Out of the Shadows: Trans-disciplinary

Research on
Modern Slavery

Todd Landman
Research Articles

DOI:
10.14658/pupj-phrg-2018-2-1
How to cite:
Landman, T. (2018) ‘Out of the Shadows: Trans-disciplinary Research on
Modern Slavery’, Peace Human Rights Governance, 2(2), 143-162.

Article first published online

July 2018
SUMMARY
The definition and understanding of slavery has evolved and changed from the era of the middle
ages but at its core it still shares similarities, the most important being that slavery devalues
human life to a point where it is looked down on and treated as someone’s property, void of
any self-thought or freedom.(Cockayne et al. 2016; Choi-Fitzpatrick 2017). This article focuses
on the correlation between relative agency and human rights (Ignatieff; 2001, 57) both in the
micro and the macro level. For example, the higher the degree of freely exchanged labour or
rule of law and protection of human rights, the lower the probability of the existence of slavery
and violation of human rights.
In order to tackle challenges like sustainability and forming laws regarding modern slavery,
the author has come up with four major questions and has periodically tackled each question
throughout the article. The questions are:
 How many slaves and where?
 Why does slavery persist?
 What works to end it?
 What difference does freedom make?

The first question highlights the fact that quantifying slavery is so difficult because it is
unobservable in most cases and remains camouflaged in plain sight. According to the article,
this barrier has been a hindrance in the past because trying to quantify the number of modern
slaves through estimation of extra-judicial killings, arbitrary detentions etc. has been riddled
with methodological problems because these data in most cases are unobservable, cases of
slavery are varied/unique and the data collected also overlap. However, this challenge can be
overcome by piecing together data from multiple sources, combining different methods of
quantifying data and finding a correlation among the data. Bales Hesketh and Silverman (2015)
adopted multiple-systems estimation (MSE) to provide the first estimation of slavery in the
UK. The multiple systems estimation initially originated for the purpose of estimating fish
populations and is now applied to large data projects all around the world (Ball, Asher, Sulmont
and Manrique 2003; Landman 2006, 2013; Landman and Carvalho 2009; Landman 2018).
The second question focuses on the conditions under which slavery thrives and the application
of the cross-national modelling techniques has provided the opportunity to tackle this hurdle.
With the help of data from Global Slavery index, which contains prevalence of modern slavery
and government responses, a strong positive correlation has been found between the two
meaning when there is a high presence of slavery only then is there a high presence of
government response and vice versa. Thus it can be concluded that there is a strong statistical
relation between slavery and levels of economic development, democracy, protection of human
rights etc.
The article then talks about a new method of observing activities of slavery remotely from
space. This is called ‘Slavery from Space’. This technology has been used to document cross
border conflict by the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science).
Members of the NGI (Nottingham Geospatial Institute) has teamed up with members from the
School of Geography in the Faculty of Social Sciences to work on the geospatial analysis of
slavery practices. This entire project is based on the idea that human activities leave behind
evidence which can be traced via satellite images (Boyd et al. 2018). The first project was a
success as it was able to detect fish drying racks in the Sundarbans areas which was a breach
of the UNESCO recognized cultural heritage site in Bangladesh. Organization teams on the
ground then confirmed the use of illegal child labour in the fish drying process. The success of
the project shows that the idea has merit and potential. Therefore this approach is now a part
of the Rights Lab’s method for determining slavery activity along with the other typed of data
collection.
The article argues that even though there are a large number of anti-slavery organizations, there
is still a lack of understanding of any systematic method which actually works thus bringing
us to our third question of how we can prevent and intervene in reducing modern slavery. Just
like how the size of the organizations that work for anti-slavery interventions vary, there is also
a large deviation in the activities that these organizations carry out. The most effective way of
finding out which method actually works best in preventing and subsiding modern slavery, a
series of evaluations and impact assessments are required to be carried out.