Slavery Versus Marronage as an Analytic Lens on “Trafficking”

Dominant discourse on “trafficking” and “modern slavery” has been heavily criticised by scholars who argue that its framing of the problem as a criminal justice issue both overlooks the political and structural roots of vulnerability to violence, exploitation and abuse (such as criminalisation and stigmatisation of sex workers, immigration regimes, austerity, neoliberal economic reform) and encourages the criminalisation and/or immobilisation of marginalised groups, including sex workers, irregular migrants, child labourers, child migrants, and runaway youth. This chapter explores how histories of fugitivity and marronage - the process of extricating oneself from slavery – might provide a more helpful starting point from which to theorise and research the contemporary experience (both positive and negative) of migrants who appear as vulnerable to “trafficking” and “modern slavery” in mainstream discourse.