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Rankings are widely regarded as particularly well-suited for capturing the public eye, which is considered a reason why they have become ubiquitous. However, we know little about how rankings direct media attention, as well as how media in turn shape and help sustain careers of specific rankings in the public over longer periods of time. To advance our understanding of the discursive dynamics at the intersection of rankings and the press, this study examines the media career of the Global Slavery Index (GSI) by analyzing 361 newspaper and magazine articles, published between the release of index’s inaugural edition in 2013 and until the end of 2019. To interpret the media coverage, the study draws attention to GSI’s universality, highly rationalized character, and a pledge to spotlight violation of the global moral order. The examination of the media coverage points to the following properties of the index as having shaped and helped sustain its career in the public: (1) repeated publication; (2) broad conceptualization of modern slavery; and (3) the construction thereof as a measurable global burden. The study finds that, throughout the period, the media were remarkably consistent in amplifying the most dramatic elements of the index. Over time, however, the index was increasingly more invoked for other purposes, usually either to lend credibility to a story or as a way of embedding local and situational concerns into global narratives.

This research develops a set of specific modern slavery disclosure principles for organisations. It critically evaluates seven legislative Acts from five different countries and 16 guidelines and directives from international organisations. By undertaking an in-depth content analysis, the research derives an index comprising nine principles and 49 disclosure items to promote best-practice disclosure in tackling modern slavery. We promote nine active principles for organisations to implement and disclose: recognising modern slavery practices, identifying risks, publishing a modern slavery risk prevention policy, proactive in assessing and addressing risks, assessing efficacy of actions, garnering internal and external oversight, externally communicating modern slavery risk mitigation, implementing a suppliers' assessment and code of conduct to ensure transparency and specifying consequences for non-compliance. The research is motivated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8, which focusses on economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work. The research findings will assist practitioners seeking to discover and disclose evidence of modern slavery practices and their mitigation to minimise and encourage the elimination of this unethical and illegal practice in domestic and global supply chains and operations.

This chapter considers the impetus for the inclusion of labour rights and secure work rights, with a particular focus on countering human trafficking and what is now widely known as ‘modern slavery’ in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs comprise 17 goals and 169 targets set to assist nation states in achieving sustainable development in the ‘five P’ areas: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership. In this chapter we analyse goals and targets that focus on modern slavery and adult human trafficking (in particular sex trafficking and trafficking for forced labour), and review the SDGs in the context of existing international counter-trafficking and slavery mechanisms. We consider what this novel framework has to offer when it comes to addressing these forms of exploitation. In so doing, the chapter considers the likely impact of the SDGs to preventing and countering these exploitative practices, and its potential usefulness within the broader spectrum of counter-trafficking/slavery mechanisms. We suggest that the SDGs are yet another international instrument that makes strong rhetorical commitments to the intersections of labour, migration and exploitation, but lacks clarity and operational strength it needs to lead the path in reduction, if not elimination of such exploitative practices. Finally, we analyse the extent to which this instrument continues to ignore the factors that contribute to or sustain the conditions for exploitation, namely the impact of migration policies and the gendered nature of the issue.

There is still significant variation in firms' efforts to address modern slavery issues in supply chains despite the importance of this grand challenge. This research adopts the awareness-motivation-capability (AMC) framework to investigate AMC-related factors that help to explain this variation.

The authors hypothesize how AMC-related factors, including media coverage of modern slavery issues, slavery risks in supply chains and corporate sustainability performance, are related to firms' efforts to address modern slavery in supply chains. The proposed hypotheses are tested based on 201 UK firms' modern slavery statements and additional secondary data collected from Factiva, Factset Revere, The Global Slavery Index, Worldscope and Sustainalytics.

Consistent with the AMC perspective, the test results show that firms put more effort into addressing supply chain modern slavery issues when there is greater media coverage of these issues, when firms source from countries with higher slavery risks, and when firms have better corporate sustainability performance. Additional analysis further suggests that firms' financial performance is not related to their efforts to address modern slavery issues.

This is the first study adopting the AMC framework to investigate firms' efforts to address modern slavery in supply chains. This investigation provides important implications for researchers studying firm behaviors related to modern slavery issues and for policymakers designing policies that enable firms to address these issues, in view of their awareness, motivation and capability.

In this introductory chapter, the main issues running through Child Labour in Global Society are identified and a perspective on making sense of these issues is outlined.

The central concern is child labour within the schooling process of modern and modernizing societies under globalization, that process through which children’s labour power is produced for consumption during the process itself and beyond.

The driving issue is the implications of the compulsory aspect of schooling given prevailing notions of ‘slavery’, and especially that definition which is well established in law on all planes from the international to the regional to the domestic.

Given these notions, the question arises: ‘can the modern schooling process be regarded as enslaving?’

The view that slaves are commoditized people is addressed, along with the argument that the commodification of people is a culturally contingent process.

From the ‘processual perspective’, slavery at the individual and societal levels appears as a process of transformation that involves changes and phases.

Just as individual slaves undergo transformations in their social status, so societies undergo transformations over various matters relating to slavery, including which people can be enslaved, what counts as slavery, and so on.

The claim that in modern and modernizing societies, people are enslaved in so far as they are compulsorily required to perform labour within the schooling process is introduced, as is the argument that such slavery is endorsed by human rights law and agreements, not least by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

This chapter is about child labour as slavery in modern and modernizing societies in an era of rapid globalization.

For the most part, child slavery in modern societies is hidden from view and cloaked in social customs, this being convenient for economic exploitation purposes.

The aim of this chapter is to bring children's ‘modern slavery’ out of the shadows, and thereby to help clarify and shape relevant social discourse and theory, social policies and practices, slavery-related legislation and instruments at all levels, and above all children's everyday lives, relationships and experiences.

The main focus is on issues surrounding (i) the concept of ‘slavery’; (ii) the types of slavery in the world today; (iii) and ‘child labour’ as a type, or basis, of slavery.

There is an in-depth examination of the implications of the notion of ‘slavery’ within international law for child labour, and especially that performed through schooling.

According to one influential approach, ‘slavery’ is a state marked by the loss of free will where a person is forced through violence or the threat of violence to give up the ability to sell freely his or her own labour power. If so, then hundreds of millions of children in modern and modernizing societies qualify as slaves by virtue of the labour they are forced – compulsorily and statutorily required – to perform within schools, whereby they, their labour and their labour power are controlled and exploited for economic purposes.

Under globalization, such enslavement has almost reached global saturation point.

The globalisation of supply chains has contributed to modern slavery by degrading labour standards and work practices. The inherent difficulties involved in monitoring extremely fragmented production processes also render workers in and from developing countries vulnerable to labour exploitation. This research adopts a benchmark methodology that will help examine the inherent modern slavery challenges.

This study examines how the benchmark model, including governance, risk assessment, purchasing practice, recruitment and remedy of victims, addresses supply chain modern slavery challenges. The proposed hypotheses are tested based on the reoccurring issues of modern slavery in global supply chains.

Estimations suggest that modern slavery is a growing and increasingly prominent international problem, indicating that it is the second largest and fastest growing criminal enterprise worldwide except for narcotics trafficking. These social issues in global supply chains have drawn attention to the importance of verifying, monitoring and mapping supply chains, especially in lengthy and complex supply chains. However, the advent of digital technologies and benchmarking methodologies has become one of the existing key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring the effectiveness of modern slavery initiatives in supply chains.

This review provides an understanding of the current situation of global supply chains concerning the growing social issue of modern slavery. However, this includes various individual specialities relating to global supply chains, modern slavery, socially sustainable supply chain management (SCM), logistic social responsibility, corporate social responsibility and digitalisation. Furthermore, the review provided important implications for researchers examining the activities on benchmarking the effectiveness of the existing initiatives to prevent modern slavery in the supply chains.