficient, can compete eco­ Africa. W hen slaves can be gotten from the next town or region, trans­
nomically with unpaid workers— slaves. portation costs fall. T he question isn’t “Are they the right color to be
slaves?” but “Are they vulnerable enough to be enslaved?” The criteria
of enslavement today do not concern color, tribe, or religion; they fo­
cus on weakness, gullibility, and deprivation.
What Does Race Have to Do with it? It is true that in some countries there are ethnic or religious differ­
In the new slavery race means httle. In the past, ethnic and racial dif­ ences between slaves and slaveholders. In Pakistan, for example, many
ferences were used to explain and excuse slavery. These differences al­ enslaved brickmakers are Christians while the slaveholders are Mus­
lowed slaveholders to make up reasons why slavery was acceptable, or lim. In India slave and slaveholder may be from different castes. In
even a good thing for the slaves. The otherness of the slaves made it Thailand they may come ft-om different regions of the country and are
easier to employ the violence and cruelty necessary for total control. much more likely to be women. But in Pakistan there are Christians
This otherness could be defined in almost any way—a different reh- who are not slaves, in India members of the same caste who are free.
gion, tribe, sldn color, language, custom, or economic class. Any of these Their caste or religion simply reflects their vulnerabihty to enslavement;
differences could be and were used to separate the slaves from the it doesn’t cause it. Only in one country, Mauritania, does the racism of
slaveholders. Maintaining these differences required tremendous in­ the old slavery persist—there black slaves are held by Arab slavehold­
vestment in some very irrational ideas— and the crazier the justifying ers, and race is a key division. To be sure, some culmres are more di­
idea, the more vehemently it was insisted upon. T he American Found­ vided along racial fines than others. Japanese culture strongly distin­
ing Fathers had to go through moral, linguistic, and political contor­ guishes the Japanese as different from everyone else, and so enslaved
tions to explain why their “land o f the free” was only for white people.^ prostitutes in Japan are more likely to be Thai, Philippine, or European
Many of them knew that by allowing slavery they were betraying their women—although they may be Japanese. Even here, the key differ­
most cherished ideals. They were driven to it because slavery was ence is not racial but economic; Japanese women are not nearly so vul­
worth a lot o f money to a lot of people in North America at the time. nerable and desperate as Thais or Filipinas. And the Thai women are
But they went to the trouble of devising legal and pohtical excuses be­ ' available for shipment to Japan because Thais are enslaving Thais. The
cause they felt they had to justify their economic decisions morally. same pattern occurs in the oil-rich states of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,
Today the morality o f money overrides other concerns. M ost slave­ where Muslim Arabs promiscuously enslave Sri Lankan Hindus, Fil­
holders feel no need to explain or defend their chosen method o f labor ipino Christians, and Nigerian Muslims. The common denominator is
recruitment and management. Slavery is a very profitable business, and poverty, not color. Behind every assertion of ethnic difference is the
a good bottom fine is justification enough. Freed of ideas that restrict reality of economic disparity. If all left-handed people in the world
the stams o f slave to others, modem slaveholders use other criteria to became destimte tomorrow, there would soon be slaveholders taking
choose slaves. Indeed, they enjoy a great advantage: being able to en­ advantage of them. M odem slaveholders are predators keenly aware
slave people from one’s own country helps keep costs down. Slaves in of weakness; they are rapidly adapting an ancient practice to the new
the American South in the nineteenth century were very expensive, in global economy.
 12 / THE NEW SLAVERY THE NEW SLAVERY / 13

sums for weaponry, money raised by mortaging their countries. Mean­

The Rise of the New Slavery
while traditional ways o f life and subsistence have been sacrificed to
For tliousands of years people have been enslaved. Slavery echoes the cash crop and quick profit. Poor families have lost their old ways
through the great epics of the distant past. Ancient Egypt, ancient of meeting a crisis. Traditional societies, while sometimes oppressive,
Greece, and the Roman Empire all made slavery integral to their social generally relied on ties o f responsibifity and kinship that could usually
systems.^ Right through the American and Brazilian slave economies of carry people through a crisis such as the death of the breadwirmer, seri­
the last century, legal, old-style slavery persisted in what is now called ous illness, or a bad harvest. Modernization and the globafization o f the
the developed world. But slavery never disappeared; instead, it took a world economy have shattered these traditional famifies and the small-
different form. T he basic fact o f one person totally controlling another scale subsistence farming that supported them. The forced shift from
remains the same, but slavery has changed in some crucial ways. subsistence to cash-crop agriculture, the loss of common land, and gov­
Two factors are critical in the shift from the old davery to the explo­ ernment policies that suppress farm income in favor o f cheap food for
sive spread of the new. The first is the dramatic increase in world pop­ the cities have all helped bankrupt millions o f peasants and drive them
ulation following World War II. Since 1945 the world population has from their land— sometimes into slavery.
almost tripled, increasing from about 2 billion people to more than Although modernization has had good effects, bringing improve­
5.7 billion. The greatest growth has been in those countries where slav­ ments in health care and education, the concentration o f land in the
ery is most prevalent today. Across Southeast Asia, the Indian subconti­ hands of an elite and its use of land to produce cash crops for export
nent, Afiica, and the Arab coimtries, populations have more th a n tripled have made the poor more vulnerable. Because the political elites in the
and countries are flooded with children. Over half the population in developing world focus on economic growth, which is not just in their
some o f these cotmtries is under the age o f fifteen. In countries that collective self-interest but required by global financial institutions, little
were already poor, the sheer weight o f numbers o v e r w h e lm s the re­ attention is paid to sustainable livelihoods for the majority. So while the
sources at hand. Without work and with increasing fear as resources di­ rich of the developing world have grown richer, the poor have fewer
minish, people become desperate and life becomes cheap. Especially in and fewer options. Amid the disruption of rapid social change, one of
those areas where slavery had persisted or was part of the historical those options is slavery.
culture, the population explosion radically increased the supply o f po­ T he end o f the cold war only made matters worse. William Greider
tential slaves and drove down their price. explains it well:
T he second crucial factor is that at the same time that the popula­
One of the striking quahties of the post-Cold War globaUzation
tion was exploding,' these countries were undergoing rapid social and
is how easily business and government in the capitalist democracies
economic change. In many developing cotmtries modernization brought
have abandoned the values they putatively espoused for forty years
inunense wealth to the elite and continued or increased the impover­
during the struggle against communism—^individual liberties and
ishment o f the poor majority. Throughout Afiica and Asia the last fifty
poHtical legitimacy based on free elections. Concern for human
years have been scarred by civil war and the wholesale looting o f re­
rights, including freedom of assembly for workers wishing to speak
sources by home-grown dictators, often supported by one o f the super­ for themselves, has been pushed aside by commercial opportunity.
powers. To hold on to power, the ruling kleptocrats have paid enormous Multinationals plunge confidendy into new markets, from Viemam
 U / THE NEW SLAVERY
THE NEW SLAVERY / 15

to China, where governments routinely control and abuse their own

Around the world today the length of time a slave spends in bondage
citizens.^
varies enormously. Where old-style slavery is still practiced, bondage

In fact, some o f these countries enslave their own citizens, and others lasts forever. A Mauritanian woman bom into slavery has a good chance
turn a blind eye to the slavery that generates such enormous profits. o f remaining so for the rest of her life. Her children, if she has any, will
also be slaves, and so on down the generations. But today most slaves
THE OLD SL A V E R Y V E R S U S THE N E W S L A V E R Y Government corruption, are temporary; some are enslaved for only a few months. It is simply
plus the vast increase in the number o f people and their ongoing im­ not profitable to keep them when they are not immediately usefiil.

poverishment, has led to the new slavery. For the first time in human Under these circumstances, there is no reason to invest heavily in their
history there is an absolute glut o f potential slaves. It is a dramatic il­ upkeep and indeed little reason to ensure that they survive their en­
lustration o f the laws o f supply and demand: with so many possible slavement. W hile slaves in the American South were often horribly

slaves, their value has plummeted. Slaves are now so cheap that they treated, there was nevertheless a strong incentive to keep them alive for
have become cost-effective in many new kinds o f work, completely many years. Slaves were like valuable livestock: the plantation owner

changing how they are seen and used. Think about computers. Forty needed to make back his investment. There was also pressure to breed
years ago there were only a handful o f computers, and they cost hun­ them and produce more slaves, since it was usually cheaper to raise
dreds o f thousands o f dollars; only big companies and the government new slaves oneself than to buy adults. Today no slaveholder wants to
could afford them. Today there are millions of personal computers. Any­ spend money supporting useless infants, so female slaves, especially
one can buy a used, but quite serviceable, model for $ioo. Use that $ioo those.forced into prostitution, are prevented from conceiving. And there

computer for a year or two, and when it breaks down, don’t bother to is no reason to protect slaves from disease or .injury—medicine costs
fix it—^just throw it aWay. money, and it’s cheaper to let them die.

The same thing happens in the new slavery. Buying a slave is no The key differences between the old and new slavery break down
like this:
longer a major investment, like buying a car or a house (as it was in the
old slavery); it is more like buying an inexpensive bicycle or a cheap Old Slavery New Slavery
computer. Slaveholders get all the work they can out o f their slaves, and
Legal ownership asserted Legal ownership avoided
then throw them away. The nature o f the relationship between slaves
High purchase cost Very low purchase cost
and slaveholders has fundamentally altered. T he new disposability has
Low profits Very high profits
dramatically increased the amount of profit to be made from a slave,
decreased the length of time a person would normally be enslaved, and Shortage of potential slaves Surplus of potential slaves
made the question o f legal ownership less important. W hen slaves cost Long-term relationship Short-term relationship
a great deal o f money, that investment had to be safeguarded through Slaves maintained Slaves disposable
clear and legally documented ownership. Slaves o f the past were worth Ethnic differences important Ethnic differences not important
stealing and worth chasing down if they escaped. Today slaves cost so
little that it is not worth the hassle o f securing permanent, “legal” Looking at a specific example will clarify these differences. Perhaps the
ownership. Slaves are disposable.
best studied and best understood form o f old slavery was the system in
 16 / THE NEW SLAVERY
THE NEW SLAVERY / 17

the American South before i860.® Slaves were at a premium, and the
growing under fraudulent accounting by the slaveholder, who may also
demand for them was high because European immigrants were able to
seize and sell the children o f the bonded laborer against the debt. The
find other work or even start their own farms in the ever-expanding
functional reality is one of slavery, but its differences from the old slav­
West. This demand for slaves was reflected in their price. By 1850 an
ery reflect five of the seven points listed above.
average field laborer sold for $1,000 to $1,800. This was three to six
First, no one tries to assert legal ownership o f the bonded laborer.
times the average yearly wage o f an American worker at the time, per­
The slave is held under threat of violence, and often physically locked
haps equivalent to around $50,000 to $100,000 today. Despite their
up, but no one asserts that he or she is in fact “property.” Second, the
high cost, slaves generated, on average, profits of only about 5 percent
bonded laborer is made responsible for his or her own upkeep, thus
each year. If the cotton market went up, a plantation owner might
lowering the slaveholder’s costs. T he slaves may scrape together their
make a very good return on his slaves, but if the price o f cotton fell,
subsistence in a number o f ways: eking it out from the foodstuffs pro­
he might be forced to sell slaves to stay in business. Ownership was
duced for the slaveholder, using their “spare time” to do whatever is
clearly demonstrated by bills of sale and tides o f ownership, and slaves
necessary to bring in food, or receiving some foodsmffs or money from
could be used as collateral for loans or used to pay off debts. Slaves
the slaveholder. The slaveholders save by providing no regular main­
were often brutalized to keep them under control, but they were also
tenance, and they can cut off food and all support when the bonded la­
recognized and treated as sizable investments. A final distinctive ele­
borer is unable to work or is no longer needed.
ment was the extreme racial differentiation between slaveholder and
Third, if a bonded laborer is not able to work, perhaps because of
slave, ,so strong that a very small genetic difference—normally set at
illness or injury, or is not needed for work, he or she can be abandoned
being only one-eighth black—still meant lifelong enslavement.^
or disposed of by the slaveholder, who bears no responsibility for the
In comparison, consider the agricultural slave in debt bondage in
slave’s upkeep. Often the slaveholder keeps an entirely fraudulent legal
India now. There land rather than labor is at a premium today. In­
document, which the bonded laborer has “signed” under duress. This
dia’s population has boomed, currently totaling three times that o f the
document violates several current Indian laws and relies on others that
United States in a country with one-third the space. The glut o f poten­
either never existed or have not existed for decades, yet it is normally
tial workers means that free labor must regularly compete with slave,
used to justify holding the bonded laborer. It also excuses the aban­
and the resulting pressure on agricultural wages pushes free laborers
donment o f ill or injured slaves, for it specifies responsibflities only on
toward bondage. When free farmers run out o f money, when a crop
the part o f the bonded laborer; there are none on the part of the slave­
fails or a member o f the fimily becomes ill and needs medicine, they
holder. Fourth, the ethnic differentiation is not nearly so rigid as that of
have few choices. Faced with a crisis, they borrow enough money from
the old slavery. As already noted, bonded laborers may well belong to a
a local landowner to meet the crisis, but having no other possessions,
lower caste than the slaveholder—but this is not always the case. The
they must use their own lives as collateral. The debt against which a
key distinction lies in wealth and power, not caste.
person is bonded—that is, the price o f a laborer—might be 500 to 1,000
Finally, a major difference between the old and new slavery is in the
rupees (about $12 to $23). The bond is completely open-ended; the
profits produced by an enslaved laborer. Agriculmral bonded laborers
slave must work for the slaveholder until the slaveholder decides the
in India generate not 5 percent, as did slaves in the American South,
debt is repaid. It may carry over into a second and third generation.
but over 50 percent profit per year for the slaveholder. This high profit
 IB / THE NEW SLAVERY THE NEW SLAVERY / 19

is due, in part, to the low cost of the slave (i.e., the small loan ad­ of return can be made on a girl for five to ten years. After that, espe­
vanced), but even so it reflects the low returns on old-fashioned small- cially if she becomes ill or HIV-positive, the girl is dumped.
scale agriculture: indeed, almost all other forms of modern slavery are
much more profitable. THE F O R M S OF THE NE W SL A V E R Y Charted on paper in neat categories,
Agricultural debt bondage in India still has some characteristics of
the new slavery seems to be very clear and distinct. In fact, it is as in­
the old slavery, such as the holding of slaves for long periods. A better
conveniently sloppy, dynamic, changeable, and confusing as any other
example of the new slavery is provided by the young women lured into
kind o f relation between humans. We can no more expect there to he
“contract” slavery and put to work in prostitution in Thailand. A popu­
one kind o f slavery than we can expect there to be one kind of mar­
lation explosion in Thailand has ensured a surplus of potential slaves,
riage. People are inventive and flexible, and the permutations o f human
while rapid economic change has led to new poverty and desperation.
violence and exploitation are infinite. T he best we can do with slavery
T he girls are often initially drawn from rural areas with the promise of
is to set down its dimensions and then test any particular example
work in restaurants or factories. There is no ethmc difference these
against them.
are Thai girls enslaved hy Thai brothel owners; the distinction between
One critical dimension is violence—all types of slavery depend on
them, if any, is that the former are rural and the latter urban. T he girls
violence, which holds the slave in place. Yet, for one slave, there may be
might be sold by their parents to a broker, or tricked by an agent; once
only the threat o f violence while, with another, threats may escalate
away from their homes they are brutalized and enslaved, then sold to
into terrible abuse. Another dimension is the length o f enslavement.
a brothel owner. T he brothel owners place the girls in debt bondage
Short-term enslavement is typical o f the new slavery, but “short” may
and tell them they must pay back their purchase price, plus interest,
mean ten weeks or ten years. Still another aspect is the slave’s loss of
through prostitution. They might use the legal ruse of a contract
control over his or her life and ongoing “obligation” to the slaveholder.
which often specifies some completely unrelated job, such as factory
T he actual way in which this obligation is enforced varies a great deal,
.^york—but that isn’t usually necessary. T he calculation of the debt and
yet it is possible to use this dimension to outline three basic forms of
the interest is, of course, completely in the hands o f the brothel owners
slavery:
and so is manipulated to show whatever they like. Using that .trick,
they can keep a girl as long as they want, and they dont need to dem­ 1. Chattel slavery is the form closest to the old slavery. A person is
onstrate any legal ownership. T he brothel does have to feed the girl captured, born, or sold into permanent servitude, and ownership is of­
and keep her presentable, but if she becomes ill or injured or too old, ten asserted. T he slave’s children are normally treated as property as
she is disposed of. In Thailand today, the girl is often discarded when well and can be sold by the slaveholder. Occasionally, these slaves are
kept as items o f conspicuous consumption. This form is most often
she tests positive for HIV.
This form of contract debt bondage is extremely profitable. A girl found in northern and western Africa and some Arab countries, but it
between twelve and fifteen years old can be purchased for $800 to represents a very small proportion o f slaves in the modern world. We
$2,000, and-the costs of running a brothel and feeding the girls are rel­ will look at chattel slavery in Mauritania in chapter 3.
atively low. The profit is often as high as 800 percent a year. This kind 2. D ebt bondage is the most common form of slavery in the world. A