This first section of our collection Shadows of Slavery explores the continuing power of the past in shaping the everyday lives of 'slave descendants'.
The everyday lives of sub-Saharan African migrants in Morocco are deeply affected by violent policies of border control. While existing laws create problems, the further burdens of history make things even worse.
Italy’s public opinion calls migrant day-labourers in the agricultural sector ‘new slaves’, but where are the voices of these workers in the debate?
Debt is everywhere a tool of social control, and no more so than in the brick kilns of Pakistani Punjab, where it travels across generations. Español
The life histories of slave descendants in Madagascar help us understand how legacies of slavery contribute to contemporary patterns of exploitation. They illuminate ongoing and everyday struggles against socio-economic subordination.
On the marginalisation of kayaye street girls in Accra (Ghana), and the continuities between contemporary and historical forms of exploitation and slavery.
In Nouakchott, former slaves live invisible lives in ‘niche settlements’ between the villas of the rich and powerful. Their continued intimacy with their former masters makes their experiences of ‘freedom’ unique.
Memories of slavery affect contemporary political life in many Sahelian countries, but how do stigmatised groups use those memories as a tool for integration?
The past of slavery has its many presents, and the present of exploitation its many pasts. Bridging the study of the historical and the contemporary can ask questions about the meaning of each.
In the south-eastern Tunisian region of Mednine, music represented a socially marginalised way for post-emancipation blacks to advance. Now younger generations want something different.
