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Shadows of Slavery Refractions of the Past, Challenges of the Present

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Shadows of Slavery Refractions of the Past, Challenges of the Present Shadows of slavery Refractions of the past, challenges of the present Bellagamba Gardini Menin (eds) This collection was published in 2018 under a Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 license. Produced by Cameron Thibos Cover photo: michel moreau/Flickr. CC (by) ISBN: 978-1-7325178-0-6 PRINTING This publication is formatted for A5 paper and is thus optimised for printing as well as electronic viewing. If you have access to a duplex (front and back) printer, you can easily create a physical copy of this book by using the ‘booklet’ printing option available in Adobe Acrobat Reader and many other PDF viewing programmes. Shadows of slavery refractions of the past, challenges of the present Alice Bellagamba, Marco Gardini and Laura Menin (eds) Acknowledgements This editorial project, and the research leading to the contributions of Alice Bellagamba, Marta Scaglioni, Valerio Colosio, Marco Gardini, Alessandra Brivio, Laura Menin, Antonio De Lauri, and Gloria Carlini were funded by the European Research Council as part of the ERC project 313737: Shadows of Slavery in West Africa and Beyond: a his- torical anthropology. We wish to thank Giulio Cipollone, Sandra E. Greene, Bruce Hall, Eric Hahonou, Martin A. Klein, Baz Lecocq, Paul Lovejoy, Ann McDougal, Ismael Montana, Julia O’Connell Davidson, Benedetta Rossi, Joel Quirk, Cameron Thibos and all the Beyond Trafficking and Slavery team for the intellectual and moral support throughout these five long years. Without the assistance, the patience and the friendships of the many men and women we met while carrying out fieldwork in Africa and elsewhere, the results we achieved would have been unthinkable. We thank them all. This collection is in memory of Ugo Fabietti. He estab- lished the study of cultural and social anthropology at the University of Milan-Bicocca; his contribution continues to define our evolving field. His personal kindness, humor and sympathy will be with us always. Core Beyond Trafficking and Slavery Supporters About Beyond Trafficking and Slavery A wide range of activists, academics, trade unions, governments and NGOs are currently trying to understand and address forced labour, trafficking and slavery. Beyond Trafficking and Slavery (BTS) occupies a unique position within this larger movement, one which combines the rigour of academic scholarship with the clarity of journalism and the immediacy of political activism. It is an independent, not-for-prof- it marketplace of ideas that uses evidence-based advocacy to tackle the political, economic, and social root causes of global exploitation, vul- nerability and forced labour. It provides original analysis and special- ised knowledge on these issues to take public understanding beyond the sensationalism of many mainstream media depictions. It further works to bring citizens, activists, scholars and policy-makers into con- versation with each other to imagine pioneering policy responses. BTS is housed within openDemocracy, a UK-based digital commons with an annual readership of over nine million. OpenDemocracy is committed to filling gaps in global media coverage, helping alternative views and perspectives find their voices, and converting trailblazing thinking into lasting, meaningful change. Find out more at: opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery Want to contribute? Email us: [email protected] Contents Shadows of slavery: refractions of the past, challenges of the present ........................................................................................ 10 Alice Bellagamba, Marco Gardini, Laura Menin Section one: Lives and memories Lives and memories ..................................................................... 20 Alice Bellagamba The legacies of slavery in southern Senegal ................................. 25 Alice Bellagamba ‘Life in Nouakchott is not true liberty, not at all’: living the legacies of slavery in Nouakchott, Mauritania ................................................ 30 E. Ann McDougall Emancipation and music: post-slavery among black Tunisians .... 36 Marta Scaglioni Memories and legacies of enslavement in Chad ........................... 40 Valerio Colosio Kayaye girls in Accra and the long legacy of northern Ghanaian slavery ......................................................................................... 45 Alessandra Brivio Malagasy domestic workers: from slavery to exploitation and further emancipation? ............................................................................. 49 Marco Gardini The racialisation of marginality: sub-Saharan migrants stuck in Morocco ...................................................................................... 55 Laura Menin Section two: Race, colour and origins in North-West Africa and the Middle East Race, colour and origins in northwest Africa and the Middle East ... 62 Laura Menin Are Haratines black Moors or just black? ..................................... 68 Giuseppe Maimone The politics of slavery, racism and democracy in Mauritania ......... 74 E. Ann McDougall On colour and origin: the case of the akhdam in Yemen .............. 79 Luca Nevola “In the skin of a black”: Senegalese students and young professionals in Rabat ................................................................. 85 Laura Menin “She is not a ‘Abid”: blackness among slave descendants in southern Tunisia .......................................................................... 90 Marta Scaglioni The multiple roots of Emiratiness: the cosmopolitan history of Emirati society ............................................................................. 96 Anonymous Whom should I marry? Genealogical purity and the shadows of slavery in southern Senegal ....................................................... 101 Alice Bellagamba Section three: Labour exploitation in global agriculture Struggling on the wrong side of the chain: labour exploitation in global agriculture ....................................................................... 108 Marco Gardini Agricultural investments in Tanzania: economic opportunities or new forms of exploitation? ................................................................ 115 Joanny Bélair Extorted and exploited: Haitian labourers on Dominican sugar plantations ................................................................................. 121 Raúl Zecca Castel Containment, resistance, flight: Migrant labour in the agro-industrial district of Foggia, Italy ................................................................ 125 Irene Peano Navigating unsafe workplaces in Costa Rica’s banana industry .. 130 Layla Zaglul The problem of “working for someone”: debt, dependence and labour exploitation in Chad ........................................................ 135 Valerio Colosio Working for former masters in Madagascar: a ‘win-win’ game for former slaves? ........................................................................... 140 Marco Gardini Section four: Global capitalism and modern slavery Global capitalism and modern slavery ........................................ 146 Alice Bellagamba, Marco Gardini, Laura Menin Eight reasons why we shouldn’t use the term ‘modern slavery’ . 149 Michael Dottridge Brick kiln workers and the debt trap in Pakistani Punjab ............ 157 Antonio De Lauri Modern slavery, child trafficking, and the rise of West African football academies ................................................................................. 163 James Esson Ghetto Ghana workers and the new Italian ‘slaves’ .................... 167 Gloria Carlini What has forced labour to do with poverty? ............................... 172 Nicola Phillips Harsh labour: bedrock of global capitalism ................................ 176 Benjamin Selwyn Capitalism’s unfree global workforce .......................................... 180 Susan Ferguson and David McNally Contributors .............................................................................. 183 About the editors ....................................................................... 186 Other titles available from BTS ................................................... 187 Shadows of slavery: refractions of the past, challenges of the present Shadows of slavery: refractions of the past, challenges of the present Alice Bellagamba, Marco Gardini, Laura Menin Interest for slavery, the slave trade, and abolition has grown steadily since the 1990s, when UNESCO launched the Slave Routes Project in order to turn this past of violence and sufferance into a path to in- ter-cultural dialogue and collaboration. Historians, literary critics, feminist thinkers, political philosophers, sociologists, and anthro- pologists have all deepened our understanding of the key role slavery played in different periods of human history, and in the making of Western modernity. Public awareness has broadened through muse- um exhibitions and commemorative initiatives, as well as through a rising concern for forms of human bondage and exploitation that con- tinue to thrive today. Emotionally and politically charged, the issue of ‘modern slavery’ has, over the past three decades, prompted a discussion on the present im- portance of past slave systems and the slave trade, and the historical roots of contemporary world inequalities. Everybody agrees on the need to explore these interconnections, but how to do it is a different issue entirely. Activists, governments, and international organisations engaged in the struggle against ‘human trafficking’ and ‘modern slavery’ have their own
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