Between Slavery and Post-slavery

Citizenship, Dependence, and Abolitionism in African and Indian Ocean Societies

Hosted by the University of Mauritius in collaboration with the University of Birmingham and SLAFNET

10-12 April 2018

Problem statement

In October 2014, the international conference Slavery in Africa: Past, Legacies and Present (SLAFCO) was held at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in Nairobi. This three-day conference brought together over sixty scholars from all over the world and representatives of African anti-slavery NGOs and civil society organizations.

Building on this first experience of exchange between researchers and activists, ‘Between Slavery and Post-Slavery’ will focus on (1) the recent legacies of past slavery; (2) contemporary forms of exploitation akin to slavery; and (3) the political mobilisation of African grassroots activists and politicians in various countries in Africa and in Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean islands.

(1) Legacies of past slavery: This workshop will explore the political and social marginalization of persons of slave descent in different African societies today. In some contexts, groups of slave descendants are classified, collectively, through labels that indicate slave origins in particular African languages. These labels have derogatory connotations and are often accompanied by ideas about the sociocultural and biogenetic inferiority of those classified as slave descendants. These groups suffer from specific vulnerabilities ranging from political exclusion and ‘second-class citizenship’, to economic exploitation and restricted opportunities for social mobility, to increased exposure to violence and exactions. Contributions focused on slave descent will study identity-based discrimination: what forms it takes and what responses it elicits in terms of resistance and grassroots activism.

(2) Slavery today: A second strand of phenomena examined here is the resilience of actual slavery, as an institution that enables control tantamount to possession over those enslaved. In spite of worldwide legal abolition, slavery has not ended. In the African continent illegal enslavement takes different forms. It can be a consequence of discrimination based on slave descent in areas where erstwhile slave-owners retained power and slave descendants remained vulnerable to extreme forms of exploitation. But slavery does not affect only persons of slave descent. Like elsewhere in the world, in Africa too, there is a persistent demand for cheap and easily controllable labour and exploitable persons. Human trafficking, especially in women and children, is well documented in different African regions and between Africa and other countries. Furthermore, recent African wars resulted in abductions and violence directed against civilians, primarily women, leading to the prosecution of perpetrators for crimes of sexual slavery. Some political movements, such as Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria, openly advocate the legitimacy of slavery as an institution. Contributions focused on slavery will consider its manifestations, discourses about slavery’s (il)legitimacy, and the resistance of those enslaved or at risk of enslavement.