Forced labour is a social phenomenon which, due to its unique nature, is difficult to understand, accept and prosecute. Given the unsuccessful attempts to deal with this problem in Poland, and similar experiences in other countries, one has to look for an answer to the question, why is this so? The answer seems obvious: because forced labour is not visible. And it is perhaps because we have a problem understanding the phenomenon itself? The existing legal definition is not particularly helpful in this regard. Therefore, in this two-part article I present a different approach to understanding forced labour and a different definition of the phenomenon. The starting point of this article is the assumption that, in describing forced labour, it is worth moving away from a legal and criminal perspective and looking at this phenomenon in the spirit of humanistic sociology, growing out of the concepts of social pragmatism and symbolic interactionism. The analysis of the reaction of the Polish authorities to the cases of forced labor described in the first article proves that a new perspective is necessary. It turns out that the social system did not take advantage of this unique opportunity and did not learn anything new. A completely new circumstance is the war in Ukraine, which has brought several hundred thousand refugees to Poland, who may also be victims of various forms of exploitation. The new model of analysis of forced labour that is proposed here consists of five elements: exploitation, cognitive façade, cultural taboo, symbolic visibility and subtlety of means of control. It is tempting to hypothesise that the effectiveness of combating forced labour will be greater if we 'see' this crime in a different light than just the “glamour” of traditional slavery.