RT Article
T1 Modern Slavery and the Punitive–Humanitarian Complex
JF The British journal of criminology
VO 65
IS 1
SP 93
OP 109
A1 Carvalho, Henrique
A2 Foreman, Sally
A2 Tawfic, Simon
A2 Aliverti, Ana
A2 Chamberlen, Anastasia
A2 Rawson, Belinda
LA English
YR 2025
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1916390013
AB This paper provides a critical analysis of modern slavery (MS) policy, legislation and discourse in the United Kingdom. Challenging the suggestion that recent attempts to dilute protections and guarantees in the original MS framework represent a fundamental shift from a more humanitarian to a more punitive orientation, it argues that these two moments ought to be understood as products of a single, underlying articulation, the ‘punitive-humanitarian complex’. We first explore the context and discourse of the MS agenda, exposing an ambivalence within its core tenets, primarily manifested through the dichotomy between victims (slaves) and offenders (slavers). The paper then examines how the punitive-humanitarian complex engenders moral and affective economies and reflects on how it reveals the vulnerability of contemporary state power.
K1 modern slavery
K1 Punitiveness
K1 Humanitarianism
K1 state power
K1 Vulnerability
K1 moral and affective economies
DO 10.1093/bjc/azae044