Diffuse Drivers of Modern Slavery: From Microfinance to Unfree Labour in Cambodia

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the global issue of modern slavery has become increasingly prominent within development thinking and practice. Efforts to address it largely focus on criminal prosecutions of immediate ‘perpetrators’, for instance those who are direct employers or middlemen. This article adds to a growing call from critical scholars to look to the structural drivers of such highly exploitative labour relations. Drawing on an unfree labour approach that views debt bondage as embedded in and reproduced by capitalist accumulation, this analysis explores the diffuse drivers of unfree labour through the experiences of indebted farmers who have migrated from rural areas to work in and around Phnom Penh as debt‐bonded brick‐kiln labourers. The study demonstrates how debt discipline in the context of unregulated microfinance lending in rural Cambodia creates the conditions for unfree labour to emerge. Evidencing links between risky lending practices and unfree labour, the article strengthens calls to understand modern slavery as unfree labour and, in doing so, highlights the failures of the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 8 and other similar policies to make these crucial connections.

Left-Wing Ideologies In The Modern Socio-Cultural Space Of Russia And The West

“…One of the consequences of this situation is the exploitation of other peoples by some peoples (for example, forced labor in the "third world" countries (Natarajan et al, 2021)), local and civil wars unleashed by economic and political forces, social conflicts within individual countries generated by large differences in the privileges of some social groups against the background of others (Shkaratan, 2018), in the possession of the most affluent citizens with special rights, which creates a sense of injustice, alienation and hostility among the masses, incitement by certain groups of interethnic, racial, interethnic and interreligious hostility for their own political and economic purposes.…”

“…The method of comparative study and analysis of scientific and philosophical literature made it possible to determine the historical (Lane, 2020;Morozov, 2017) and socio-political (Natarajan et al, 2021;Shkaratan, 2018;Usmanova, 2020) prerequisites for the actualization and popularity of left-wing ideologies in the modern cultural space.…”

Twisted Trajectories, Curious Chronologies: Revisiting the Unfree Labour Debate

“… 24. Arguing that ‘the time was ripe for new conceptualisations’, Shah and Harriss-White (2011) endorse both the ‘neo-bondage’ concept of Breman and the semi-feudal approach to agrarian transition of Byres as solutions to the analytical problems facing those who study Indian development, notwithstanding extensive critiques of their contributions to the capitalism/unfreedom debate. Much the same is true of a more recent intervention in this debate by Natarajan et al (2021), an approach that draws specifically on the Marxian concept of unfree labour (‘Insights from this study thus show the need to understand modern slavery as unfree labour. .…”

Credit, land and survival work in rural Cambodia: Rethinking rural autonomy through a feminist lens

“…The use of multiple microfinance loans combined with informal debts (Bylander, 2015) and even in some cases debt bonds (Natarajan et al, 2020) offers a key means of coping for precarious rural households. In keeping with trends across the Global South (Roy, 2010), the last two decades have seen commercialization and deregulation in the Cambodian microfinance sector, with a shift from non-collateralized group loans to individual loans requiring collateral (Clark, 2006).…”