On May the 9th 2014, the State of the Union Debate was held in Florence. The debate was the second of a series of three Europe-wide televised debates between the candidates for European Commission President. Four out of six of the candidates were present on this occasion. We have chosen to focus on this debate, for it was scheduled to coincide with the highly symbolic Europe Day, celebrated annually on May the 9th, in honor of Robert Schuman’s historic speech on European integration in 1950.

Video registration of the seminar “Paid domestic work: contemporary forms and past legacies,” organised by the Gender, Race & Sexuality Working Group at the European University Institute on 16 April 2014. Video and editing: Elena Borghi. Speakers: Swapna Banerjee, Vera Pavlou and Raffaella Sarti.

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”. […]