The Enduring Life of Exploitation

Written by Helen Bryant, Lennon Chido Mhishi, Charles Forsdick, Wendy Asquith, and Alex Balch

Jun 7, 2021

97 people are rescued from a double-decker wooden boat by Sea-Watch . Sea-Watch International / TWITTER.

This special issue comes about as a result of efforts to cultivate collaboration and partnerships which challenge exploitation in its various guises, with this understood as modern slavery or otherwise, in some African contexts. The work of the Antislavery Knowledge Network (AKN) has ranged, for instance, from exploring the challenges faced by survivors and returnees in Nigeria, communities tackling discrimination and descent-based slavery in Mali and Niger, ex-child soldiers rebuilding their lives in Uganda and supporting and safeguarding victims of trafficking in Kenya, Uganda and across the region.

As a co-produced issue between the AKN and The Republic magazine, this complements the wider work of the AKN in exploring, together with our African partners and colleagues, how the arts and humanities can be used creatively to comprehend and confront exploitation. We offer here a glimpse into some of the conversations pertaining to modern slavery in Africa, which of course could not hope to cover the full breadth and complexities around exploitation across the entire continent. They constitute here an invitation for further thinking about and research into how we respond to the challenges of the enduring life of exploitation, whether understood in historical terms as part of the legacies of slavery and colonialism, or as a manifestation of contemporary relationships of power and hierarchy, themselves not synonymous with, nor separate from, these histories.

In the contemporary moment, we are becoming increasingly aware of how the many structural, social, political and economic inequities that underpin exploitation in all its guises have been deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The conversations and thought-pieces collected here give an insight into understandings of how those inequities have been accrued and play out in selected African contexts. We hope these essays can contribute to the important cross-sectoral thinking and practice that will enable better understandings and approaches to confronting exploitation in the present. Such efforts are required now more than ever to develop the equitable partnerships and collaborations in research and knowledge production needed to challenge the enduring life of exploitation.

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This story features in our print issue, 'Modern Slavery in Africa'.

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About the Author

Helen Bryant

is a Project Manager on HE research projects, which focus on heritage and culture.

About the Author

Lennon Chido Mhishi

is a Zimbabwean researcher with a background in migration and diaspora studies whose interdisciplinary work spans interests in the African diaspora, forms of exploitation and human rights in different African countries.

About the Author

Charles Forsdick

is the James Barrow Professor of French at the University of Liverpool and a CoInvestigator on the Antislavery Knowledge Network.

About the Author

Wendy Asquith

is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Politics at the University of Liverpool.

About the Author

Alex Balch

leads the Antislavery Knowledge Network and is the director of research at the Policy and Evidence Centre on Modern Slavery and Human Rights in the UK.

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The Enduring Life of Exploitation