The modern slavery wheel as the new theoretical framework

La Rueda de la Esclavitud Moderna: un nuevo abordaje teórico

Abstract

A few research papers on modern slavery have outlined how this phenomenon flourishes and persists despite institutional pressures against inhumane practices. In order to analyze slavery from an institutional perspective and answer the question of the main factors in the institutional field that sustain modern slavery, qualitative data were collected in the Brazilian context, where the country is widely recognized for its significant actions against modern slavery practices. This study draws on primary and secondary data collected through in-depth interviews and participant observation at conferences, as well as content analysis of documents using NVivo software. The study suggests that certain contextual conditions legitimize organizational practices of formal and informal firms, called institutional deflection. As a contribution to modern slavery management patterns, this article presents the “modern slavery wheel” based on the results of a dynamic cycle that incorporates and systematizes the elements that support the phenomenon. Wheel mechanisms such as favorite conditioning, recurrence, enticement, and truck system seem to contribute to modern slavery practices and their maintenance over time. Moreover, we suggest that these same components may also contribute to breaking the modern slavery wheel

Keywords: Institutional field; Modern Slavery; Institutional Deflection

Resumen

Algunas investigaciones sobre la esclavitud moderna han evidenciado cómo este fenómeno prospera y persiste pese a las presiones institucionales contra las prácticas inhumanas en la vida social. Para analizar este fenómeno desde una perspectiva institucional y responder a la pregunta de cuáles son los principales factores en el campo institucional que sostienen la esclavitud moderna, se recopilaron datos cualitativos en el contexto brasileño, ya que el país es ampliamente reconocido por sus acciones significativas contra las prácticas de esclavitud. Este estudio se basa en datos primarios y secundarios, recopilados por medio de entrevistas en profundidad y observación participante en conferencias sobre el tema, así como documentos cuyo contenido se analizó utilizando el software NVivo. El estudio sugiere que ciertas condiciones contextuales legitiman las prácticas organizacionales de las empresas formales e informales, lo que se denomina deflexión institucional. Como aporte a los patrones de gestión de la esclavitud moderna, este artículo presenta la “Rueda de la esclavitud moderna” a partir de los resultados de un ciclo dinámico que incorpora y sistematiza los elementos que sustentan el fenómeno. Los mecanismos de la rueda, tales como las condiciones favorables, la recurrencia, la incitación y el “sistema de trueque” (truck-system) contribuyen a las prácticas modernas de esclavitud y su manutención a lo largo del tiempo. Además, sugerimos que estos mismos componentes también pueden ser la salida para romper con el ciclo vicioso de la rueda de la esclavitud moderna.

Palabras clave: Campo institucional; Esclavitud moderna; Deflexión institucional.

Resumo

Algumas pesquisas sobre a escravidão moderna mostraram como esse fenômeno prospera e persiste, apesar das pressões institucionais contra práticas desumanas na vida social. Para analisar esse fenômeno do ponto de vista institucional e responder à pergunta sobre quais são os principais fatores no campo institucional que sustentam a escravidão moderna, foram coletados dados qualitativos no contexto brasileiro, já que o país é amplamente reconhecido por suas ações significativas contra práticas de escravidão. Este estudo é baseado em dados primários e secundários, coletados por meio de entrevistas em profundidade e observação participante em conferências sobre o tema, bem como documentos cujos conteúdos foram analisados usando o software NVivo. O estudo sugere que certas condições contextuais legitimam as práticas organizacionais de empresas formais e informais, o que é chamado de deflexão institucional. Como contribuição aos padrões de gestão da escravidão moderna, este artigo apresenta a “Roda da Escravidão Moderna” a partir dos resultados, definida como um ciclo dinâmico que incorpora e sistematiza os elementos que sustentam o fenômeno. Os mecanismos da roda, quais sejam as condições favoráveis, a recorrência, o aliciamento e o “sistema de barracão” (truck system) contribuem para as práticas de escravidão moderna e sua manutenção ao longo do tempo. Além disso, sugerimos que esses mesmos mecanismos também podem ser a solução para romper o círculo vicioso da Roda da Escravidão Moderna.

Palavras-chave: Campo institucional; Escravidão Moderna; Deflexão institucional

INTRODUCTION

At age nine, the formerly enslaved child began working. In Nazaré da Mata, Pernambuco, she cut cane. There was nothing else her father and mother could do for the family. The household was at work from 4:00 am until 9:00 pm. She trimmed, leveled the land, and piled the cane. During her childhood, her father called the studying pen the hoe. They remained illiterate. Food was flour from home or some meal from the cabin, where the slaveholders - “gatos” sold coffee, food, and other materials. However, the food from the cabin was deducted from her father’s salary. She watched her pregnant mother work all day long.¹ This is one of the many life stories of people in a modern slave-like situation in agriculture, livestock farming, textile industry, construction, and domestic work. However, despite the data and evidence, it is a situation that manifests itself in many ways and maybe naturalized and justified by other labels in daily social life.

Brazil is home to over 190,000 slaves, and there are 40.3 million enslaved people in the world (Walk Free Foundation, 2018), manifested by unsustainable work relations with lack of freedom, degrading work conditions, long working hours, and physical, moral, and psychological abuse (Cooke, 2002; Crane, 2013). From the literature review, it appears that three factors may foster modern slavery: population explosion associated with socioeconomic vulnerability, violation of social rules-greed, corruption, violence, and agricultural modernization through the international supply chain (Bales, 2004; Crane, 2013; Flynn, 2020; Gold, Trautrims, & Trodd, 2015; Robb & Michailova, 2022; Stevenson & Cole, 2018).

First of all, there is an emerging need to understand modern slavery practices in management due to an attention gap among researchers and denial of the existence problem by some companies and governments (Araújo & Carneiro, 2020; Bales, 2004; Burmester, Michailova, & Stringer, 2019; Cooke, 2002; Walk Free Foundation, 2019; Voss et al., 2019). However, the debate is marginal in social sciences and relatively ignored in business administration (Burmester et al., 2019; Cooke, 2003; Crane, 2013; Datta & Bales, 2014). For instance, in 2017, a survey in England by the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply found that more than 90% of managers were somehow suspicious that their supply chains are tainted by modern slavery practices (UK Government, 2017).

The literature on modern slavery in management studies presented an advance by Crane (2013) who described “slavery as a management practice” - “new world slavery”, by Bales, (2004) and Bales, Trodd, and Williamson, (2009), indicated the social economic and regulatory elements that foster the persistence of modern slavery, by Gold et al. (2015), discussed the detection and remediation of slavery in supply chain throughout the multi-stakeholder partnerships, community-based approaches, and supplier development. Equally, there is a critical demand for the development of new supply chain management - SCM theories (Gold et al., 2015) to facilitate the understanding, prevention, and elimination of modern slavery. Focusing on the response, the research of Benstead, Hendry, and Stevenson (2018) illustrated the outcome in the fashion and textile sector and the connection to relational capital - stakeholder relationships, in addition to formal and informal governance mechanisms (Benstead et al., 2018; Wilhelm, Kadfak, Bhakoo, & Skattang, 2020). Likewise, Flynn (2020) examined 350 companies on the British stock exchange. His study found that compliance with reports of modern slavery was significantly related to company size, prior commitment to social responsibility, and network involvement. Other predictors, such as media exposure, shareholder concentration, and profitability, were not significant (Flynn, 2020).

In Brazil, Law No. 10,803, of 2003 (Lei nº 10.803, de 11 de dezembro de 2003), amended Article 149 of the Brazilian Penal Code (Decreto-Lei nº 2.848, de 7 de dezembro de 1940), which has a significant influence on the supply chain (International Labour Office [ILO], 2010), was approved in 1995 to recognize modern slavery as “analogous conditions to slavery” that additional elements were added: degrading conditions and exhaustive working hours (Lei nº 10.803, de 11 de dezembro de 2003). From 2003 to 2008, two plans were launched by the government together with nongovernmental organizations - NGOs (ILO, 2009), civil institutions, Government (Ethos and Instituto Observatório Social), and the ILO (ILO, 2005). Brazil’s so-called “dirty list,” one of the country’s most potent weapons against slave labor and internationally recognized, is legal and can remain, the Supreme Court ruled, in 2020 (Gold et al., 2015; Supremo Tribunal Federal [STF], 2020). As a result of the blacklist, labor inspectors identify companies and individuals involved in slave labor. Companies on the list cannot receive credit or loans from public and private banks. The blacklist is used by banks to assess credit risk and by international buyers concerned about their supply chains.

In light of Australian legislation requiring companies to disclose what supply chain practices are used to combat slave labor, Christ and Burritt (2021) discussed the dimension of voluntary engagement in light of institutional theory (Christ & Burritt, 2021). The findings suggested a lack of materiality in the information published on the website and in the sustainability reports of large companies (Christ & Burritt, 2021). The study presented the official reports of the ILO, United Nations, and international human rights agreements (coercive), multisectoral initiatives (mimetic), and organizational and professional normative (norms) are considered sources of institutional pressures (Flynn, 2020).

From an institutional perspective, Diab (2022) study investigated actors’ engagement in the fight against slave labor in the context of domestic worker conditions in Lebanon. The link between migration and low socioeconomic status, leading to humanitarian problems such as modern slave labor, seems to be clearly documented (Diab, 2022). Another study is the context of globalization seems to be correlated to the persistence of modern slavery. One of the examples is human rights violations cited in multinational enterprise - MNE reports (Robb & Michailova, 2022). Geng, Lam, and Stevenson (2022) apply “awareness-motivation-capability” - AMC to analyze the supply chain and modern slavery. For Geng et al. (2022), the results suggest that supply chain companies are concerned about modern slavery when there is more media coverage, in countries with a higher risk of slavery, and with better corporate sustainability performance. Additional analysis suggests that companies’ financial performance is unrelated to their efforts to address modern slavery (Geng et al., 2022). Alternatively, Christ and Burrit (2021) examined the additional invisibility of slavery in a COVID-19 environment where companies’ ability to track victims of modern slavery in supply chains may be affected. The findings pointed to opportunities to collect data, set up internal awareness of the problem of modern slavery in supply chains, and reconsider operational risk and investment to reduce modern slavery (Christ & Burritt, 2021). Corroborating, Meehan and Pinnington (2021) examined sustainable supply chains and illustrated how companies use the ambiguity of transparency in the supply chain - TISC statements as a method of strategic action to defend the status quo. Their TISC appears to reduce the responsibility for mitigating modern slavery in supply chains. The authors identified three ambiguous techniques: defensive reassurance, transfer of responsibility, and scope reduction that deviate from the political intent of collaborative action (Meehan & Pinnington, 2021).

Secondly, slavery as a management practice unfolds how institutional and competitive conditions are capable of supporting modern slavery in the ESG - environmental, social, and governance strategy perspective (Caruana, Crane, Gold, & LeBaron, 2021). Theoretically, free market, institutional forces, productive chains internationalization, and advanced investment systems on a global scale on the ESG strategy would promote an influence on the Global Production Networks - GPN (Gold et al., 2015; Voss et al., 2019). The GPN and its chains, as a means of business’ aligning, would initiate an adaptation process to norms/rules - isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Scott, 1995). Thirdly, few theoretical and empirical types of research on the institutional theory related to modern slavery (Baptista, Bandeira, & Souza, 2018; Crane, 2013; Mascarenhas, Dias, & Baptista, 2015).

The institutional approach attempts to explain the social and organizational environment in terms of a set of norms that regulate collective action, these norms being either explicit or symbolic. The assumption, then, is that the creation of a normative framework to regulate collective human action is sufficient to end and eliminate social problems such as contemporary slavery. In this regard, there are several legislative initiatives, regulations, and formal guidelines that mitigate this social phenomenon, among other policy instruments. However, it is observed that social practice is often far from norms and sometimes the norm or law itself is thought to serve to legitimize practices that would be detrimental to social well-being (Crane, 2013; Reckwitz, 2002). In other cases, the explanation for the recurrence of contemporary slavery could be based on socioeconomic vulnerabilities supported by social dynamics (political, cultural, religious, etc.).

This research sought to answer the following question: what institutional elements support the phenomenon of contemporary slavery?

Based on qualitative documentary and field research, this article proposes a new analytical model using a modern slavery wheel illustration. The wheel rotation is explained under favorable modern slavery conditions, practices of modern slavery, and maintenance of modern slavery.

The research has been developed since 2011, with an excerpt for the presentation of these results. Empirical research was conducted in Brazil from 2011 to 2022 through the signatories National Pact Institute for the Eradication Slave Labor - InPACTO, Ministry of Labor, and Public Ministry of Labor. The InPACTO establishes actions to eradicate slave labor in Brazil, and it was cited as good practice by the International Labor Organization - ILO (ILO, 2009). The data show that initiatives to regulate the phenomenon are insufficient to mitigate it, and that several articulated factors favor conditions that perpetuate contemporary slavery. Our theoretical contribution establishes a new multilevel framework analysis, including institutional, organizational, and individual approaches. Specifically, we propose analyzing how institutional conditions can assume a deflection position (Crane, 2013), contributing to maintaining modern slavery even under institutional conditions (Crane, 2013; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Scott, 1995) illegitimate routines, tasks, or functions. We also discuss how slave operators design actions, build structures, and occupy legitimate or illegitimate spaces. The structural network named “cats” - slave operators or slave recruiters has a particular hidden interest established to farmers’ owners that supply GPN (InPACTO, 2017a, 2017b). Finally, the new model argues individual perception and conditions under social, cultural, and economic levels.

The literature review was organized by favorable conditions for modern slavery and practices of modern slavery. Furthermore, we present the methodology, research model, analysis and discussion of results, and final considerations, including an agenda for future research.

LITERATURE REVIEW

One of the concerns of the institutional approach is to understand and study the mechanisms for creating and maintaining the norms that regulate social action. The new institutionalism emphasizes the forces of power prevalent in the field, particularly the role of actors in legitimizing these regulating norms (DiMaggio & Powell, 1999). The field or institutional environment is understood as a symbolic space with rules, sometimes tacit, that organizations follow in exchange for support and legitimacy. Organizations that value the institutional approach consciously use these instruments of control and structure to establish values and regulate organizational action. These are institutionalized organizations modeled according to socially shared criteria, leading to institutional isomorphism (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). This perspective is consistent with the prevailing research orientation concerned with institutions and concepts designed to explain the maintenance of organizations over time (Dacin, Goodstein, & Scott, 2002). Equally important, the processes associated with institutional change-institutionalization, deinstitutionalization, and reinstitutionalization are related to legitimacy (Oliver, 1992).

Oliver (1992, p. 58) postulates that there is a collapse resulting from a “gradual deterioration in the acceptance and use of institutionalized practices.” To this collapse, the author associates the notion of an institutional vacuum, a period in which norms are redefined, which can lead to significant breaks in social dynamics. In this process, however, there would not be a vacuum but an institutional disorder (Bandeira, 2005), or a hybrid and plural “order” in which different institutional forces struggle for legitimacy. These processes are carried out by various actors in a particular political environment. Some actors use mechanisms to bring about institutional change that is not always immediately legitimized by the actors in the field. Thus, it is possible that in this dynamic, what Crane (2013) calls institutional deflection could illustrate the disputes in the field and understand this hybrid coexistence of norms that legitimize the practice of certain aspects of social life, such as the phenomenon of contemporary slavery. An organizational field would be the result of several organizations’ activities and the homogenization of these organizations and, consequently of the new entrants-to current practices. Its field definition consists of a set of organizations that form a recognized area of institutional life. Its boundaries include key suppliers, consumer goods, services or resources, regulatory agencies, and other organizations that produce similar services or products. It is assumed that organizations, by belonging to a field, share specific rationality that guides them in their structure and value system. Fonseca (2003) agrees with Powell (1991) when he states that each organizational field has a different degree of technical and institutional elements. This diversity depends on several factors, so we can claim that institutional change can look different in each field (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983).

Institutional deflection is a concept that encompasses the practices that are justified by discourses of productivity, cost-cutting, or other discourses and serve the interests of actors in the institutional field. Crane (2013) adds that in particular niches, there is a “structural inertia”, meaning that practices are recurrent and persist in sociocultural and economic dynamics, no doubt due to complacency and the tradition of these practices. Crane (2013) confirms that the persistence of pockets of slavery linked to niche structural inertia resists broader changes in the population and its environment. For example, the truck system, or “barracão” in Portuguese (ILO, 2011; Ministério do Trabalho e Emprego [MTE], 2021), is a control practice whose hidden aspect is accounting opacity (Crane, 2013), where workers are physically tied to a job by a false debt that must be paid (Boyd et al., 2018). The purpose is to ensure that workers owe money on payday so that they can continue to work without being paid and are not allowed to leave the workplace.

Thus, various motivations and interests may lie behind the persistence of contemporary slavery. The literature review gathered the main elements identified in studies and publications on the subject held responsible for modern slavery being adopted by some companies, such as recurring practices. It is possible to understand that these technical or institutional elements are part of the political dynamics in this field. The aspects presented below are grouped in what is defined as favorable conditions of the institutional field that foster modern slavery: legal, economic, social, and cultural. Then, in sequence, the dynamic of modern slavery is presented with degrading conditions, exhaustive working hours, physical, psychological violence, and truck system. Finally, the last theoretical structure is shown in the maintenance framework: political arrangements, business articulation, and individual under social pressure.

Favorable modern slavery conditions

Usually, poverty, vulnerability, lower education level, and few economic opportunities are considered fertile field conditions to flourish slaves. They are bonded on invisible networks and organized crime that take legal, economic, social, and cultural to fertile new forms of slavery. The control is done by enticement between the slave operator or recruiter and worker (Bales, 2004; Datta & Bales, 2013; ILO, 2007).

Legal: from conventions to regulation under law

International Labor Organization - ILO and its Conventions 29 and 105 about forced labor are instruments, which its ratification should generate legal obligations by signatories’ countries (ILO, 2007, 2009). The Conventions are recommended to countries’ ratification because they guide policy and legislation. For example, the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act is a law and regulation effect in 2012. It requires large retail and manufacturing firms to declare their efforts towards eradicating human trafficking and slavery from its supply chain and publishing the information on their websites (New, 2015; Voss et al., 2019). In 2015, the United Kingdom also launched the Modern Slavery Act 2015 law and regulation, demanding “The Transparency in Supply Chains” clauses (Gold et al., 2015). It requires companies with an annual turnover above £36 million to make a Slavery and Human Trafficking statement, indicating that they are taking policy action to prevent modern slavery abuses in GPNs (UK Legislation, 2015). Brazil has been a signatory to both ILO Conventions since 1965, and the most advanced regulation cited by ILO was Article 149 of the Brazilian Penal Code. The four elements of Article 149 of the Penal Code can characterize contemporary slavery: forced labor - curtailment of the right to come and go; fake debt bondage linked to debts, often fabricated, degrading conditions - work that denies human dignity, putting health and life at risk, or exhausting working hours - leaving the worker to exhaustion given the intensity of exploitation (Lei nº 10.803, de 11 de dezembro de 2003). The origin of the term condition analogous to the slave is in the ILO Conventions and the Brazilian concept advanced with the expression “work analogous to slavery,” where dignity is more significant than freedom status. Furthermore, the worker can be free, but the living conditions and false decent employment push him to accept the false promise.

Formal institutional elements such as ILO Conventions 29 and 105, international human rights agreements, and laws as the Article 149 of the Slave Labor may have varying degrees of effectiveness. Coercive sanctions based on institutional factors appear to depend on the strength of stakeholder governance (Burmester et al., 2019; Crane, 2013). Governance represents the regulatory quality of legislation, the rule of law, political stability, control of corruption, government efficiency, and organized civil society (Bales & Robbins, 2001; Crane, 2013; ILO, 2009). A governance plan against slave labor led by public-private action can be undermined by corruption and by actions to delegitimize legal mechanisms against slave labor. For example, the Brazilian concept of slave labor (Bales & Robbins, 2001). The blacklist has been heavily attacked by business sectors and policymakers, despite being an instrument recognized by the ILO in its technical reports. Despite this normative framework, there is a relativization and resignification of this legal framework as part of the jurisprudence, which could illustrate Crane’s institutional deflection (2013). In addition, there are difficulties in finding evidence, especially when there are powerful and politically business groups behind modern slavery (Purkayastha & Qumer, 2019).

Economic conditions and population explosion

Significantly increased populations do not create the possibility of enslavement. However, it may increase the population’s pressure on resources such as food and job (Bales & Robbins, 2001; Boyd et al., 2018). The worker supply has tripled in the last 30 years, creating the condition for cutting costs in raw material extraction (Bales, 2004). This generates a phenomenon based on value and cost optimization in productive chains. It tends to intensify poverty escalate if the company’s productivity that is a generator the work opportunities does not follow population growth (Gold et al., 2015). Bales (2004) argues that the key factor of modern slavery is a population explosion, from 2 billion people to 7 billion people in the last 50 years.

As a result of socioeconomic conditions, the supply side of slavery has been dramatically affected by a number of people in search of work and livelihood who have turned to the world market to hire an intensive, low-cost labor force (Gold et al., 2015; New, 2015). Moreover, Bales (2004), Crane (2013), New (2015), and Phillips and Sakamoto (2011) acknowledge that the availability of a socioeconomically disadvantaged population as poverty, low education, and high unemployment all lead to increased chances for enterprises to adhere to slavery in a more widespread manner. Additionally, Crane (2013) affirms that the availability of affordable credit and social welfare programs may mediate these factors.

The dynamic operates under slavery operators, called “cats” in Brazil. According to ILO and Ministry of Labor, the worker lured by false jobs knows he is under a lay promise, but he usually accepts the work because there is an involuntary consciousness due to its social e economic condition. This is what Bales et al. (2009) say about slavery can therefore be defined as a relationship in which another controls one person (worker) through violence (recruiter as a cat or slave operator), the threat of violence, psychological coercion, has lost free will and free movement is exploited economically and is paid nothing beyond subsistence. The “cats” know about hiring easygoing workers to be enticed by fake good jobs under the promises. The cats know about the vulnerable condition that can reduce decision make voluntarism. Poverty creates niches of persons looking for jobs for subsistence and survival.

Urbanization increase

The population explosion in the last 50 years has tripled. Bales (2004) and Datta and Bales, (2013) revealed when he correlated the incidence of modern slavery for economic purposes with the population explosion and the increased demand for products and services in urban areas (Bales, 2004; Moser, 1998). The characteristic of this explosion was the great movement of people who left the rural areas to the urban areas in Brazil (Bales, 2004). The rate of urbanization in the 1960s was 57% in the Southeast region, reaching more than 92% in 2010 in the same region (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística [IBGE], 2016). Interestingly, the states of Maranhão, Piauí, and Pará have the lowest rates of urbanization in the country: 59%, 67%, and 70%, at the same time they generate a large number of slave laborers (IBGE, 2010). In principle, it intensified the supply of people searching for work, and wages were reduced in the countryside and urban centers (Bales, 2004). This type of dilemma was also discussed by Gold et al. (2015) that in textile chains, demand from the industry showed increases driven by population growth and that concurrently did not generate opportunities at all.

Social poverty

The poverty constructs analysis encompasses material deprivation, lack of education, ill health, exclusion, vulnerability, and voicelessness (ILO, 2014; Moser, 1998; Phillips & Sakamoto, 2011; World Bank, 2000). Individuals can be destitute of opportunities and choices if they are living in poverty. This poverty concept is encompassed to a multidimensional level, which definition argues about a per capita income at or below US$1,500 or US$2,000 per annum (Bales, 2004; World Bank, 2000). Although Banerjee and Duflo (2006) discuss the poverty limit of US$1 or US$2 per day, which is widely used in both academic and practitioner discussions of poverty, following foundational articles by Prahalad and coauthors (Prahalad & Hammond, 2002), most articles that provide an explicit definition use a per capita income at or below US$1,500 or US$2,000 per annum. On the other hand, some authors note that poverty also negatively affects the environment, as the struggle for survival can cause environmental degradation, suggesting that improving the poor’s situation also benefits the environment (Boyd et al., 2018).

Poverty is one of the most critical “push factors” to the worst labor exploitation since it creates a fertile environment for the worst kinds of exploitation (O’Connell, 2012; Panori, Mora, & Reid, 2019; Phillips & Sakamoto, 2011).

Analphabetism

Analphabetism is associated with a structural inertia condition related to geographic isolation, lower regulation, poverty, migration, corruption, lack of education, a considerable number of people struggling for survival, and race and ethnicity (Bales, 2004; Datta & Bales, 2014; Crane, 2013; ILO, 2013). In addition, the structural inertia appears to be associated with what Bales et al. (2009) calls disposable people - workers are “things” that can be replaced due to a considerable number of workers trying to live and get a job (Bales, 2004).

Undoubtedly, education and awareness have a critical role in the persistence of slavery. In addition to a low level of education, a lack of awareness of slavery practices results in an increased vulnerability among potential victims (Crane, 2013; Bales, 2004; O’Connell, 2012), which limits the choices to decent work. Similarly, poor education and lack of awareness within local communities in regions where enslaved people are deployed will hinder the potential reporting of incidents that may occur.

Vulnerability and low Human Development Index (HDI)

Vulnerability is characterized by the distance between the availability of material resources and access to the social opportunity structure. This difference in distance can result in disadvantages for both the worker’s performance and the social risk to his economic and social mobility (Datta & Balles, 2013). Disasters, earthquakes, and wars can have even more extreme effects on economic and social risks to performance mobility (migrations). The analysis about the considerable distance risk on economic and social mobility used by the Global Slavery Index in the world (Walk Free Foundation, 2018, p. 14) has a structure: national policies against modern slavery, human rights, economic development, political stability, and women’s rights/discrimination. Crane (2013) believes that further progress is needed to validate the variables’ correlation through quantitative studies using rigorous academic methods. However, it seems reasonable to assume that the population growth of the last 50 years, vulnerability, impoverishment, and corruption are conditions of slavery in the country (Crane, 2013). Bales (2004) seeks to understand the relationship of the variables such as per capita income, human Development Index (HDI), levels of corruption, political and human rights abuse, Human trafficking in a country, trafficking in human beings for a country, and high population density. These few conditions interact as threats to survival, causing effects such as insecurity. The argument is associated with the victim’s vulnerability state that reaches the slaves’ conditions. Phillips (2013) and Phillips and Sakamoto (2011) propose that vulnerability and poverty seem to be the previous condition for understanding unfree labor in the global economy (Datta & Bales, 2013). A better comprehension of unfree labor is connected to the relational perspective, its circular interaction between vulnerable social structures, the global productive economy, and the labor market (Gold et al., 2015).

Social-culture repertoire and geographic aspect

Bales and Robbins (2001) say that modern slavery has expression patterns; it manifests itself in cultures weakened by poverty and misery in communities and among individuals. The authors affirm that a moral economy is still necessary - the relationship between the slaveholder and the slave. It is justified by the subsistence emergence, the morality of gaining bread through labor pains. The dignity sense of livelihood is embodied in the work management of illegal practices. Furthermore, the community’s work is dignified and stimulated, bringing sustenance and support to basic needs. However, the jobs’ dignity has not reached freedom, health, good work conditions, family communication, and even the worker’s life protection (Bales, 2004; Crane, 2013). The rationale of the moral economy lies in discrimination, race or ethnicity, religion, political differences, and vulnerabilities (Datta & Bales, 2013). Research such as Figueira (2004) argues that race and ethnicity are not always related to modern slavery because extremely fragile economic conditions are associated with meager schooling and geographic distance, enough to attract, generate and retain contemporary enslaved people.

For Bales (2004) and Figueira (2004), the relationship between ignorance and the geographic distance of large cities contributes to corruption mechanisms. Datta and Bales (2013) show that men, women, and children sometimes understand their slave situation interact with reality but are relieved by macro-level - institutional forces and meso-level - formal or informal enterprises. This relief means that the enslaved can accept his condition because this ends up being part of his individual and community daily life (Figueira, 2004). Modern slavery takes place in illegality and requires “ignorance” or a lesser education degree. The geography that isolates from the large centers is also at the micro-level (ILO, 2005, 2009). The distance prevents the worker’s escape and limits the voluntary act. Isolation is a control instrument and intensifies psychological violence. This environment is what Le Breton (2003) conceptualizes about the vulnerability of Brazilian workers that are easily manipulated and dominated in the Amazon region in Brazil.

The practice of maintenance of modern slavery

The practice is forced labor through threat (ILO, 2007; MTE, 2020). The control is through abuse and dehumanization. Bales (2004) says economic exploitation is through underpayment of wages due to the commoditization of human beings with constraints on freedom of movement (Bales, 2004; Crane, 2013; Datta & Bales, 2013; ILO, 2009). In Brazil, the definition of illegal practice uses the term “analogous condition to slavery” which encompasses elements: degrading conditions, exhaustive working hours, physical and psychological violence. International Labour Organization (2009) has cited Brazilian Law and regulation to tackle the problem. At last, the “truck system” practice in modern slavery is a kind of mechanism used to give support to these physic and psychological violence (Bales, 2004; MTE, 2012; Philips & Sakamoto, 2011). The truck system consists of a number of actors and organizations that articulate to make contemporary slavery successful, such as recruiters, hotel owners, and local markets that create unpayable debt. It is connected with violence, debt management, accounting opacity, and labor supply chain management (Crane, 2013). This illegal practice under truck systems design establishes slave operators (Crane, 2013), slaveholders (Bales et al., 2009), and slave recruiters named “gatos” or “cats” in Brazil (Figueira, 2004; Le Breton, 2003; Phillips & Sakamoto, 2011).

Degrading conditions

Degrading work is an element associated with the individual suppression of freedom and the worker’s dignity (Lei nº 10.803, de 11 de dezembro de 2003). This element symbolizes a victim’s dignity status, instead of the focus being only the freedom status, based on the Brazilian Penal Code through the 149 Article about modern slavery. For instance, the worker’s case shows their performance in an oxen farm in Paragominas, Pará - Brazil, where Mobile Group of Inspection of Ministry of Labor’s report describes degrading conditions and the frustration of expecting a job that should bring the future - thirty workers were found on sleeping in the corral as animals, and feces mixed with food and clothing because of lack of facility structure (MTE, 2021).

Exhaustive working hours

The exhaustive working hours refer to work over the border or exceeding the individual physical limits (Marinho & Vieira, 2019). This work condition element emphasizes the extreme power exercised by the recruiters (“gatos” or cats), which imposes dehumanizing and excessive working hours (Lei nº 10.803, de 11 de dezembro de 2003). For instance, according to MTE (2011, 2012), the truck driver had driven for 23 hours with only 40-minute intervals. Another driver worked from December 14, 2014, until January 11, 2015, without a day off - not even Christmas or New Year. Furthermore, a formerly enslaved person’s testimony describes her mother, pregnant, and her sister below 14 years old, cutting sugar cane from 4 am to 9 pm without a break, appropriate food, and bathroom. Her pregnant mother testified her daughter was dead, hitten by a truck when she was backing home in the middle of the night. In this case, children are under modern slavery conditions.

Physical and psychological violence

The worker is deprived of his freedom under psychological, moral, or armed threats, such as rape, torture, flogging, and beatings (Lei nº 10.803, de 11 de dezembro de 2003; ILO, 2010). Psychological violence is represented by rhetoric that makes the worker equal to or worse than an animal. Bales (2004) so-called being human as a “thing.” The worker’s case, an oxen farm in Pará (Brazil) has suffered thirty hot oxen iron marks on his body because he complained that the salary was late. Another worker’s case in the construction sector felt like a prisoner due to shipowners and managers’ surveillance. The Bolivian worker lured in La Paz was threatened at the sewing workshop in Sao Paulo if he did not pay illegal debt and worked from 7 am until 11 pm under work terrible conditions.

Truck system

It is a structure slave recruiter (“gatos”) or slave operators organize materials, food, legal or illegal drugs with accountability controls to worker’s debts. In some cases, it is a canteen selling products and materials. Generally, the structure design makes available materials for the worker’s consumption. It is also known as the truck system. In some cases, in this structure, it will find soap, work gloves, work boots, coffee, beer, drip, drugs, and basic food in general. In an interview, the Ministry of Labor Inspector says: [...] there he does not have water to drink, he does not have electricity, and the worker stays in that condition. Sometimes the “cat” manages a canteen. The canteen sells a pack of cigarettes, a packet of crackers and the tool. The Mobile Group of Inspectors by the Ministry of Labor rescue slave labor found debt bondage and notebooks where recruiters register debts (MTE, 2011, 2021). This structure network is so-called a “system” due to the organization and control of the stock of materials, sale price, and registration of the debt contracted by the worker. One of the organization instruments controls the notebooks, which function as an accounting record. It is what Crane (2013) says about opacity accountability.

METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN

The literature review was based on the assumptions of modern slavery as a management practice, exploring the dynamic of an institutional field that creates conditions and capabilities for human exploitation (Crane, 2013) and the conditioning factors as social and broken rules elements (Bales, 2004). In addition to the conditions presented in the previous section as factors related to the phenomenon studied, this study is complemented with a qualitative documentary and empirical research on how the institutional field is configured to sustain contemporary slavery. To achieve this aim, first of all, secondary sources of data were collected between 2011 and 2022: official documents from the International Labour Organization (ILO), Public Labour Prosecution (MPT), Ministry of Labour and Employment (MTE), NGO Repórter Brasil, LASF, FGV EAESP, Global Slavery Index, and Instituto Ethos. Data were collected at InPACTO - Institute of the National Pact for the Eradication of Slave Labor through participation in lectures with public-private actors in Brasília and São Paulo. The study chose the InPACTO for its representativeness and because it brings together more than 70 companies and 20 civil organizations (InPACTO, 2017b). Signatories follow ten monitoring standards in production chains to combat slave labor in Brazil. InPACTO companies represent 35% of the Brazilian GDP.

The literature review and documental survey identified the main categories of analysis for the field study. The categories presented were derived by Crane (2013) launches as slavery as a management practice in a multilevel context analysis: macro, meso and micro. Moreover, Bales (2004) discusses elements such as poverty and breaking social rules that indicate a likelihood of workers being reduced to the condition of modern slaves. To the extent of those stated assumptions, the wheel of slavery was created, as the main contribution of this research. It illustrates the vicious cycle of modern slavery as a set of institutional deflections that work as a motor and maintain this wheel in a constant movement. The wheel of slavery has three main components that worked as categories in this study: conditions that favor slavery, slavery practices and structure for the maintenance of slavery. Recruitment, enticement, and the truck system are elements used by slave recruiters that provide movement to the wheel of slavery, and they are recognized as manifestations of institutional deflection. The legal, cultural, social, and economic subcategories are part of the conditions that favor recruiters. The subcategories of degrading conditions, physical and psychological violence, and exhausting work are real practices found in primary data and documents of Brazilian legislation - Article 149 of the Penal Code. The subcategories of political arrangement and articulation of companies and individuals under social pressure are part of the actions by policymakers, NGOs, institutions, and informal criminal organizations to tackle modern slavery practice. This documental research support understanding the official rules and laws that have been institutionalized during a long time in Brazil. Then, it was conducted 15 in-depth interviews from 2011 to 2022, and 30 participant observations on lectures and meetings in São Paulo and Brasilia organized by different organizations to highlight and discuss the problems derived from modern slavery. The lecturers’ observation, interviews and speeches were transcribed and categorized using NVivo text analysis software (Bazeley & Jackson, 2013), and the Box 1 illustrates the presence of all previously identified categories.

Box 1
Categorization’s results

Box 1
continuation

Box 1
continuation

Box 1
continuation

RESEARCH MODEL

The research basis model converges to understand the modern slavery dynamics as a continuous and vicious cycle, represented symbolically as a wheel whose movement depends on the perpetuation of its three main components: conditions that favor, practices themselves, and maintenance system of modern slavery. A context of high socio-cultural vulnerability defines the first wheel component - conditions favoring modern slavery: [...] I come from the Northeast […] finding a good job opportunity is rare […] In 2011, it was my turn to go South (region). […] recruit people, and the job was for a major construction company. After two days on a bus, I arrived in São Paulo. And there the conversation changed.

The agent warned that he would deduct the value of the trip from his salary. […] many had to sleep on the floor and even in the kitchen. The toilets were dirty and there was a line of 20 people for a single shower (Interview 15). The social, economic, cultural status, and an ambiguous legal environment constitute a fertile field. This field can be fertile because it is associated with recruiters’ knowledge. Offering a job with false working conditions, lowers costs, attracts workers, and maintains a structure for selling materials and food to produce false debt. Our research has seen in theory that among the most evident characteristics are: chronic poverty, low education, unemployment, high population density, geographic isolation (Bales, 2004; Boyd et al., 2018; Crane, 2013; Gold et al., 2015b) and ambiguous regulatory framework (Crane, 2013): […] our (Brazilian) concept is broader and considers not only the problem of restriction of freedom, but also issues of degrading conditions. The idea of these police-markers is to stick to the concept of forced labor, which in this case is the international concept, and to disregard the issue of degrading conditions. Based on Article 149, the Brazilian approach was an internationally recognized advance, but stakeholders disapprove of this approach.

Moreover, this legal condition can lead to ambiguity and provide a possible field for disputes between police-makers, auditors, companies, institutions, and workers: [...] the fact that the worker has no water for us is not so in this radicalism, but some auditors find in radicalism the point that not having water is already degradation. I, and a group of people, understand it differently. This example refers to the auditors of the Ministry of Labor recognizing the concern of the materiality of legal conditions and degrading conditions in the inspection action. There are differences in interpretation among tax inspectors regarding the characterization of the elements of degrading work, exhausting working hours, and forced labor. These elements may or may not be associated, but there is still a level of ambiguity.

In practice, these conditions could be observed in the characterization of modern slavery in Brazil, based on the HDI, IDHM, GINI Coefficient, legal framework analysis, and statistics of rescued workers freed by the MTE (2011) and destination and residence place. Another measure is the vulnerability index developed by InPACTO: IVI index (InPACTO, 2020). According to InPACTO (2020), it is an innovative technology developed by crossing socioeconomic and demographic data to indicate a risk scale.

The second wheel component was called Practices of Modern Slavery, characterized by the Enticement dynamic, “Truck System,” Exhaustive Working Hours, and Physical and Psychological Violence - interview 15 and former slave testimony. The dynamics of grooming rely on recruiters or slave operators (“gatos” or “cats”), as observed in the analyzed data. Each of them with their own ethical and social justification to maintain this functioning. The “Truck System” illustrated by interview 15: “the people who took us did not pay us anything, but my father always shopped in the shed (truck system), he always had what he sold, and then he paid the bill” is characterized by the dependency created through accountability opacity (Crane, 2013), debt bondage mentioned by Bales (2004), Bales et al. (2009), Gold et al. (2015), and by Philips and Sakamoto (2011), as well as of the facilities and working conditions, admittedly degrading. This practice is also set by exhaustive working hours and physical and psychological violence: “we left at 4 am in those trucks that came to pick us up. We worked from 4 in the morning until 9 pm. We took a can of couscous with us.” The theory was corroborated by the results of our research, made visible in the interview made by the former slave - interview 15.

The third wheel component consists of a maintenance slavery system, fertility, and reproduction using underlying mechanisms. This underlying mechanism is the relationship and values throughout slave operators, recruiters, and formal/informal enterprises that supply the main economic sector group. They maintain modern slavery practices while they protect themselves from institutional forces. The maintenance keeps lower costs at GPNs and reduces human beings under modern slave conditions at the same time (Dahan & Gittens, 2010) show that the public ethics topic “is instead the social construct shaped by conscious actors trying to further their interests.” Starting from this logic, this set of articulations is being proposed and subdivided into three: political, business, and individual couplings with their socio-cultural environment. The political articulations refer mainly to public power and policymakers, which can influence collective life through normative and public policy.

Nevertheless, it is subject to ambiguous and underlying mechanisms that potentiate corruption and practices inconsistent with social needs. Business articulations make sense in which companies are engaged through their networks and strategic alliances to reduce production costs and increase profits. Even with evidence to the contrary (Datta & Bales, 2013), some figures could hide the reality that modern slavery generates “profits,” as is visible in the Global Index Slavery. Slaves are forced to work for others’ profit and are unable to walk away (Bales et al., 2009 p. 31). Besides, the articulations between the individual and the social and cultural context are sustained under moral pressures, psychological control, and violence through symbols representing their role in that social group. The individual psychological view is much more present. Somehow it guides his decision to be subjected to degrading work conditions into this perspective. Briefly, these three articulations serve to maintain modern slavery and strengthen the conditions that promote the practices. The wheel of modern slavery, as we baptize it, takes the following form Figure 1.

Figure 1
Wheel of modern slavery

The engine’s wheel upholds modern slavery running is illustrated by favorable conditions, practices of enticement, and the maintenance capable of recruiting someone to be reduced to the analogous condition of a slave. Nevertheless, the maintenance of slavery uses a macro and meso-regulatory environment. It happens due to an ambiguous environment - a strategy of cutting costs and outsourcing without guaranteeing a safe job. The institutional deformity seems to flourish from organizational and institutional actors (Crane, 2013). These actions seem to somehow contribute to the fight against slavery; however, they are insufficient. These can be correlated with socioeconomic’s structural inertia - poverty, geographic distance, low schooling, and workers’ tracking for a livelihood. As a result, former modern slaves can recur to slavery activity. Companies and informal enterprises held responsible for reducing workers to modern slavery are also recurrent slave practices (MTE, 2012, 2021). These two phenomena were identified in the official reports of the Public Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Labor and Employment through the so-called “Dirty List.”

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF RESULTS

The analysis categories identified through the literature review are favorable modern slavery conditions, the practice of modern slavery, and the maintenance of modern slavery.

Favorable modern slavery conditions

The favorable modern slavery conditions are founded at the vulnerable population without resources access like food, health and shelter: […] did not have a toilet. We used to go far away, and we needed it in the bush. There was nothing. Only the sickle to cut the reeds and cane [...] one day my mother fainted from hunger (Interview 15). Another testimony: […] animals no longer lived in the corral, but we did, and the feces mixed with our food (MTE, 2016). The workers seem like “things” or “disposable things” because they do not receive dignified treatment and almost no structure. Bales et al. (2009) argue that the core characteristic of understanding what conditions are favorable to slavery is a weak regulatory environment connected to persons in a vulnerable situation. The victims are usually voiceless due to low education and absence of rights awareness. For instance, the trafficking of human beings is a gateway to modern slavery, as in the case of construction company Odebrecht, in its construction outsourcing site in Angola, the cat lured the Brazilian workers under the false promise of the job. It was Bales (2004) and Bales et al. (2009) so-called: “invisible human beings.” The voiceless people profile is connected on what Bales (2004) discusses the regulative environment has not able to protect some inertial niches (Crane, 2013) characterized by poverty: […] the idea and ideal of these parliamentarians are to stick to the concept of forced labor, which in this case is the international concept, and to disregard the issue of degrading conditions (Interview 14).

ILO (2009) recognizes that the concept of “analogous condition to slavery” in Brazil presents the greatest advance in the world in the fight against slave labor. However, the reality of the Brazilian prison for Article 149 has weaknesses in the court defense. It seems the concept of Article 149 is subjective or ambiguous. The data presented when the farmer was arrested not because of the reduction of workers under slaves but because of illegal weapon possession by his recruiter (“gato”). The legal proposal that might improve the fighting against slavery is what Brazil has done through the rule of laws and several law articles to punish slaveholders. It was argued by Crane (2013) to government effectiveness and its regulatory quality: change Brazilian modern slavery definition and implement so-called “dirty list”: […] the behavior of companies is not always the same, and companies behave differently, so a tool like the Dirty List (Interview 14). The dirty list gathers slaveholders and their supply chain on the database that forbidden financial by any private or public bank in Brazil. However, for condemnation of the slave labor crime, the Law and regulations require evidence of degrading conditions and exhausting work: […] the concept of degradation is delicate because it involves the question of the conditions that operate. [...] the fact that the worker has no water for us is not so in this radicalism, but some auditors find in radicalism the point that not having water is already degradation. I, and a group of people, understand it differently (Interview 4).

Bales (2004) associates corruption with slave labor practices by controlling structure networks and dissembling social rules. Data reveal that clandestine transportation and unlicensed driver are common in the structure offered by “cats”. “Cats” fraudulent documents and bypass the inspections when no transportation authorization is issued by the MTE, as these authorizations would attest to the transportation conditions and the employer required by Brazilian Law. Data show that IBAMA’s inspectors maintained communication with farmers in certain inspections before Mobile Group of Inspectors of Ministry of Labor operations arrived.

In some cases, they bribe police officers serving as tools to protect slave practices. Bales (2004) shows that corruption manifests by breaking a social rule at the institutional and political levels. Brazilian context includes crimes that, together or separately, can characterize modern slavery. However, for condemnation of the crime of slave labor, evidence of degrading conditions and exhausting work is required. Environmental crimes, crimes against the social function of work, and the danger to life due to lack of safety at work are materialities that, together or separately, can typify slave labor. Data indicates degrading practices with environmental crimes in extractive wood and livestock production activities. The result corroborates with Boyd et al. (2018) research. ILO recognizes that the concept of work analogous to slavery in Brazil presents the most significant advance in the world in the fight against slave labor. Nevertheless, the Brazilian reality of prisons for the crime of Article 149 of slave labor has weaknesses in the defense aspect of slaveholders. They claim that the concept of Article 149 is subjective or ambiguous.

Data indicate degrading practices related to environmental crimes in extractive activities of wood and cattle raising not only in Brazil: […] I have to tell you that it is not just Brazil. […] slave labor is destroying the largest forest in Central Africa. The dangerous parts of Central Africa, the villages, the tipples, and japing are under threat and have been destroyed by the slaveholders (Lecture 2). Environmental crimes, crimes against the social work function, and the danger to worker’s life due to lack of safety at work are pieces of evidence that together or separately, can typify slave labor. Modern slavery sheds light on the role of poverty in some interrelationships at the core of the present mass production-consumption system (Gleason & Cockayne, 2018). Sadly, though, it seems to sustain that the management field has not yet fully grasped the fundamentals of poverty and how management practices may be involved in its reproduction and alleviation. As a result, such aspects often become obscured in the debate (Crane, 2013).

Practice of modern slavery

The modern slavery definition is connected to illegal practices, that’s why is needed to be comprehended by companies, managers, and civil society: […] following the concepts of the International Labor Organization, considering that the situation of forced labor or in degrading conditions (Interview 10). This is justified because more than 300 international slavery agreements have been signed since 1815, under ILO Convention 29 and 105, but none has defined slavery in the same way (Bales et al., 2009). Even in Brazil, when a new definition was applied in Article 149 Penal Code using “conditions analogous to slavery” from 2003, it has brought advances in tackling the problem. For instance, during exhausting working hours and degrading conditions, fashion retailers worked from 15 to 22 hours in the sewing workshop without any break. Drivers were operating in the mining, making 24-hour truck trips non-stop in Minas Gerais and making their needs on the road. Workers cane-sugar producing at the harvester machines speed - 24 hours. Other mining truckers come to work 23 hours, with bathrooms scrubbed. Another worker says: […] I worked every day from 7 in the morning until 11 at night. The food was terrible. The dormitory was above the engine room (Testimony collected by MTE). The degrading work in sewing workshops presents the repetitive effort without rest as a causative factor of diseases. Bales (2004) similarly reveals that women in Bangladesh serve long days in brick factories. The dynamic of modern slavery practice has not always involved physical violence, but it has psychological coercion under bad work conditions associated with poverty and vulnerable population niches. It seems to be structural inertia.

Nevertheless, there is a control status between master and worker (Bales et al., 2009). The physical/psychological element concerns the threat under illegal work permit immigration, retention of documents, armed guards, gun possession by cats, and 60 iron marks on the worker’s body at a cattle farm. Reports of workers’ sugarcane described their needs in the bush and the case of fainting in sugarcane due to lack of food where a mother and two children worked. Livestock workers described feces mixed with food, and 30 workers slept in the corral. This scenario corroborates reducing costs in specific chains to the extreme point (Bales, 2004; MTE, 2021). Besides, Bales and Robbins (2001) describe cost-cutting limits when isolating human rights. Another example is men and women sewing, at night, they slept in the midst of machinery noises and all together, without privacy and in dirty, unventilated rooms - “it looked like a prison”, said one of the workers.

Box 2 shows the numbers of inspections and operations for the eradication of slave labor by the Ministry of Labor and Employment - MTE:

Box 2
Inspections and operations by the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE)

Box 2
continuation

Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, slave labor in production chains has not stopped. For instance, Minas Gerais and Pará represent 21,002 people freed, with approximately 44 million reais in paycheck compensation to the workers. The economic activities range from mining, livestock, civil construction, and restaurants. In some cases, MTE describes workers as meat only when the ox is run over, even though they work in a wealthy sector of agriculture and livestock in Para - Box 1. They ate beef meat, lungs and tits remaining, and black coffee with flour to thicken. Bales (2004) described that the chocolate production chain did not provide food and housing facilities for Ghana and the Ivory Coast workers. Data reveal a child’s work in the middle of the forest cutting trees, cold, working under the rain, and then sleeping beneath the yellow tarp in a shabby ground shack without electricity. The bathwater was the same as the one they drank in specific reports. Surveys by Bales et al. (2009) revealed the worse when describing tigers eating children and men dying in the fishing chain in some areas of Africa.

Maintenance of modern slavery

The maintenance of modern slavery refers to an inefficient environment when policies, norms, and laws, are trying to tackle modern slavery in the same way it cannot eradicate it: […] the signatory companies of InPACTO must recognize the legitimacy of the Dirty List and establish trade restrictions for suppliers […] promote the regularization of labor relations in the supply chain. Support professional qualification of rescued and vulnerable workers, support relationships for the reintegration of laid-off and vulnerable workers. Promote information and communication activities to prevent slave labor. Support and participate in the articulation, systematize the dissemination and exchange of good practices, participate in the monitoring process, and develop an action plan (Lecture 30).

There is, though, the evidence presented by InPACTO Coordinator (2022) indicating that only 72% of signatory companies care about the dirty list. The business articulations, political arrangements, and individuals under social pressure are the maintenance structure that keeps the slavery wheel rotating and overcomes institutional pressures by anti-slave policies, for instance, Corporate Social Responsibility - CSR policies: […] every business essentially operates on two levels, an economic level that must be efficient. It has to generate results, but it also does so in an ethical context; it is extremely complex. The challenges are enormous […] a retail company that has about 16,000 suppliers, with all their subcontractors. I do not know how many thousands there are, there are more than 70 thousand items, and we distribute products within all the risk chains (Lecture 27). Data show the operation of the “truck system” in Brazil employed by “gatos” (cats) through the so-called canteen or in Portuguese, “barracão” refers to four components: structure, recruiter profile (“gato” or slave operator), mobile structure, and management design (ILO, 2011). These are the “underlying mechanisms” that lead to cost reductions, better profit margins and competitive advantages. For instance, data shows the availability of food, alcohol, beverages, and legal and illicit drugs sold in Amazon rainforest and jungle to the workers to control them and finish the “job” (Le Breton, 2000; MTE, 2020).

These underlying mechanisms throughout slaves’ recruiters to have financial and logistical power as they supply multiple sectors while being relatively outside of institutional pressures. The logic dynamic reaches the status of a “system” because recruiters find workers and find customers. All material is bought for no regular prices (higher expensive) and discounted monthly over the salary. Bales (2004) and Crane (2013) do not present the supply of illicit drugs in certain chains as a form of unlawful managerial practices in their research. It is a sales structure for materials and products for personal use, work materials, and food: soap, work glove, work boot, coffee, beer, drip, drugs, and food in general. One of the instruments of organization and control is the notebooks, which function as an accounting record of illegal and fabricated debt that restricts freedom and oppresses. Crane (2013) names as “accounting opacity.”

The maintenance of modern slavery is connected to what we have discussed underlying mechanisms (Crane, 2013), which its role can occupy legitimate or illegitimate space: […] there is a strong link between inhumane labor and deforestation […]every time we encounter slave labor on soybean farms, those are unhealthy conditions for deforestation […] the employee sleeping in a tent on the canvas, very inadequate conditions and food, but the good news is that of the 60 million hectares used for agriculture in Brazil, soybeans account for 28 million hectares, almost half of the country’s agricultural land (Lecture 16).

The subcategory elements of the political arrangement refer to the integration of decision-makers and policymakers; for example, there is a group that has been criticizing the blacklist and the concept of labor analogous to slavery, and they try to boycott: […] despite the changes in the Temer government and Bolsonaro, the dirty list has already been published. There were discussions about the Dirty List at the time, but that has also been the case since the Dilma government. But the list still exists; the financial institutions that lend to producers still adhere to the list. It is an essential reference point, which is why there are always heated discussions about it because it is not an instrument for “English see”. The list has an interesting effectiveness; in short, it is considered good practice in several forums and the like, and many attempts are made to copy this list good practice. In short, the Dirty List is a tool that works.

Business articulations are tied to the integration of decision makers with the signatory of InPACTO. So, it seems no one is advocating for modern slavery. The reality is that there are still some people and companies who do not help InPACTO, and that there are still members of InPACTO who appear to be figurative or symbolic members. On the other hand, some members of the Brazilian Congress are in favor of ending the dirty list and do not use the Brazilian concept of slave labor, which is the most advanced in the world.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

The theoretical contribution of this paper broad the notion of structural inertia and the institutional deflection proposed by Crane (2013). The institutional deflection emerges from a fertile socioeconomic, cultural, and political environment. For instance, the recurrence of slave workers back to the undignified job, from the leadership of enticement by “cats” and the “truck system” by formal and or informal enterprises. Structural inertia seems to be interconnected to workers “accepting” the risky, unpredictable job. Businesses do not externalize production costs in supply chains, corporations cutting production costs despite the life protection of a human being and not managing the outsourcing process. Besides the legal power, advertisement campaigns against slavery, public political initiatives, and rescue of workers’ slaves and lawsuits/penalties by Justice are not capable of reaching a high level to tackle modern slavery.

The slavery wheel model reveals in part that actions and norms may not be sufficient to achieve a level of normative adequacy, i.e., there is institutional deviance. InPACTO signatories appear to be monitoring the first links in the supply chain but have not yet managed to actively adapt management systems. Some companies are responsible for slave labor more than once. Outsourcing can be associated with cost reductions and the precariousness of human resource management standards. This divergence can gradually worsen the acceptance and application of institutionalized practices, such as cost-cutting in supply chains that compromise workers’ dignity. This institutional vacuum appears to be associated with disruptions in the social dimension of the supply chain-human rights, health, and safety. It takes advantage of specific institutional spaces that sustain and maintain modern slavery as a management practice. Institutional pressures would initiate an adaptation process to norms and rules - isomorphism, but this movement does not reach its legitimacy due to the institutional deflection spaces and particular inert niches.

The slave’s recruiters act at the micro-processes connected to “hidden” organizational inertia. At the organizational level, they are called structural networks of groups to support, which performance according to the market demand sectors on livestock, agriculture, iron ore, and civil construction. Stakeholders seek to compete for external and institutional pressures while reducing workers to analogous slave conditions. Future studies can examine how structural inertia at the individual and community level interacts with businesses in some regions of Brazil: corruption, symbolic CSR strategy, violence, community pressure, and environmental degradation. This interaction also opens the chance to deepen the mediation and remediation by organizations in supply chain actions against modern slavery discussed by Gold et al. (2015) and Voss et al. (2019).

Likewise, it is still essential for more empirical research on how the wheel of slavery explores niches and organizational spaces of higher-level - formal organizations and lower companies - informal organizations or networks of slaveholders. One example would be the “symbolic” actions of some signatories to the InPACTO agreement. The maintenance system has political dynamics mediated by legitimacy, which converges interests and resources. In that way, there are three elements in the institutional dynamic of modern slavery that is included in the model presented in this paper: the truck system, the enticement process, and the recurrence. These elements act hidden. Finally, these elements use the underlying mechanisms that link the phases of the modern slavery dynamics. The model of the wheel of slavery reveals the favorable conditions, the practice of slavery, and its maintenance. Regrettably, the wheel turns by hidden mechanisms where the inert structure paves a pathway to continuous slave practices.

Of course, this is one of the possible approaches to discussing contemporary slavery. Furthermore, questions that could be the object of future research, and to which there is not yet a satisfactory answer, concern the cultural and historical causes for the persistence of this phenomenon in modern society. Questioning the African diaspora and structural racism would also be among the possibilities for an epistemological discussion of modern slavery. Finally, the civilizational political structures that support the vision of modernity in the administration would be another way to discuss this social problem. Thus, it is essential to continue to make this issue visible in administration and to prioritize it on corporate and governmental policy agendas.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Prof. Dr. Stefan Gold of the University of Kassel in Germany for the 2018-2020 postdoctoral phase, Prof. Dr. Alexander Trautrims and his team of the University of Nottingham in England, the team of the NGO Repórter Brasil, the InPACTO team, the reviewers, and the scientific editor whose comments were valuable in improving this text. The authors would also like to thank the International Center for Development and Decent Work - ICCD at the University of Kassel in Germany, FEI University, and the Instituto Presbiteriano Mackenzie at the Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie for funding through MackPesquisa.

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• 1
  The interview 15 was done with a former slave in sugar cane sector in 2016.

• 6
  [Original version]

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  30 June 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  27 Feb 2022
• Accepted
  15 Dec 2022