‘Feeding the Horses’: Modern Slavery, the Dark Side of Construction Hidden in Plain Sight in Ambridge

Abstract

The chapter explores how the recent storyline about modern slavery has landed in Ambridge, commending the writers and producers for the job they have done in engaging NGOs and pressure groups active in this area. It situates the plight of ‘The Horses’ as hidden in plain sight and probes the dark side of this important social issue in the context of how far the systematic exploitation of vulnerable people provides a ground floor within a profoundly unequal economy. Modern slavery speaks of a wider form of neoliberal necropolitics – in which logics of accumulation and hierarchies are played out on the bodies of workers. In this form of political economy social and emotional vulnerability and economic precarity combine together, trapping those unable to escape exploitation. It explored the policy context for the Modern Slavery Act and the assessment of how many people are enslaved in the UK. I also make the link from the extreme nature of modern slavery and connections with extractive and abusive employment situations throughout the economy. While Modern Slavery is an extreme form of precarity, where people are controlled and forced to work, scholarship on precarity shows us that it is a spectrum disorder, where economic abandonment pushes people away from a liveable life.

Citation

Headlam, N. (2021), "‘Feeding the Horses’: Modern Slavery, the Dark Side of Construction Hidden in Plain Sight in Ambridge", Headlam, N. and Courage, C. (Ed.) Flapjacks and Feudalism, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 57-72. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80071-386-420211007