Sistema de salud colombiano

We worry that the study of contemporary slavery is more of a proto-science than a proto-science. Its data are uncorroborated, its methodology unsystematic. Few researchers work in the area, so the Weld lacks the give and take that would Wlter out subjectivity. Bales himself acknowledges all this. As we debated his deWnitions of slavery, he told us, “There is a part of me that looks forward to being attacked by other researchers for my interpretations, because then a viable Weld of inquiry will have developed.”

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only because of the relative lack of social importance of the individual slaves.

In the twentieth century, slavery was generally criminalized and forced underground. This had direct consequences for the construction of our understanding of it. Its hidden nature, for example, concealed the dra-matic changes that took place in its economic character after 1950. In par-allel with the population explosion of the same period, slaves became more numerous, as well as less costly. The economic processes of mod-ernization and globalization have pushed signiWcant numbers of people in the developing world into social, economic, and political vulnerabil-ity. In this context, when governmental corruption allows criminals to use violence with impunity, slaves can be harvested. High levels of vulnera-bility have produced a glut of potential slaves, and, obeying the rule of supply and demand, the price of slaves has fallen precipitously. Slaves are now less expensive than at any point in recorded history. Their cheapness is a boon to criminals, and it has altered the ways that slaves are treated and used. These changes mean that, while slavery remains a criminal activ-ity, both the law and researchers are forced to confront new manifesta-tions of slavery.

The criminalization of slavery leads to a number of problems in meas-uring slavery, as in any other abusive labor practice. The Wrst problem is the basic fact that criminals conceal their activities, often going to great lengths to do so. Second, following a long history of more visible and legal slavery, societies (as well as researchers, activists, and policy makers) have been slow to clearly deWne what now constitutes slavery.¹This lack of an agreed-upon deWnition of the phenomenon under study is a recipe for confusion at best. Third, crime is best understood in its context, but in some places where slavery occurs, it is not thought of as a crime. In regions with relatively stable forms of debt bondage, euphemisms are common. In parts of India, for example, bonded workers who have no freedom to walk away, and who are not paid for their work, are often referred to as “attached workers,” a term concealing their actual status.

Fourth, without agreed-upon deWnitions, it is impossible to collect infor-mation systematically so that it can be shared and tested. The standards put forward by the International Labor Organization are a useful inno-vation, but note that these deWnitions usually have been developed through negotiation within a political process, rather than through a process of analysis and reWnement.²

The role of politicians in determining how we deWne the social and economic relationships of slavery points to forces—outside observation 88 T H E C H A L L E N G E O F M EA S U R I N G S L AV E RY

and analysis—that shape our working deWnitions. Ideological, political, moral, and cultural viewpoints are all linked to, and aVect our perceptions of, data on abusive labor practices. These views bring controversy to the collection, analysis, and interpretation of information. For example, some governments have a vested interest in demonstrating that there have been few violations of their core labor standards. Meanwhile, some non-governmental organizations have an interest in demonstrating the oppo-site. When slavery as an economic activity enters into areas with a high potential for generating moral outrage and controversy, such as prosti-tution, apparently simple measures become battlegrounds. Many a good researcher has been wounded on that battleground and has retired to pur-sue other, less dangerous subjects. This loss of good researchers is espe-cially regrettable because the phenomenon under consideration is a rap-idly evolving, moving target requiring long-term study. Criminals are inventive. They work in a context of intense competition, they must be Xexible, and they must adapt quickly or (at times literally) die. The pace of social research, especially large-scale research, is glacial by comparison.

Criminals, human traYckers among them, came to understand glob-alization before most of us. Early on, they mounted large-scale operations to traYc and enslave people, utilizing the attributes of the newly global-ized world economy. Because the context of globalization is rapidly evolving, the Wt between abusive labor practices, such as slavery, and the economy, both local and global, is dynamic. This is important, in part because these are economic activities, albeit criminal, and one dimension of their measurement must be economic. Two key themes of economic globalization are the erosion of control by nation-states and the functional integration of dispersed (economic) activities.³As discussed in chapter 4, these characteristics have suited human rights organizations admirably and created a context for potential growth. These characteristics have also fostered nonstate actors that might be thought of as anti-human-rights actors, especially criminal organizations.

The importance of these two themes—of dispersed economic activity and the loss of governmental control—for those who try to gain a bet-ter understanding of slavery and forced labor is that both tend to obscure the phenomenon and make the collection of information more diYcult.

Dispersal hinders the researcher’s ability to trace the links between slav-ery in one place and the economic impetus for that slavslav-ery in another. The loss of governmental control also means the loss of a government’s means to record and investigate the crime of slavery. That said, both of these negative outcomes of the globalization process—which involve the

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reduction of information about forced labor—are counterbalanced by another outcome of globalization: the increased Xow of human rights information from the global south to the global north.

As noted in chapter 4, certain criminal groups are globalized actors of signiWcant scale who play an important role in slavery and human traYcking. A clear linkage exists between the groups who engage in crim-inal traYc in drugs, guns, and people, all of which are major proWt cen-ters for organized crime. That said, these groups are businesses: some are organized bureaucratically; others are centered on a leader. Operating within a Xuid, often risky context, they must adapt to very short time-scales and seek to maximize proWts quickly. Like legitimate businesses, they often meet challenges and competition through diversiWcation and concentration, and they consciously make the most of transcending nation-state boundaries. The rapid and dispersed movement of organized criminal groups has outdistanced the data collection systems of most national law enforcement agencies, and international agencies like Interpol spend signiWcant resources getting national forces to share more of their information. Unfortunately, the information on forced labor held by these agencies is normally unavailable to most researchers.

All these diYculties, especially the reality that in researching slavery we are researching a criminal activity, point up the fact that careful deWnition is necessary and measurement is a challenge. In writing about crime and globalization, Mark Findlay notes that “one of the diYculties associated with accurate contextualization of crime is the diverse manner in which it is represented. This is not simply a problem of distortion or misinter-pretation; the basic sources from which crime becomes known are so var-ied.”⁴What follows is a discussion of some of the topics that must be resolved conceptually before we can quantify and measure slavery and other forms of forced labor more objectively.