Introduction

The ‘racial other’ – on the move, at the border or in detention – is without rights and liberty compared to the White citizen. In the context of mass mobility and social change, it will be helpful to demonstrate how racism and concepts of race are used to justify enforcement policies that continue adversely to affect non-White populations. Recent academic literature not only draws out practices of detention and border controls that criminalise certain types of migrants, but equally problematises the absence of race and racism in migration research. In the UK and European social context, where stark racial inequalities persist, the focus in migration research has shifted from race and ethnicity to social cohesion and integration policy (Erel et al, 2016). These contemporary debates are bound with the broader realm of citizenship characterised by practices of inclusion and exclusion of individuals by the state. Studying the connections between race, migration and borders helps make the point that racism persists and does not differentiate between racialised citizens and migrant non-citizens. Nation-state sovereignty is based on the right to police borders. But borders facilitate and ‘preserve racial and colonial hierarchies’ (Parmar, 2020). While race remains relevant in shaping migrant experiences, the intersecting dimensions of gender, age, nationality and economic status equally shape the migrant experience both at and inside the border.

This chapter aims to engage critical race theory (CRT) and postcolonial scholarship in criminology to show how experiences of Black children and women are not prioritised in addressing modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT). This issue adversely affects men too, but the scope of this chapter does not permit engagement with it. Our contribution aims also to show that strategies of support from statutory and charitable organisations fail to draw attention to race and forms of racialisation. The passage of the UK Modern Slavery Act in 2015 promised tough justice for offenders charged with modern slavery offences. The Act committed the UK government and criminal justice agencies to stamp out slavery and address the sexual exploitation, domestic servitude and forced labour of adults and children trafficked into the UK (see Chapter 8, this volume). This coincided with a rapid growth in charitable organisations specialising in tackling modern slavery in the UK (Gadd and Broad, 2018).