The UK Modern Slavery Act: A Historic Dive into White Slavery and National Borders
Anna Forringer-Beal, MPhil | September 22 | 1:45-2:45 PM
Topic: Research, International | Knowledge Level: Intermediate
Enacted in 2015, the Modern Slavery Act (MSA) is the United Kingdom’s response to ending modern slavery on a global scale. But how did it come to be? And what does the history of anti-trafficking law in the UK tell us about how the MSA is implemented today? Going back to the movement against white slavery in late nineteenth century London, this presentation will examine how anti-trafficking policies have shifted over time to produce tactics, such as border monitoring, employed in the MSA (Lammasniemi, 2017). First called white slavery, a phrase used by early campaigns to refer to young women forced into prostitution (Faulkner 2018; Knepper 2010), trafficking individuals has been a crime that both defies and defines international borders. This project uses discourse analysis and archival research to study how these early conceptions of human trafficking influence the MSA today. By examining the archives of the National Vigilance Association (NVA), a social reform group dedicated to ending white slavery, the presenter has found that race and gender were used to personify victims and perpetrators alongside personal accounts (Attwood 2015; Kempadoo 2015; Laite 2017). This encouraged the NVA to call for increased immigration monitoring networks and stricter border control. Now a bedrock of UK anti-trafficking policy, these approaches to curb trafficking often recycle – knowingly or not – white slavery discourse. Although this work focuses on the UK, fears over white slavery spread to the U.S. These discussions are relevant to all those working against human trafficking globally because it challenges today’s assumptions about survivors and perpetrators using a historic lens.
Presentation Objectives:
· Introduce the history of white slavery panics in the UK and U.S. to the audience
· Demonstrate how early formations of victims or perpetrators are racialized and gendered
· Discuss how these conceptions might influence policy today, like the UK Modern Slavery Act of 2015