THIS BOOK REPRESENTS the culmination of sixteen years of research into modern slavery. During that time, I have investigated slavery in fifty-one countries and have comprehensively documented the cases of 5,439 slaves of all kinds. I traced human trafficking networks around the globe, witnessed the sale of human beings into slavery on six continents, and confronted some of the traffickers and organized crime networks that exploit people in bondage and servitude. My first book, Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, outlined the most profitable form of slavery the world has ever seen. My second book, Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia, outlined the form of slavery that ensnares more people than all other forms combined. This third book offers my overview of the most pervasive and salient manifestations of contemporary slavery I have documented. It represents the totality of what I know about slavery, the full evolution of my thinking on the topic, and my earnest efforts to contribute to the abolition of this savage institution. I focus on a handful of case studies that manifest many of the most important realities of slavery as they exist in the world today—from sex trafficking in Nigeria, to labor trafficking in the agricultural sector of California, to organ trafficking in South Asia and across the U.S.–Mexico border, to debt bondage in the construction sectors of Malaysia and Singapore, and finally to slavery in Thailand’s seafood sector.
In my first two books, I placed a substantial focus on outlining the economic realities and key metrics of slavery as it exists in the world today. When I began my research in the summer of 2000, there was a gaping deficiency in slavery scholarship relating to data, metrics, and basic modeling of the offense. I believe my early work helped shift the mode of inquiry into contemporary forms of slavery by demonstrating the value of a business and economic understanding of the crime, as well as the importance of data and metrics relating to every facet of the offense—be it how many slaves there are by type, the profits generated by specific types of slavery from one country to another, the business models used to exploit slaves, or the expected economic value of a slave to the exploiter. This information was meant to provide baselines for measurement, to frame the scale and functioning of the phenomenon, and to inform antislavery policy and law.
In some sense, my journey into slavery has been the wrong way around. In recent years I have grown somewhat weary of metrics and data in the face of the immeasurable human suffering I have witnessed. The misery, degradation, and debasement of human life that I have seen in brothels, in factories, on ships, in agricultural fields, and in other venues of slave exploitation has taken an immense toll on my mind, heart, and health … as well as on my faith in humanity. My arguments on how to rid the world of slavery continue to be data-driven, but in this book I wanted to share with you the clearest possible picture of slavery, just as I have seen it—in all its depravity, greed, and disdain. At this stage in my journey, numbers no longer provide the comfort they once did, so I have returned to the beginning and tried to convey to you the torment of the slaves I have met, the forces that perpetuate their servitude, and the challenges I faced in trying to document their suffering. I do so solely in the hope that in some small measure these efforts will contribute to the eradication of this dehumanizing institution. Slavery has been an ignoble stain on the legitimacy of human civilization from the beginning. Although this truth only dawned on our collective consciousness a few centuries ago, the systems and forces that promote slavery remain as pervasive and entrenched in the global economic order as ever. Slavery debases human relations, invalidates the conduct of our lives, and indicts us all as participants in its ignominy. I hope this book will play some small role in moving you to action and will inspire new and more effective efforts to abolish slavery once and for all.