‘New abolitionist’ anti-trafficking interventions often prioritise rescue and ‘liberation’, without considering how trafficked individuals themselves define freedom. Running parallel to, yet often excluded from ‘new abolitionist’ activities, a movement of survivor activists is emerging, whose priorities differ from the dominant anti-trafficking discourse (Dang and Leyden, 2021). South African survivors I work alongside describe exiting trafficking into post-apartheid conditions of poverty and unemployment, leaving them contemplating returning to exploitation as a means to survive. For them, rescue is not synonymous with liberation.

Two prominent theoretical strands exist in the analysis of ‘modern slavery’. The dominant ‘new abolitionist’ movement perceives trafficking as a modern continuation of transatlantic slavery (Bales, 2017). Critical perspectives alternatively view the afterlife of slavery as situated within global racial and gendered “systems of domination” that have persisted beyond abolition (O’Connell-Davidson, 2022:2). Racialisation is understood as underlying the segregation of poverty and people in the global south, with western hegemony influencing international law in its favour (Sharma, 2020). Anti-trafficking protocols are underpinned by anti-immigration agendas that maintain these structural inequalities (Aradau, 2008; Brace, 2018; O-Connell Davidson, 2022). Trafficking, while exploitative, may provide a means to escape or survive the afterlife of transatlantic slavery, rather than representing a modern form of slavery in itself. 

My research explores how survivors’ perspectives complement or are juxtaposed with these theoretical strands.