Women and men attach all kinds of values to the range of activities which they refer to as work. Such subjective evaluations of work are shaped by and exist in tension with cultural representations of work, and the value of work as defined in economic terms and academic and public debate. This workshop focuses on the tensions between individual and public valuations of work, and explores the ways in which the gendered construction of work sheds light on these tensions.

Although talk is always of their abolition, in this article I reflect on whether the dark triumvirate of trafficking, slavery and forced labour are actually necessary for the political and conceptual maintenance of liberal capitalism itself.

Slavery, trafficking and forced labour are crimes which sit at the far end of the labour exploitation spectrum. As Bridget Anderson observes, they are to “badness” what Apple Pie and Motherhood are to “goodness” – that is, just as we all know that apple pie and motherhood are “good”, so everybody knows that these three are “bad”. […]