THE CONTEMPORARY SLAVERY AND THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE OF THE EXPLOITED NOTES ON THE ABOLITIONIST DECEIT AND THE PERPETUATION OF THE MACHINE FOR GRINDING WORKERS

Abstract

Currently, in Brazil, there are 1,053,000 people in a situation of slavery. In this paper, the central hypothesis aims to understand the realization of contemporary slavery as a result of a Western political project, established from a network of strategies, laws and forms of regulation of conduct that affect the lives of countless Brazilian workers. For this purpose, based on a bibliographical research of a documental nature, reflections and some problematizations about slavery, similar conditions and forms of combat in the national territory will be woven. The use of the expressions “slave labor” and “contemporary slavery”, which appear throughout the text, respond to an urgency that is inscribed in the clash between the legal term “condition analogous to slavery” and the risk of softening the real conditions exercise of such instance. They have, therefore, an ethical and political character, in the sense of seeking to recover a social memory about colonial and imperial slavery, at the same time that a re-signification is sought from the specificity of practices situated around slavery in contemporary times. It is concluded that, in order to arrive at the concept of contemporary slavery – in relation to the period that extends from abolition to the present day –, it is necessary to think about the existence of related elements, such as exploitation and precarious work. It is necessary to point out, then, that the deplorable conditions that some human beings face in the universe of work are endorsed by the precariousness of their lives that makes them vulnerable and victims of enticement and hiring of exploitative functioning.