Abstract
The term modern slavery has become part of common discourse in the last few years, attributable in large part to the enactment of the Modern Slavery Act
2015
(UK) and its Australian counterpart, the Modern Slavery Act
2018
(Cth). These Acts define modern slavery, for which they are both named, by reference to specific categories of criminal offences. But the term is actually rooted in advocacy and developed organically to encompass a range of issues, which have proven difficult to pin down in practice. Many practitioners suggest that it is impossible to draw hard lines: the dynamic and fluid nature of the term in advocacy runs against the certainty required of definitions in law. Until now, few people have questioned how the term has functioned in the legal context, yet there are important questions to be asked. What are the tensions between the Acts' strict legal categories and modern slavery's supposedly dynamic nature? How can these tensions be resolved? Is there a better way to understand modern slavery that would not only allow the law to function efficiently but also recognise the informality, poverty, and exploitation at modern slavery's core?