Forced Labor Research Articles

Stalin and the origins of mistrust

We examine current differences in trust levels within the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and trace their origins back to the system of forced labor during Stalin, which was marked by high incarceration rates and harsh punishments. We explore whether those exposed to knowledge about the repressions became less trusting and transferred this social norm to future generations and communities. We argue that political repressions were more salient and visible to local communities living near forced labor camps (gulags), which symbolized the harshness of Stalin’s regime. Combining contemporary survey data with the geolocation of forced labor camps, we find that living near former gulags lowers present-day social trust and civic engagement. These effects are independent of living near places where Stalin’s victims were arrested. Moreover, they are above and beyond any experiences with war or civil conflict that the extant literature documents, indicating that the gulag system's repressiveness is a crucial trigger of the mistrust culture within the FSU countries today. As such, we furnish novel evidence on how past political repression matters for current socioeconomic outcomes.

Cultural capital and constrained agency in debt-migration for construction work in India

ABSTRACT Debt-migration is endemic in construction work in India, where exploitative social relations are an integral part of businesses’ capital accumulation model that can entrap migrants in forced labour and perpetual indebtedness. Drawing on concepts of cultural capital, ‘constrained agency’, and qualitative interviews with migrants and their wives, this study examines the embodied and material practices that migrants in Telangana use to challenge power hierarchies and embark on different life trajectories. The paper draws out the gendered differences in cultural capital and agential strategies that migrants use to place themselves and their families on an upwardly mobile path. Although still in debt, many migrants had succeeded in buying land, investing in farming, marrying their daughters, releasing themselves from moneylenders, and educating their children privately. A few had transitioned to working and living more permanently in the city of Hyderabad. This research sheds new light on how constrained agency and the use of cultural capital intersects with gender, ethnicity, and caste. It also shows that while the situations of both those who continue to circulate and those who settle in the city remain precarious, small incremental changes can add up to a significant shift in social and economic circumstances.

The Need for a Black Feminist Climate Justice

The Need for a Black Feminist Climate Justice

Said the Hooker to the Thief

Said the Hooker to the Thief

A Review of Modern International Law on the Expansion of Colonies

The study begins with questions about Japan s colonization of the Korean Peninsula under international law. Currently, the international community is actively debating the establishment of comfort facilities for Asian women, including the peoples of the Korean Peninsula, who were colonized by Japan during the Sino-Japanese War, and were put into forced labor following the national recruitment order. In South Korea, the research focuses on the treaties signed between Japan and South Korea from the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War in 1914 through 1910, as well as comfort women, and forced labor. However, Japan continues to argue that while its annexation of Korea was unjustified, it was not a violation of international law due to the absence of multilateral treaties on colonial expansion and few judicial bodies or international conferences. In order to elucidate the Japanese annexation of the Korean Peninsula, which is closely linked to Korea s identity, international law research on colonial expansion in the 19th and early 20 centuries is needed. Furthermore, given the fact that international law evolved in the process of the expansion of European colonies, such research is crucial for the correct understanding of contemporary international law. This study analyzes the “European International Law” of colonial expansion by examining 19th and early 20th-century bilateral treaties, state practice, and the views of international jurists. The definition of colonies as defined in international law at the time is explored, and the concept of territorial acquisition and trust to colonial peoples of European countries are also discussed. Additionally, it reviews a non-annexation declaration agreed upon at the Paris Peace Conference. In addition, it examines the human rights norms applied to the mandate system, a territorial management system operated by the League of Nations. Furthermore, this study applies the international law on colonial expansion discussed in Chapter 2 to cases involving Japanese colonial expansion. Japan began colonial expansion at the end of the 19th century when it joined the “Family of Nations”, comprising “European Christian countries.” The international community criticized Japan s ambition to expand its colonies against European international law for its colonization of the Korean peninsula, the Manchurian Incident, the Sino-Japanese War, and the mandate of the South Sea Islands.

일제강제징용 배상판결에 대한 민사소송법 쟁점의 검토

Legal remedies for the forced labor of the Korean people for the production of military supplies by Japanese companies during the Japanese colonial period have not been appropriately implemented to this day. Accordingly, the victims first requested a Japanese court for damages against Japan and Japanese companies, and the Japanese court dismissed and confirmed the plaintiff s claim. Victims claimed for damages to the Korean courts again, and the Supreme Court Decision 2009Da 68620 and the Supreme Court en banc Decision 2013Da 61381 after reversed were in favor of the plaintiffs. It is the first final and groundbreaking judgment in favor of the plaintiff in legal actions related to various compensations filed by victims of the Japanese colonial period against the Korean and Japanese governments, Etc. In the above case, the courts start from the domestic jurisdictional provisions of the Civil Procedure Law in determining international jurisdiction. In addition, the courts consider the ideology of the distribution of international jurisdiction, the distinctiveness of international jurisdiction, predictability, Etc. by accepting substantial relations. Moreover, the courts affirmed that the situation of the Republic of Korea, the conclusion of the Korea-Japan Claims Settlement Agreement, and follow-up measures are more closely related. However, it is sorry that the decision simply enumerates the legal basis without explaining the interrelationship between each criterion in the development of logic. On the other hand, it is very reasonable to apply constitutional values and international jus cogens rules in determining whether foreign judgments violate public policy as one of the requirements for recognizing them. However, it is necessary to supplement more elaborate legal grounds for public policy as the requirements for recognizing foreign judgment and the detailed legal basis on the conclusion of the judgment. Recently, in the same case of claims for damage by victims of forced labor, a lower court concluded contrary to the above logic of the Supreme Court, raising concerns about the regression of the precedent. The lower court should respect the purport of the above Supreme Court decision, and it is hoped that the upper courts will amend the decision. Conclusions and rationale of the Supreme Court decision will be an essential milestone in the future remaining enforcement proceedings as an executive title, in the unification of precedents between the contrary court decisions, and the establishment of political, economic, and international relations between Korea and Japan. It is expected that the theory of precedent will progress further with the development of more advanced and sophisticated legal grounds in related cases in the future.

Beyond Precarity: Forced Labor in China’s Ride-Hailing Industry

Scholarly discussions of the consequences of the on-demand economy on work mainly focus on precarity. Using a case study of Didi Chuxing, this article moves beyond this conventional approach to highlight coercion as a striking feature of labor relations in China’s ride-hailing industry. Drawing upon the conceptual tool of neo-bondage, this article foregrounds the central role played by forced labor in securing a cheap and docile work force during Didi’s rapid market expansion. This article advances the existing literature in two ways. First, it highlights the need for a more robust analysis of the productive forces in the on-demand economy. Second, it argues that the on-demand economy not only represents an intensification of the ongoing trend toward precarity, but also an extension of forced labor regimes from electronic assembly lines to the service industry.

The Swahili World

The Swahili World

The Issues of Child Trafficking in Southeast Asia

Child trafficking is a modern-day slavery, which involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain a certain type of labor or act of commercial. The trafficking of humans a serious crime that gravely violates the fundamental human rights. Almost every country in the world is involved in trafficking of children. Every year, millions of children are trafficked, and the estimation shows that child trafficking generates billions of dollars of profit per year. Nevertheless, many cases of human trafficking involve forced labor, there are larger socio-economical reasons behind the dreadful cycle. Many of the southeastern countries are still developing, with number of population under the poverty line. As a result, some families are forced to sell their own children into the slavery, leaving no other means of survival left besides. With such reasons, it is critical for the countries to develop with the people by the side, leaving no one behind, with a long-term goal to create a more stable social environment, by creating more jobs, for instance.

Global value chains for medical gloves during the COVID‐19 pandemic: Confronting forced labour through public procurement and crisis

AbstractThis paper evaluates ways in which labour issues in global value chains for medical gloves have been affected by, and addressed through, the COVID‐19 pandemic. It focuses on production in Malaysia and supply to the United Kingdom's National Health Service and draws on a large‐scale survey with workers and interviews with UK government officials, suppliers and buyers. Adopting a Global Value Chain (GVC) framework, the paper shows how forced labour endemic in the sector was exacerbated during the pandemic in the context of increased demand for gloves. Attempts at remediation are shown to operate through both a reconfigured value chain in which power shifted dramatically to the manufacturers and a context where public procurement became higher in profile than ever before. It is argued that the purchasing power of governments must be leveraged in ways that more meaningfully address labour issues, and that this must be part of value chain resilience.

Improvement of the legal regulation of the prohibition of forced labor in the Republic of Uzbekistan

In this article the author examines the current state of the prohibition of forced labor in the Republic of Uzbekistan, in particular, measures taken by the state to prohibit forced labor and to eradicate the worst forms of child labor. The article shows the relationship between forced labor and the principles of the prohibition of discrimination in employment and occupation and elimination of the worst forms of child labor, and draws attention to the need to harmonize the definition of forced labor, contained in the Labor Code of the Republic of Uzbekistan, with ILO Convention № 29. The circumstances contributing to the risk of the use of forced labor are defined, including imperfect legislation, in particular the absence in the Labor Code of Uzbekistan of a closed list of jobs that do not constitute forced labor. The article notes that unreasonable narrowing of the term “forced labor” in the Code of the Republic of Uzbekistan on administrative responsibility often limits the possibility of bringing to justice those guilty of using forced labor. On the basis of the analysis of administrative and criminal responsibility for forced labor according to the legislation of the Republic of Uzbekistan the need to extend the scope of the articles on responsibility for forced labor to legal entities was substantiated. Despite the positive dynamics of development in the sphere of prohibition of forced labor in the Republic of Uzbekistan, the author concludes that an integral part of this process should be the solution of a range of economic, organizational and social measures, the implementation of which is impossible without improving national legislation, bringing it into conformity with international labor standards.

Living Memories of Domestic Slavery versus Forced Labour: Freedom, dependence and oppression (Ibo Island, Cabo Delgado)

Living memories of slavery in the Querimbas Islands, especially Ibo Island, are apt to reserve some surprises. When talking about slavery, some elders’ shared memories sometimes seem to be defensive, serving to justify the practice of slavery rather than decrying it. This may be ascribed to several factors. The reasons which lie behind this viewpoint seem to be related to recent past events in which forced labour and political repression of dissent were extremely cruel as to obscure the mistreatment of slaves. This paper will inquire into the memories of forced labourers and descendants of domestic slaves as well as into the policies that preserved servants from being coerced into forced labour.

Ecocritical Post Colonialism and Plantationocene: A Comparative Study of Sky Is My Father by Easterine Kire and Aranyak by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay

Sky Is My Father is a historical novel by Easterine Kire who writes about the life of Naga indigenous people living amidst naturally rich mountain scape and forced recruitment of Naga tribesmen as bonded labourers by the British which tribal warriors of the Angami tribe try to resist against. Their fight is the collective fight of their community to save the land which they are deeply connected to from British invasion and subjugation. Britain’s colonization of the third world countries have always brought with it deforestation and disruption of habitat of indigenous people and native plant species. Similarly, Bibhutibhushan’s Aranyak is a novel on Satyacharan’s predicament in the pristine jungles of Bhagalpur where he is posted. His guilt comes from the job he is sent there to do which is to cut down the forest that is not only important to the native community there but to him as well. Capitalocene and Plantationocene as Donna Haraway defines is a contemporary epoch which has its roots in European Imperialism. This imperial legacy of rampant exploitation and destruction of environment which is singlehandedly a contribution of Britain’s colonial rule includes subjugation of indigenous people into forced labour along with destruction of forest spaces for resource extraction. What entails as a result is postcolonial trauma within native psyche. Post colonial literatures coming out of South Asia like Sky Is My Father and Aranyak essentially discusses Britain’s expansion, coercive policies and their after effect on the native people of India in relation to the ecological disruption around them.

Necessary Trade-Offs or Two-Faced Hypocrisy: Normative Conflicts in EU Policies

The European Union (EU) often tries to present itself as a normative leader in both human rights protection and climate change prevention. However, since emission reductions sometimes require investments in solar panels that are produced using forced labor, these two norms can conflict with each other. Based on two case studies of EU policies on Israel-Palestine and North Africa, this article shows how conflicts between different norms are nothing new to the EU. In its policies on Israel-Palestine, the EU has had to balance its historical responsibility to Israel with its commitment to international law. In its policies on North Africa, the EU has had to balance its push for good governance with respect for other countries’ sovereignty. Drawing on the academic literature, EU policies, and statements by EU officials, this article therefore argues that normative conflicts are an essential part of what makes the EU a normative actor.

History, Metaphors, Fables: A Hans Blumenberg Reader

Initially in college and then throughout my career, the writings of the German philosopher and historian Hans Blumenberg (1920 – 1996) have been my secret talisman, warding off the tedium of routine academic labor by conjuring, with poetry and precision, higher powers of thought. I read him first for his fabulous, inimitable German style, which blurs the boundaries between historical survey, philosophical meditation, and creative fiction. Then I found how consistently useful his writings could be for taking a new viewpoint on one's own work, whatever one might be working on. The phrase work on itself figures in the title Arbeit am Mythos, one of Blumenberg's many enormous and forbidding tomes. Jewish on his mother's side, he spent the war in forced labor, then in hiding, and he so resented the time lost for work that he slept only six nights a week and lived and taught reclusively, refusing (except once) even to be photographed. But it is impossible to summarize what Blumenberg, through five decades of ceaseless labor, worked on. Most famously, he undertook a fundamental reevaluation of the “modern,” rescuing it from attempts (by Carl Schmitt, Karl Löwith, and others) to strip it of its legitimacy as something authentically new. Blumenberg also rethought ideas about time (human and cosmic), myth, legibility, reality, science, theory, and philosophy, the last of which he himself pursued by way of a sustained, sometimes antiphilosophical attention to metaphor. His interlaced projects often took the form of sprawling, eccentric histories that visited, usually in chronological succession, thinkers both great and obscure. His legendary Zettelkasten method allowed him to weave together memoires of an obscure nineteenth-century German school reformer with Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and Claude Lévi-Strauss, and to connect Ludwig Wittgenstein's “fly bottle” with Plato's cave as stations on a picaresque itinerary leading from our troglodyte past into the posthuman future. Such itineraries are impossible to survey from above, as Blumenberg's chapter titles are cryptic, and the material covered is best gleaned from footnotes, which are brief and sparse.Few readers will travel the whole of even one of Blumenberg's journeys, but to tag along even briefly is always dazzling and rewarding. History, Metaphors, Fables is a perfect place to begin. Bajohr, Fuchs, and Kroll have gathered, in the best translation this great prose stylist has received, fundamental short texts by Blumenberg that were the seeds of his later encyclopedic volumes. Also represented are a number of essays written for a general audience, for example on Franz Kafka, Aesop, William Faulkner, pensiveness, and Goethe (Blumenberg's patron saint). A lesser-known 1964 piece on Paul Valéry's objet ambigu, included among a group of texts on “Nature, Technology, and Aesthetics,” grabbed me with the same force that arrested me, now forty years ago, browsing through some pages on the Rosetta Stone contained in Blumenberg's (untranslated) Die Lesbarkeit der Welt (The Legibility of the World). Once again, I felt torn between continuing to read and rushing back to my desk to what I had been trying to write. Blumenberg is hard to read not because of the length or difficulty of his books, but because, while reading him, one becomes both refreshed and envious.

Domestic Violence Current Legal Status: Psychiatric Evaluation of Victims and Offenders.

Domestic Violence Current Legal Status: Psychiatric Evaluation of Victims and Offenders.

Economic Impact of COVID-19 on Different Groups of Peoples in South Asia: Evidence from Bangladesh

Within a couple of months, COVID-19 has evolved as an economic catastrophe beyond health cataclysm that was initially thought. It is already forewarned as to the deepest global recession since World War II. Bangladesh that represents the emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) has suddenly fallen into a deep economic hole although unprecedented challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic related to health, macroeconomic and social effects are on equal focus. World Bank, in its June 2020 estimation, has revised Bangladesh’s growth downward to 1.6 percent in FY2020 whilst Bangladesh achieved average GDP growth of 6.5% since 2004 and generally, the labor-oriented service sector contributes about 50% to this growth. It is estimated that the national (upper) poverty rate from 24.3 percent in 2016 already increased to 35 percent in 2020. Declining demands, as well as supply disruptions, have weighed significantly on exports, especially exports of textiles and clothing products. Banking sectors are in potential risk due to the increase of Non-Performing Loan (NPL) which are mostly associated with the RMG industry and its backward linkage industries. On the other hand, the RMG sector has started to suffer from both cancellations of order and supply chain interruption alongside hamper in production due to lockdown. Slower loan recovery rate is also a cause of greater headache of the banking sector in this pandemic period. 85% of the total employment of the country belongs to informal sectors. A sharp fall in overall consumption led to decline in overall trade as well decline in production except for foods and medical items. SMEs have seen revenue drop by at least 50%, while 52% of SMEs have locks hung over their businesses generating no revenue at all. These all will create a large spillover effect on the state economy. To build quick resilience, some fiscal measures have been taken by the government of Bangladesh. IMF, ADB, and World Bank promised to support US$730 million, US$ 600 million, and US$100 million respectively to increase social safety net. To build more and sustainable resilience, a number of interventions to be considered such as immediate access to capital and technology by small, medium, and regional clustered enterprises; proper guideline and financial support to forced migrant laborers, utmost attempt to collect the demographic dividend and more. The study stands for composition analyses of secondary data proceedings and literature on the previous pandemic.

Activities to strengthen service discipline and legality in the paramilitary guard units of forced labor camps and colonies of the USSR after the end of the Great Patriotic War (second half of 1945)

Activities to strengthen service discipline and legality in the paramilitary guard units of forced labor camps and colonies of the USSR after the end of the Great Patriotic War (second half of 1945)

Definition of forced labor and forced work in the Russian and international law

Definition of forced labor and forced work in the Russian and international law

The Trade Union and Labour Situation in Guatemala

The Trade Union and Labour Situation in Guatemala Julio Coj (bio) The trade union centre UNSITRAGUA HISTORICA emerged 8 February 1985 from a historical process that was a re-articulation of the trade union movement with the “classist” trade unions that were dispersed but had survived the criminal and repressive policy launched against trade unionism in Guatemala. Business interests and governments had succeeded in destroying the important trade union organisations, such as the Central Nacional de Trabajadores (CNT), the Federación Sindical Autónoma de Guatemala (FASGUA), the Federación de Trabajadores de Guatemala (FTG), and the instrument of unified struggle the Comité Nacional de Unidad Sindical (CNUS), as well as other popular organisations that fought for life, for social justice, against militarisation and for the construction of a state with effective and participatory democracy, while under the terrible policies of the military governments-and in complicity with certain business sectors-in the context of the internal armed confrontation. In fact the actions and struggles of re-articulation of the popular movements became necessary to continue defending life and human rights, after the thousands of crimes and massacres carried out by the State “security” forces. These crimes occurred within the framework of the counterinsurgency policy that unleashed the most brutal and criminal repression against the non-combatant civilian population and those who tried to exercise full citizenship through trade union organisation, among many other popular sectors and organisations. The Revolution of 1944 It should be pointed out that the working class organised in unions, popular sectors, artisans, peasants, women, students, soldiers, and with politicians of democratic and nationalist thought, managed to triumph with their great popular and trade union struggles to achieve the Revolution of 1944. This was an authentic struggle of the people that brought great advances and benefits with this new authentic, effective, participatory democracy and social welfare, and real freedom for the majority. The first Labour Code was created in 1947, freedom of association for trade unions was allowed, and other important institutions were established: the Labour Courts, the Ministry of Labour, the right to vote for women, the Instituto Guatemalteco de Seguridad Social (IGSS, English: Guatemalan Institute of Social Security), alongside the Agrarian Reform and many important achievements in the ten years of the Spring that Guatemala lived. A criminal phase of oppression from 1954 But in 1954, with the invasion of Guatemala by the United States, which set out to destroy the revolutionary process that began in 1944, they stopped the economic, social, political and cultural development of the country, and another stage of terror was re-started. There began the murders and disappearances of the leaders that had managed to break the oppressive and enslaving system and form a government of the majority. It was a bloody and criminal phase of oppression against the population and mainly against trade union, popular, and revolutionary leaders, and those who had been in the government of Dr. Juan José Arévalo Bermejo and the soldier of the people, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. Guatemala, like the rest of the peoples of Latin America, since the invasion of the Spanish have had to live and face slavery, oppression, violent and criminal repression, the absence of a justice system, and the severe exploitation of forced labour. Without a real, effective and participatory democracy, under the boot and terror of militarism, exile, death, illiteracy, chronic childhood malnutrition, deficient and precarious public education and health systems, without the Rule of Law or an effective justice system. The Peace Agreements of 1996 and continuing impunity In Guatemala, the Peace Agreements were signed on December 29, 1996, whose content and spirit was a consensual agenda and to initiate the route to begin to combat the causes that originated the internal armed conflict. But over time there has never been a will policy of big business, the different governments, and it could be said of the government of the United States, and some other sectors of the country, for either its application or compliance. These sectors are the ones that oppose the well-being and the economic, social, political and cultural development of the majority of the people, including the working class for work and...