
Slavery is illegal throughout the world, yet more than twenty-seven million people are still trapped in one of history's oldest social institutions. Kevin Bales' disturbing story of slavery today reaches from brick kilns in Pakistan & brothels in Thailand to the offices of multinational corporations. His investigation of conditions in Mauritania, Brazil, Thail&, Pakistan, & India reveals the tragic emergence of a new slavery, one intricately linked to the global economy. The new slaves are not a long-term investment as was true with older forms of slavery, explains Bales. Instead, they are cheap, require little care, & are disposable. Three interrelated factors have helped create the new slavery. The enormous population explosion over the past three decades has flooded the world's labor markets with millions of impoverished, desperate people. The revolution of economic globalization & modernized agriculture has dispossessed poor farmers, making them & their families ready targets for enslavement. & rapid economic change in developing countries has bred corruption & violence, destroying social rules that might once have protected the most vulnerable individuals. Bales' vivid case studies present actual slaves, slaveholders, & public officials in well-drawn historical, geographical, & cultural contexts. He observes the complex economic relationships of modern slavery & is aware that liberation is a bitter victory for a child prostitute or a bondaged miner if the result is starvation. Bales offers suggestions for combating the new slavery & provides examples of very positive results from organizations such as Anti-Slavery International, the Pastoral Land Commission in Brazil, & the Human Rights Commission in Pakistan. He also calls for researchers to follow the flow of raw materials & products from slave to marketplace in order to effectively target campaigns of naming & shaming corporations linked to slavery. Disposable People is the first book to point the way to abolishing slavery in today's global economy.