Abstract
Globalization in many ways represents the culmination of capitalism’s spread across the world, and a deepening of the rules of the marketplace throughout all spheres of social life. In terms of the possible emergence of a global labour market, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that the effective global labour force has risen fourfold over the last two decades (IMF, 2007: 161). Is this growing labour force ‘free’ in the double sense that these workers can dispose of their labour power as their own commodity and that they own no other commodities? What should we make of the growing evidence that increasing globalization seems to be increasing the clearly unfree labour of children and those trafficked for forced labour? In brief, does unfree labour in this era of globalization represent an unfortunate anomaly, soon to be overcome, or is it, in some sense, the new normality?
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, P. (1974) Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London: New Left Books).
Andrees, B. (2006) Forced Labour and the Linkage to Trafficking in Human Beings. ILO Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour.
Anti-Slavery/ICFTU (2002) Forced Labour in the 21st Century (London: Anti-Slavery/ICFTU).
Bales, K. (2005) Understanding Global Slavery (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Bales, K. (1999) Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Blackburn, R. (1988) ‘Slavery: Its Special Features and Social Role,’ in L. Archer (ed.) Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labour (London: Routledge).
Blackburn, R. (1997) The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800 (London: Verso).
Bricmont, J. (2006) Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War (New York: Monthly Review).
Chua, A. (2003) World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (London: Heinemann).
Foucault, M. (2003) Society Must Be Defended (London: Penguin).
Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1996) The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy (Oxford: Blackwell).
Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2001) Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Harvey, D. (2003) The New Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
ILO (2001) Stopping Forced Labour (Geneva: International Labour Office).
International Monetary Fund (IMF) (2007) World Economic Outlook: Spillovers and Cycles in the Global Economy, www.imf.org.
Kaye, M. (2005) 1807–2007: Over 200 Years of Campaigning Against Slavery (London: Anti-Slavery International).
Knowles, C. (2003) Race and Social Analysis (London: Sage).
Laczko, F. and Gozdziak, E. (eds) (2005) Data and Research on Human Trafficking: A Global Survey, International Organization for Migration: Geneva. http://publications.iom.int/bookstore.
Luxemburg, R. (1968) The Accumulation of Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press).
Marx, K. (1976) Capital, Volume I (Harmondsworth: Penguin). [Originally published in 1867.]
Miles, R. (1987) Capitalism and Unfree Labour, Anomaly or Necessity? (London: Tavistock).
Munck, R. (2002) Globalization and Labour: The New ‘Great Transformation’ (London: Zed Books).
Potts, L. (1990) The World Labour Market: A History of Migration (London: Zed Books).
Quirk, J. (2006) ‘The Anti-Slavery Project: Linking the Historical and Contemporary,’ Human Rights Quarterly, 28, 565–598.
Ruggiero, V. (1997) ‘Criminals and Service Providers: Cross-national Dirty Economies,’ Crime, Law and Social Change, 28, 27–38.
Smith, N. (1984) Uneven Development (Oxford: Blackwell).
Spike Peterson, V. (2003) A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy: Integrating Reproductive, Productive and Virtual Economies (London: Routledge).
Ste Croix, G.E.M. de (1981) The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquest (London: Duckworth).
United Nations (2000) Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementingthe United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (New York: United Nations).
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1991) Fact Sheet 14: Contemporary Forms of Slavery (Geneva: United Nations).
van den Anker, C. (ed.) (2004) The Political Economy of New Slavery (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
van den Anker, C. (2006) ‘Trafficking and Women’s Rights: Beyond the Sex Industry to “Other Industries,”’ Journal of Global Ethics, 2(2), 163–182.
Weissbrodt, D. and Anti-Slavery International (2002) Abolishing Slavery and Its Contemporary Forms (New York: United Nations).
Williams, E. (1964) Capitalism and Slavery (London: Andre Deutsch).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2010 Ronaldo Munck
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Munck, R. (2010). Slavery: Exception or Rule?. In: Wylie, G., McRedmond, P. (eds) Human Trafficking in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230281721_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230281721_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-31045-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-28172-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)