CJC Research Seminar: Wed 20^th January 2021, 2pm-3pm

From criminals to slaves: ‘modern’ slavery, drugs trafficking, and the cultural politics of victimhood in postcolonial Britain

Insa Koch – Associate Professor of Law and Anthropology, London School of Economics

Abstract: States’ claims that they are relieving human suffering have become a central element of their ongoing liberal legitimation amid their production of deepening inequalities. The British government’s ‘modern’ slavery agenda in relation to ‘county lines’ provides a case in point. County lines is the name given by the police to ‘Class A’ drugs networks spreading from larger cities that rely on young runners to move the drugs. These runners – predominantly working class and ethnic minority young men who used to be criminalised for their involvement in the illicit economy – are now being discovered as ‘modern’ slaves in need of saving. Yet, professionals also separate those worthy of saving from others who are the object of rightful punishment. The ‘making’ of ‘modern’ slaves hinges upon a fraught politics of victimhood, one which divorces the de jure vulnerability of so-called slaves from the de facto structural exclusions they face. By distinguishing ‘modern’ slavery from its historical antecedents, this politics of victimhood further acts to disguise the afterlife of the history of transatlantic slavery in the racialised and classed exclusion of post-colonial subjects – some of whom are now discovered by the state as ‘slave masters’ – in Britain today.