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Hello. Thank you for joining us. We're proud to welcome you to our special series, In Chains, brought to you by Brill, where we talk about the history and the current state of slavery and human trafficking. I'm your host, Lee Jung Racco.
Today we're speaking with Dr. Alexis Jonathan Martique. He's an adjunct professor at University of Alberta and an instructor at Machiwon University. He's also author of Slaving Zones, Contemporary Slavery and Citizenship.
Dr. Martique, thank you so much for sitting down with us today. Yeah, hi, good morning. So first of all, what is a Slaving Zone?
Are they bound by geography? So the concept of Slaving Zone is a concept which was defined by Jeffrey Finpol. In order to describe how into a specific geographical area, there are a given societies, demands for slaves, and there were limits about the conditions of who you were able to enslave or not. So progressively, we have seen through history the emergence of Christian and Islamic blogs through the empires of mostly in Europe, and we have seen the conditions enabling and allowing to enslave some people change progressively so it was not possible anymore to enslave someone into your own empire.
So this is how progressively Jeffrey Finpol has described the emergence and appearance of Slaving Zone and no Slaving Zone because at first you were able to enslave people, no matter the place, no matter the society, the empire, etc. And with the first empires through history, so progressively, you normally weren't able to enslave people inside your empire, but the point was that truly there were still and slavery going on regarding political conditions or economic conditions, but progressively with the emergence of the empire was based on religion with Christianity and Islamic religion. What happened is that into these empires, it was completely impossible and forbidden to enslave your fellow citizens and your coalition citizens. So this is exactly the definition of a Slaving Zone emerging through history places where you weren't able to enslave people anymore, and at the same time, so the boundaries of the empire were geographical exactly, but at the same time that you were not allowed to enslave people into your own empire, the boundaries outside where the Slaving Zone.
So you were able to go and to take someone from another religion, another empire and enslave them. So this is how progressively through history, we have seen the appearance of Slaving Zones and no Slaving Zones places where you were able to completely enslave people and places where you were completely not allowed to. So you didn't have the right to. So this is very interesting.
What is mostly interesting is progressively also to try to understand how can we today talk about modern the slavery, because we have progressively passed through history, through the anti-slavery movement also with the emergence of the human rights after World War II, we have passed today into almost theoretically a global no-saving zone, because today this idea of the saving zone developed by Geoffrey Finple, which was based on the fact that people were sharing religious ethos into Christian Islamic empires. Today, the ethos is global, the ethos which forbid people to enslave other people is human rights or humanitarianism, which forbid people to enslave other people. And this is completely global. So the point is, what is modern the slavery?
Can we still speak of modern slavery when we know that we are living in a global no-saving zone, and can we still apply the concept of Slaving Zones today? And if we do, can we base it on geographical boundaries? So this is what is truly interesting about the concept of Slaving Zones trying to apply it on to their situation, which is again a global no-saving zone, at least based on the ethos of human rights, which is that we are not allowed to enslave other people, we have to respect the rights of every people on Earth, World War I, and also the fact that progressively also the legal status of slavery has been almost completely abolished worldwide. So in this context, what is slavery?
What is modern slavery? And can we still use the concept of Slaving Zones based on the secretarians, which were basically geographic boundaries? Yes, so let's focus on Brazil. Can you talk about specific cases of exploitation described as labor in Brazil today?
So in Brazil today, actually, you will find modern slavery in the majority of the states, Brazilian states, both in rural and as in urban area. And this is a very significant. Brazil is a very interesting case because it's not one of the countries when you find the most important number of modern slavery, but that's a country who has led different planes to fight modern slavery through at the federal level, as at the scale of different states, through different bills and different planes, et cetera. And the UN acknowledged that Brazil was a leader into fighting modern slavery, mostly during the presidency of the United Silver.
And after that, the American State of Cuba, of course, it has changed a lot since then. But mostly, you will find modern slavery in Brazil in the majority of the states, and if different forms of work, mostly civil construction, textiles in manufacturing, rural work, rural work, migrant workers, which are going to work in producing coal, for example, or are going to work in cutting sugar cane, or are going to go into Amazonia to prepare the lanes for the exploitation with beef, et cetera. You will also find it in meat production, et cetera. If you take just here, the example, we have the economic production, textile manufacturing and civil construction, all of these occur in urban area, and the rest is occurring in rural area.
So it's almost everywhere in Brazil, and there are even maps, official maps of what they call terbaleo shiravu, which will be enslaved labor here. So it's official, there are official data of modern slavery in Brazil. And if you want to see how this situation illustrates what we just have said about the criteria of the new slavery zone based on mostly symbolic and economic protection business, you will see that most of the people who are working in civil construction in rural rural areas are rural migrant workers coming from rural areas, and which again are seen and constructed as others, because coming from the country, and this has been very strong in the construction of Brazilian society. So this is something which is developed into the text, we don't have the time to go in further detail here, but this is something very important to understand that these citizens are easily exploited through civil construction, rural work, and meat production also about textile manufacturing, what is interesting is that it's mostly Bolivian people who are coming into Brazil in order to find to flee economic protectionist from Bolivia.
So they are going there and mostly Bolivian are exploiting other Bolivian through a specific form of relationships which are developed to the people which are in charge of the manufacturers of textile. And so they are going to be the gut-fouvers of the workers so there are specific personal relationships which are developed so it's a very specific system here but it is interesting to see how it works with others there for you know so that will be mostly what we can see today in Brazil. And again what is interesting is that in Brazil we are talking of a post slavery country one of the country which has used the most important number of slaves that history during the transatlantic trade section. And so interesting is to see that today modern slavery for example is not only a not exclusively and basically based on racist criteria so they are over criteria to play still it's complex because these people who are poor mostly are of darker skins, colours of skin so it's all interconnected there are a question of it and sexuality here between the classic classes and colour of the scheme, but the criteria of the transatlantic safe trade was mostly relying on the colour of the skin.
And here it's more complex it's more economic precarousness which was inherited from the past society, Brazilian society. So you can see here the interaction between the context to this context global context of this global economic neoliberal situation which is articulating with the past the past inheritance of the past slavery in Brazil in order to give rise to new forms of modern slavery so this is very interesting because all these people we are talking about from India from Brazil and other developing countries. We have to understand that what they are producing is completely embedded into the global community chain so mostly what they are going to produce we are going to participate to it into the global north we are going to buy it or we are going to buy some things which are related to the global community chains So this is what is interesting here with modern slavery that it's completely functional with capitalism and which is also most interesting that capitalism is based on the idea of free labour that's the myth of capitalism so what is truly very interesting here is that we can see that we have millions of people who are exploited through modern slavery conditions and it's completely functional with a system which defend the very idea the myth we could say of free labour so this is something which is very interesting to study understand even if it's also very sad for all these people who are exploited to conditions which are similar to past slavery when it was legal even if today again it's condemned at the global scale legally at least That's interesting that leads me to my last question you mentioned that slavery and capitalism are actually well paired here so if you live in a democratic society you expect all citizens have equal rights and that slavery is banned but as you described that's not really the case in Brazil so what does that tell us about what kind of rights are actually guaranteed in a liberal capitalist democracy Well what is interesting is that that's not exactly the case in Brazil and that's the case in Brazil and that's mostly what is important here to highlight if we want to understand the very conditions which enable to enslave some people in modern days conditions today so which are from the same society so this is because officially all Brazilian citizens have the same rights and as we said for India also comparing there is no more legal leader is no more possible discrimination based on the caste system but still it happens still it occurs because we have been relying too much on the efficiency the performativity and the ability of legal rights to be implemented so it's not because we abolished some forms of discrimination it's not because we said that everybody was equal that they are in real life in the day to the life and this is something which is interesting because if you look at today liberal capitalist democracy you will see that and this is something which is not new which has been highlighted but the Indian policy is part of strategy there is a gap between the formal official equality through rights and the real inequality of the day to the life we are affirming that people are equals and because we are affirming that people are equals we believe that it's done but it's not and it's not because behind that there is a capitalist system which is based on the idea of the based on the idea that we have done a social contract based on free labor so that capitalism is organized on the very basis of the social contract and this is a complete myth because the choices here we have just talked about the economic precariousness which is leading people to accept compelling people to accept conditions of work which are similar to past slavery so where is the freedom here of choice first and then into the condition of work if we said that they are similar to past slavery so there are forms of freedom into these forms of labor which are completely again functional into this global community change so it's not working there is a discourse of equality but beyond that there is a capitalist system which is allowing and which is completely functional and working with forms of expectations which are similar to slavery so this is truly problematic here so if you look today at numbers which are given and this is significant because if you look at the numbers from for example the NGO or the NGO or World Free you will see that there is today one hundred and fifty billions of annual illegal profits from modern slavery it's a lot and that represents also 25 millions of people were like exploited in modern day forms of slavery which usually are completely functional into the global community change so there is a true problem here between the different states we are considering if you look at this different forms of societies which are exploiting some citizens and which are theoretically egalitarian societies so again take the case of Brazil take the case of India so there is a problem here between the fact that they are saying that everybody is equal and still the form of capitalism which is each time specific because it's articulated with specific histories in Brazil in India and this is going to lead to forms of exploitation which are denounced and are similar to past slavery so this is problematic there is a gap between the discourse and the day to the life and then we have also to replace it relocated at the global scale and this is how we understand that there is no true liberal capitalist democracy today it's just a myth that's based on the myth of economic freedom political and economic freedom because even if you take the cases of countries from the north so there it's more complicated because the way these countries were constructed and constructed citizenship is stronger which means that they won't exploit their own citizens they are going to exploit human trafficking and they are going to exploit foreigners through migratory policies as we just described before but still we could question here the true freedom and liberty of people into these countries because you are educated and raised in order to to to feed or to supply a market of labor and use work and there you will also it will be interesting to consider the question of the debt into this country so where is the true freedom of choice of labor into such capitalist systems so it's a it's a it's a huge question but it's important to and we don't have the time to answer it today but it's important to acknowledge it in order to truly understand this phenomenon of modern and both in its most significant and important forms of expression in developing countries but also to question the very freedom of capitalist democracies which are into developed countries because stealing these countries also we could question the true freedom of choice and the true social contract here between the different actors in place Dr. Martig, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us thank you so much for inviting me that that's a that's a great that's a very significant topic we are talking about it's important that people hear about and thank you so much for the work you are also doing with this podcast it's a great job Dr.
Lexus Jonathan Martig, he's an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta and instructor at Machiwon University and author of Slaving Zones Contemporary Slavery and Citizenship You are listening to the Humanities Matter podcast you can find more podcast episodes on Apple Podcast, Spotify and Google Podcast