Research
My current project, 'Work as a Site of Agency and a Site of Exploitation' (funded by British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant), compares the understanding of labour exploitation across policymakers, law enforcement agents and people with lived experience of exploitation.
‘Modern slavery’ has received growing attention within the UK, with the Modern Slavery Act (MSA) introduced as a new framework to address the worst forms of labour exploitation. While labour exploitation is central to the MSA framework, there is insufficient understanding within the modern slavery discourse of what it means. This Project addresses this gap and explores different perceptions of work as a site of agency and a site of exploitation, to inform the understanding of extreme labour exploitation, including modern slavery. Drawing on more than 40 interviews with migrant workers in precarious jobs, recognised victims of modern slavery, and law enforcement officials, it compares different official definitions to existing social understandings of these phenomena.
Publications from this project include:
‘What does labour exploitation really mean? Listening to migrant workers’. The Joseph Centre for Dignified Work, October 2025. https://www.josephcentre.org/post/what-does-labour-exploitation-really-mean-listening-to-migrant-workers
‘What do we mean by ‘labour exploitation’?’, Centre for the Study of International Slavery blog, 18 June 2025. https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/csis/blog/2023/what-do-we-mean-by-labour-exploitation/