By Paul MulhollandBy Siddharth Kara’s conservative estimate, there are 31.2 million slaves in the world today. In his third and most comprehensive book on slavery, Modern Slavery, Kara describes how and where commerce in human beings is able to survive, and thrive. Kara has interviewed over 5,000 slaves, and many of the slaveholders and middle-men that make the slave trade possible. The book is filled with stories of angry and suspicious managers and recruiters and a number of risky situations the author found himself in. But it also contains the words of the slaves themselves that describe the appalling conditions of enslavement. The most vulnerable of the world are the ones that are targeted for enslavement: the poor, refugees, foreign migrants, racial and caste minorities. The ease of modern transport and social apathy make slaves a relatively low-risk option in some areas, and can bring stupefying profit margins. Bonded labor is the most common form of slavery. Poor people are offered transit to wealthier countries to work for higher wages, often illegally. The cost of transit is borrowed by the worker and is theoretically to be paid off with his labor. They are then paid far less than promised, and work in worse conditions. They have no choice but to work off the debt because it is often enforced with violence against them and their families back home: cartels and mafias kill them, or local shamans curse them and they become outcasts. They have no access to modern capital markets to secure a reasonable loan, or to legal retribution, being outside the law themselves. The United States still has slaves in its agricultural sector. Many illegal immigrants work off debts in perpetuity, and exist outside of the law. Those who come legally are also enslaved, surprisingly. The H-2A visa used by many migrant workers in agriculture only allows them to stay for one year, making them illegal when a debt forces them to stay past that time; and only allows them to work for one employer, meaning they cannot switch when they are being underpaid without risking deportation. The suffering that Kara describes is astonishing. From Thai fishermen being shot and thrown overboard for being injured and unable to work, to girls that are lied to and sold into sex slavery until they die young of STDs, there is no limit to the cruelty that profit-motives will drive humans to, especially towards the vulnerable. Many will find Kara’s work useful, and anyone will find it enlightening and shocking. His work is filled with history, economics, cultural studies and interesting journalistic methods. There are few supply-lines in global commerce that are not tainted by the dehumanizing and unpaid toil of those who have no other option.
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