Free and Unfree Labour

Hosts the Cluster of Excellence “Beyond Slavery and Freedom”, which aims to overcome the binary opposition of “slavery versus freedom”. For that we approach the phenomenon of slavery and other types of strong asymmetrical dependencies from methodologically and theoretically distinct perspectives.

The Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies holds the “Dependency and Labor in Latin America” Workshop. The guests are based in Universities in Europe and the Americas, and the papers cover different spaces and periods.

The intention of the Workshop is to stimulate the debate on several aspects of dependency and labor in Latin America. The event has been organized along the following axes: “The Process and Impact of Abolition”, “Social Categorization and Work-related Dependency”, “Migrations, Borderlands, Colonization”, and “Dependencies, Transculture and Labor”.

Presentation: "Mondays at the Square: On the Domestic Mita Service in La Plata, Charcas (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries)".

Departing from liberal accounts that understand ‘modern-day slavery’ and unfree labour in isolation from markets and shifting global networks of production and reproduction, this article highlights the need to investigate how far and in what ways the deepening and extension of neoliberal capitalism has given rise to the contemporary spectrum of unfree labour relations. Building on feminist political economy frameworks, the article argues that the neoliberal resurgence of unfree labour has been rooted in fundamental shifts in power, production and social reproduction whereby capital's security has increasingly come to rely upon the deepening of labour market insecurity for certain sections of the population. It highlights the need to understand unfree labour within the context of broader relations of inequality and hierarchical social relations, particularly along the lines of race, gender and citizenship, arguing that broader and more systemic evaluations of labour and unfreedom are essential to understanding the variegated power relations that underpin the most severe forms of exploitation.

Taking the new Canadian legislation on migrant domestic workers as an illustration, this article suggests that framing temporary migrant work programs in a discourse of economic labor markets has a dehumanizing effect and tends to obscure both the reality experienced by the workers (within and beyond the workplace) and the forces at play in the creation of these experiences. Ultimately, such a discourse can even serve to justify regulatory frameworks that violates workers’ basic human rights and maintain global inequalities. Building on the concepts of informality, unfree labor relations and precarious work, we suggest that a rehumanization process built around the workers dignity is necessary, in order to fully recognize the responsibility of governments in the construction of migrant domestic workers’ unfreedom and thus bring to light the illegality of these types of regulatory frameworks. In the end, respecting temporary migrant workers’ dignity should translate into an institutional change where these workers not only get to participate in the law-making processes, but also in the very framing and shaping mechanisms of these institutions.

Book chapter in WORK, SOCIETY, AND THE ETHICAL SELF
Chimeras of Freedom in the Neoliberal Era, available from Berghahn Books https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HannWork

Rather than accept formal commodity-like contractual definitions of ‘free’ labor, this chapter reflects on the ambivalence in Mauss’s concept of “prestations totales” (‘total services’) to reconsider the ‘voluntary character’ of work. It discusses Vanuatu’s colonial and unfree labor history, as well as the impact of overseas labor migration on attitudes to work in contemporary Vanuatu. It shows how the meaning and value of ‘free work’, both in terms of working without payment, or working autonomously, depends on the worker’s standpoint within their social and political relations, and how they confront their social obligations.

The use of prison labour in Aotearoa New Zealand weaves its way through every major urban centre, across the pastured grasslands of heartland New Zealand and into Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific. Yet despite is entanglement with many significant events of New Zealand’s past, prison labour is largely absent from our national histories. And despite its indelible impact on the land, prison labour is not mentioned in the seventeen papers that make up 'The Environmental Histories of New Zealand' and merits a single passing reference in the official history of the Public Works Department. Nor is it commemorated in the centennial histories of New Zealand’s cities.

This research aims to provide an accessible and original overview of the use of prison labour in New Zealand’s long nineteenth century – a story of the making of New Zealand and its Pacific empire told through the prism of prison labour. Using the framework of ‘workscapes’ provided by Thomas G. Andrews, I hope to combine the best of new labour history with environmental history, expanding significantly on the existing literature for a general audience.

I will argue that prisons and hard labour in New Zealand were not shaped by ideas about punishment alone. Land and the environment also shaped the labouring activity of prisoners. Faced with Indigenous power and a natural environment that placed its own demands on the use of prisoners, prison labour in the Pacific context was a geographically-specific response to the colonisation and improvement of (indigenous) land. In other words, penal practice in New Zealand was rooted in the development of prison labour.

A ticket of leave was the third stage of servitude for convicts sent to Western Australia, following periods of separate confinement (in Britain) and hard labour (in Britain or the colony). Unlike other convicts, ticket-of-leave men were allowed to enter the colonial workforce, earn a wage and acquire property, although they remained subject to police surveillance and faced legal disadvantages. Despite the fact that most Western Australian convicts spent longer on ticket of leave than in colonial gaols or prisoner work parties, few historians have examined the ticket-of-leave experience in detail. Many have focussed on the freedoms of ticket-of-leave life described in convict department reports, reaffirming official assurances that 'ticketers' were treated more or less as free men. This article challenges these representations, providing a long overdue systematic exploration of ticket-of-leave standards of living. Through analysis of ticket-of-leave wage rates, living costs and mortality data, it shows that the 'freedoms' ticketers were afforded rarely translated into favourable living standards or work conditions. Not only were most ticket-of-leave holders disadvantaged in comparison to free men, but a considerable proportion were scarcely better off (in terms of living and labour conditions) than incarcerated convicts.

In Arbeiten zur mittelalterlichen Sklaverei hat das östliche Europa seinen Platz als Region, die die islamische Welt mit Sklavinnen und Sklaven belieferte. Besonders viele Menschen, so wird mit Blick auf die in Ostmittel- und Osteuropa entdeckten Horte von Silbermünzen argumentiert, seien gegen Dirham nach Zentralasien verhandelt worden. Die Kaufleute, die sich im Sklavenhandel zwischen dem östlichen Europa und der islamischen Welt betätigten, seien meist Juden gewesen, und das Geschäft sei im 11. Jahrhundert zum Erliegen gekommen. Der vorliegende Beitrag kommt nach einer Analyse vor allem arabischer Überlieferungen des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts zu ganz anderen Schlüssen und lenkt schließlich den Blick auf Formen der Sklaverei, die im östlichen Europa selbst praktiziert wurden und in der bisherigen Forschung kaum Beachtung fanden. Sklaverei war, so offenbaren die Quellen, weit verbreitet, und daran änderte auch die Christianisierung der politischen Eliten und weiter Teile der Bevölkerung nichts. Das Beispiel des östlichen Europa zeigt sich damit unvereinbar mit dem Narrativ vom sklavenfreien Europa.

Europe’s Slaves during the Middle Ages. Tracing Slavery in East Central and Eastern Europe:

In studies on medieval slavery, East Central and Eastern Europe figures first and foremost as a territory that supplied the Islamic world with slaves. Most notably – in the light of the numerous hoards of silver coins unearthed in Europe’s eastern part – Central Asia is described as a region where people were taken in exchange for dirham. The merchants who engaged in the slave trade between Europe’s eastern part and the Islamic world are believed to have been mainly Jews, while the trade is thought to have come to an end in the 11th century. The close reading of mainly Arabic sources stemming from the 9th and 10th centuries undertaken for the present study yields very different results, though. The article thereupon focusses on the forms of slavery practised in East Central and Eastern Europa which rarely caught the attention of historians. As the sources reveal, slavery was a wide-spread phenomenon that did not cease when ruling elites and large parts of the populace became Christians. The example of East Central and Eastern Europe thus contradicts the narrative which depicts Europe, following antiquity, as a region free of slaves.

This dissertation follows Fernando Pó’s labour recruiters wherever they went— between the 1860s and 1920s recruiters traversed the entirety of the Gulf of Guinea and enlisted mostly Kru from Liberia and Fang from Rio Muni, Cameroon and Gabon; between the 1930s to 1960s they gathered particularly around the Bight of Biafra and brought an unprecedented number of contract workers into the island’s booming cacao plantations, mostly Igbos and Ibibios from south-eastern Nigeria. Recruiters tended to appear in a modality that I will describe and theorize as ‘touts’. They operated almost exclusively with an excess of language and money—deceit and informal advances. They operated ‘outside’ the law and the regulated, yet it was only the shape of the contract on Fernando Pó—forced, long and irrevocable—that allowed recruiters to deploy their techniques. Recruiters created and relayed a series of wholly impermissible twists: quasi-enslavement through fraud that was a form of kidnapping, quasi-debt bondage with informal wage advances enabled by the contracts, and even a movement of really quite free but fugitive labour across borders and work-sites. A sustained attention on the ambivalent practices of recruiters reveal a series of juxtapositions of free and unfree that produced creative potentials for intensification and unravelling, rather than single points along a ‘free-unfree’ labour spectrum.

This is an essay on the subject of free labor in archaeology. By presenting a diverse material of laws, ethical documents and interviews the inclusion of free labor in archaeology is discussed. The discussion is made through the case study of the bog of Rönneholm, a site in central Scania, Sweden, where archaeologists working under contract are recruiting volunteers as free labor. Focusing, not on the site, but on field archaeology as a whole, the conclusion is made that a formal national policy document is missing and should be formed; to construct the moral ground on which decisions of this character should be made, especially in the case of contract archaeology. Emphasis is put on showing that all archaeologists are part of a collective unit and that it is as such the matter of free labor should be discussed, as exceeding the individual in favor of the collective regarding ethical principles.

I wish that I had written this article in english, since free labour in archaeology is a highly viable subject globally and should really be discussed in wider perspectives.

This review examines the ambiguous condition of unfree labor in modern, Fordist, or postindustrial systems of exploitation. Unfree labor is reviewed across two multidisciplinary strands of research. The first pertains to forms of coercion and exploitation of labor in situations of human mobility or bondage—so-called modern-day slavery and human trafficking. The second attends to the effects of precariousness and dependency conceived at the interstice of recent theorizations of affect and belonging. Whereas the first case is framed as an exception, morally and legally condemned, the second is presented as a new ordinary form of inequality. A theoretical and empirical engagement that straddles both literatures under the prism of unfree labor consolidates this renewed anthropological focus on work. This review suggests that the objectification and dehumanization of labor should be placed back at the heart of anthropological reflection to pave the way for a refined scrutiny of exploitation, inequality, and dispossession.

Since the early successful colonial enterprises in Brazil’s territory, men and women forcibly transferred from Africa were used as enslaved workers not only on plantations and other agricultural settings, but also in protoindustrial contexts, such as in the sugar mills and the mining trade and metallurgy. Enslaved people were also a fundamental part of the labor force in the urban artisanry, manufacturing, and the early industrial ventures in the 18th century and after Independence in 1822. In the second half of the 19th century, the first drive of industrialization, in places like Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, and São Paulo, was driven by British investments led by slave-owning entrepreneurs and powered by the intensive use of enslaved labor. Foreign workers brought to the country, Brazilian free manual laborers and other poor immigrants, freed, and enslaved people often worked side by side in shipyards, gunpowder factories, mining endeavors, railways constructions, and many other activities.

In Brazil, especially in urban contexts, many enslaved men and women would rent themselves out, or they would be leased out by their masters, to perform a variety of urban activities, including working in the country’s many artisan shops and industries. In doing so, not only were they able to get financial compensation for their work by becoming ganhadores (enslaved wage earners), but, in that capacity, they also experienced situations usually associated with “free” laborers, such as wage negotiation, bargaining, and even strikes. Some of the enslaved ganhadores were able to buy their own freedom and carried their experiences into their lives as free workers. Therefore, both free and unfree laborers of African descent were present in a variety of trades and enterprises, and the multiplicity of their experiences shaped the dynamics of labor relations, identity building, political and labor cultures, and individual and collective action and organization in the long history of the making of Brazilian working classes.

The heterogeneity that defined the Brazilian laboring classes, composed of people of African descent as well as poor White Portuguese settlers and other immigrants, united and divided by race, gender, nationality, legal status, histories, and cultural backgrounds cannot be stressed enough. It is crucial to understand how the institution of slavery impacted the social and economic relations of all workers, free and unfree, in Brazil even after slavery was abolished in 1888: its legacy of oppression, but also diversity, is expressed in the conflicts and collaborations that marked workers’ collective experience and impacted the transformations that the working classes underwent in post-emancipation Brazil.

This article revisits the agrarian question and the related problematic of so-called unfree labour through the prism of two contending approaches to Marxist theory. In highlighting the limitations of the received approach the conceptual infrastructure of which is pushed to the limit in the face of seismic shifts in the world economy, the article draws upon the alternate approach to Marxist theory to examine the case Marx makes for the role of agrarian change in capitalism and sketches out the implications of that for understanding labour relations in non-developed economies at the current conjuncture. Operationalising theoretical insights arrived at in this discussion the article turns to evidence on agrarian change and the commodification of labour power in East Asia which arguably is the geospatial locale of the last world historic spurt of capitalist development and full-scale industrialisation. It concludes by examining China’s experiential divergence from the modalities of agrarian change in South Korea and Taiwan and the implications of this for Marxian theoretical debate.

The deprivation of liberty is one of the defining components of Christendom-Islam relationships in the Medieval Mediterranean. In this context the Kingdom of Granada is a perfect framework within which to study a frontier society both in the Nasrid and the Castilian periods, in which the daily presence of prisoners and slaves show social and economic features common to the rest of the Western Mediterranean and also specific traits related to the particular historical characteristics of the Iberian Peninsula. In line with the current trend that supports the joint study of captivity and slavery overcoming the juridical differences that divide them, this article collects the state of knowledge on the matter. It reviews the classic bibliography and moves forward to include the latest studies in an attempt to deal with the subject from an integrating perspective. Given that very few Late Medieval Mediterranean territories offer the documentary richness and the economic, social and structural complexity of the Kingdom of Granada, there emerges a panorama of great clarity for the question under study.

Desde o final do século XVIII, diferentes administrações portuguesas e brasileiras se ocuparam em criar mecanismos de compulsão ao trabalho, voltados às populações não legalmente escravizadas na Amazônia. Após a abolição do cativeiro de povos indígenas, em 1755, sucessivas legislações buscaram estabelecer rígidas bases oficiais (não raramente exasperadas pelas práticas cotidianas de coerção) para que os pobres livres e libertos, sobretudo índios, negros e mestiços, fossem obrigados a realizar atividades laborais, tanto em serviços e obras públicas quanto para particulares. Esses trabalhadores eram empregados em funções econômicas fundamentais tais como transporte, extrativismo, lavoura, comércio, entre outros, num cenário em que a presença de escravos negros era significativamente menor do que em outras regiões do país. A partir disso, pretende-se analisar de que modo as autoridades públicas e agentes privados articularam formas legais visando impelir os pobres livres e libertos ao trabalho, e como tais instrumentos buscaram regular e naturalizar diferenças de origem étnicas e sociais objetivando a máxima retenção e controle de toda força de trabalho não escrava disponível na Amazônia no século XIX. Igualmente serão enfatizados os modos pelos quais essas populações vivenciaram, reagiram e se opuseram a tais investidas legais contra sua liberdade, mobilizando-se por meio de fugas, organizando-se politicamente em áreas de disputas fronteiriças e fazendo uso dos recursos naturais não apenas para sua sobrevivência, mas também para a reafirmação da sua autonomia sociocultural e econômica.

La dicotomía libre/esclavo se ha mostrado insuficiente para explicar la diversidad y multiplicidad de relaciones y de experiencias laborales en el mundo. De esta certeza surge la necesidad de poner en evidencia y estudiar en perspectiva histórica la coexistencia de sistemas laborales que, por su diferente grado de coerción, la historiografía ha tradicionalmente calificado de “libres” y “no libres”.1 Además de las posibles similitudes y diferencias, se pueden constatar ciertas conexiones y relaciones entre estos regímenes. De hecho, esto demanda superar la distinción misma entre relaciones “libres” y “no libres”, para enfocarse en el continuum de coacción en el cual se sitúan todas relaciones laborales. Un acercamiento de este tipo debe ir de la mano de la reflexión renovada sobre los significados de coerción y libertad asociados a las formas laborales estudiadas en diferentes contextos y periodos...

This article revisits the agrarian question and the related problematic
of so-called unfree labor through the prism of two
contending approaches to Marxist theory. In highlighting the
limitations of the received approach, the conceptual infrastructure
of which is pushed to the limit in the face of seismic
shifts in the world economy, the article draws on the Uno
approach to Marxist theory to examine the case Marx makes
for the role of agrarian change in capitalism and sketches out
the implications of that for understanding labor relations in
nondeveloped economies at the current conjuncture.
Operationalizing theoretical insights arrived at in this discussion
the article turns to evidence on agrarian change and the
commodification of labor power in China.

This article pursues two goals. First, it reviews recent literature calling for a revised and extended history of work. Based on that review, it then explores the possibility of a new, empirically based analytical and methodological framework for the study of labor relations and the reinterpretation of contemporary issues, including precariousness, “modern slavery,” social inequality, and dependence. We contend that viewing labor relations as standardly diverse, coexisting, entangled, and overlapping across history provides an alternative organizing principle for the research field and is central to the understanding of larger social processes. To this end, we propose a contextualized, interrelational and transepochal approach to labor relations and labor experiences and discuss the potential of three research strategies: the analysis of the historical semantics of labor relations, the detailed study of coercion, and the historical investigation of the relation between precariousness and flexibility.

This bibliographic essay seeks to contribute to the understanding of convict labour from a global and long-term perspective. First the conditions conducive to the emergence and transformation of convict labour are addressed by framing this coercive labour form within broader classifications of labour relations and by discussing its connection with the problem of governmentality. Subsequently, an overview of the literature is undertaken in the form of a journey across time, space, and different regimes of punishment. Finally, the limitations of the available literature are discussed, the possibility of a longer-term (pre-1500) and global history of convict labour is considered, and some theoretical and methodological approaches are suggested that could favour this task.Dans cet essai bibliographique, les auteurs tentent d'approfondir les connaissances sur le travail des prisonniers dans une perspective mondiale et sur une longue durée. D'abord, les conditions propices à la naissance et la transformation du travail des prisonniers sont évoquées, en définissant cette forme de travail coercitif à l'intérieur de classifications élargies de relation de travail, et en discutant son lien avec le problème de la gouvernementalité. Ensuite, un panorama de la littérature spécialisée est esquissé sous la forme d'un voyage dans le temps, dans l'espace et sous différents régimes de peines. Enfin, les limites de la littérature disponible sont examinées, la possibilité d'une histoire sur une longue durée (remontant à avant l'an 1500) et mondiale du travail des prisonniers est considérée, et diverses approches théoriques et méthodologiques propres à favoriser cette tâche sont suggérées.Traduction: Christine Krätke-Plard Dieser bibliographische Aufsatz versucht, aus globaler und langfristiger Sicht einen Beitrag zum Verständnis der Sträflingsarbeit zu leisten. Zunächst werden die Bedingungen angesprochen, die die Entstehung und Veränderung der Sträflingsarbeit begünstigen, in dem diese Form von Zwangsarbeit in den Kontext weitreichenderer Klassifizierungen der Arbeitsverhältnisse gestellt und ihre Beziehung zum Problem der Gouvernementalität diskutiert wird. Anschließend wird ein Überblick über die Literatur geboten, in Form einer Reise durch Zeit und Raum sowie durch verschiedene Strafregimes. Schließlich werden die Grenzen der vorliegenden Literatur diskutiert; die Möglichkeit einer langfristiger angelegten (vor 1500 ansetzenden) Globalgeschichte der Sträflingsarbeit wird ins Auge gefasst und es werden einige theoretische und methodologische Ansätze vorgeschlagen, die diesem Vorhaben dienlich sein könnten.Übersetzung: Max Henninger Este ensayo bibliográfico aspira a ser una contribución a la comprensión del trabajo cautivo desde una pespectiva global y de larga duración. Comienza por situar las condiciones que conducen a la emergencia y transformación del trabajo cautivo en un marco más amplio de clasificación de las relaciones laborales y se dialoga sobre su conexión con la cuestión de la gubernamentalidad. A continuación se lleva a cabo una panorámica de la literatura existente sobre el tema como si se tratara de un viaje a través del tiempo, del espacio y de los diferentes regímenes de castigo. Por último, se analizan las limitaciones de las obras a disposición del investigador, considerando la posiblidad de introducir una visión de mayor duración temporal (anterior a 1500), proponiendo una historia global del trabajo cautivo y se sugieren algunas cuestiones teóricas y metodológicas que puedan ir en esa dirección.Traducción: Vicent Sanz Rozalén

The literature on the unfree character of temporary migrant labour has drawn much needed attention to the poor working conditions faced by migrant workers and opened up an important space to challenge those ubiquitous claims by defenders of the current political-economic status quo of the freedom expressed at the core of neoliberalism. However, there is a risk to focusing on legal unfreedom to the exclusion of a broader critique of the logic of capitalist reproduction, the very premise of which is the private ownership of society's productive wealth and the alienation of the majority of people from that wealth. Unfreedom and coercion are systematic to capitalist market relations, and all wage labour, including that of formally 'free', is unfree. This article examines different conceptions of labour unfreedom and concludes with a discussion of unfree labour in the neoliberal context.

Dash in pidgin English means an ancillary gift to an exchange. What happened when the dash became attached to the indentured labour contracts that the Spanish Empire brought from Cuba to their last colony, Spanish Guinea? On the island of Fernando Pó, which came to be almost wholly populated by Nigerian labour migrants, the conditional gift in the form of a large wage advance produced a particularly intense contradiction. In the historiography of unfree labour, the excess wage advance is thought to create conditions for the perpetuation of bondage through debt. However, in imperial contexts, the wage advance did not generate compliance and immobility; exactly the opposite – it produced unprecedented waves of further escalation and dispersed flight. The dash was pushed up by workers themselves and relayed by informal recruiters. Together they turned this lynchpin of indentured labour and debt peonage into a counter-practice that almost led to the collapse of the plantations in the 1950s. The trajectories of the dash led to a more pointed version of the foundational thesis of global labour history: namely, that it was actually free labour, not unfree labour, that was incompatible with labour scarcity-ridden imperial capitalism.

The “Labour Question”, a well-known obsession pervading the archives of Africa, was posed by colonial rulers as a calculated question of scarcity and coercion. On the Spanish plantation island of Fernando Pó the shortage and coercive recruitment of labour was particularly intense. This article examines two distinct clandestine labour recruitment operations that took hold of Rio Muni and eastern Nigeria, on the east and the north of the Bight of Biafra. The trails of the recruitment networks were successfully constructed by the specifically aligned “mediators” of kinship, ethnicity, money, law, commodities, and administration. The conceptual focus on flat “mediators” follows Bruno Latour's sociology of associations and has been set against the concept of an “intermediary” that serves to join and uphold the structure/agency and global/local binaries.