1. Patterson, Orlando, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 171Google Scholar.

2. The racialization of Atlantic slavery is rendered linguistically explicit in French, Spanish, and Portuguese. For the French case, see Simone Delesalle and Lucette Valensi on the distinction between noir and nègre. (“Le mot ‘nègre’ dans les dictionnaires français d'ancien régime: Histoire et Lexographie,” Langue française 15 [1972]: 79–104.) [“The word ‘nègre' in French dictionaries of the Ancien Regime: History and Lexicography”] For Spain and Portugal, see Sweet, James H., “The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought,” The William and Mary Quarterly 54 (1997): 143–166 Google Scholar.

3. Gregoire, Henri, Des Peines Infamantes à Infliger Aux Négriers (Paris: Baudouin Frères, 1822), 1Google Scholar [Infamous Penalties to Inflict on Slavers] (translation our own).

4. El pais es negrero. Todo lo que se diga en contra es una farsa, como antes ya he insinuado; y salvo algunas pocas individualidades sinceras (entre cuyo número he de incluirme) no hay casi un habitante de Cuba que no sea cómplice moral en este género de contrabando.” [“This is a negrero country. Anything said to the contrary is false, as I insinuated before; and except for a few sincere individuals (I include myself among them) there is hardly a single inhabitant of Cuba who is not a moral accomplice in this type of contraband.”] Galiano, Dionisio A., Cuba en 1858 (Madrid: Imprenta Beltrán y Viñas, 1859), 112Google Scholar; quoted in Surwillo, Lisa, Monsters by Trade (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 11Google Scholar.

5. A range of recent studies has addressed the question of memory and slavery in the Atlantic world more generally, and in France and Spain in particular. See Araujo, Ana Lucia Shadows of the Slave Past: Memory, Heritage, and Slavery (New York: Routledge, 2014)Google Scholar; Michel, Johann, Gouverner les mémoires (Paris: PUF, 2010)Google Scholar [Governing Memories]; and Surwillo, Monsters by Trade. See, also, the ongoing project La Cartographie des Mémoires de l'Esclavage [The Cartography of Memories of Enslavement] accessible at http://www.mmoe.llc.ed.ac.uk.

6. The usage goes well beyond the examples analyzed here. In 2014, Matteo Renzi, Prime Minister of Italy, argued that Southern European countries (Italy and Spain in particular) had been responsible for managing the Mediterranean migration crisis, and that all of Europe needed to be involved. Steve Sherer, “Italy's Renzi Says EU Must Take Responsibility for Boat Migrants,” Reuters, 2014. http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-italy-eu-migrants-idUKKBN0EZ1TK20140624 (July 5, 2016). Early in 2015, Renzi drew on the language of the slave trade to draw attention to the gravity of the situation: “Siamo in presenza di nuovi schiavisti.” “Migranti, Renzi: ‘Interventi Mirati contro schiavisti.’ Giovedì consiglio straordinario Ue,” Reppublica, 2015. http://www.repubblica.it/politica/2015/04/20/news/migranti_renzi_escludo_intervento_di_terra_salvini_sciacallo_berlusconi_saggio_-112385886/?refresh_ce. (July 5, 2016).

7. See, for example, “Les migrants : une manne pour les “négriers” des temps modernes,” November 6, 2015 [“Migrants: Manna for Modern-Day Négriers”]. http://www.frontnational.com/videos/les-migrants-une-manne-pour-les-negriers-des-temps-modernes/; “Mankeur N'diaye annonce une croisade contre les passeurs et déclare fantaisistes les chiffres sur le nombre de disparus Sénégalais en Méditerranée,” Dakaractu, 2015 [“Mankeur N'Diaye Announces a Crusade Against Smugglers and Deems the Number of Disappeared Senegalese in the Mediterranean to be Unbelievable”]. http://www.dakaractu.com/Mankeur-N-diaye-annonce-une-croisade-contre-les-passeurs-et-declare-fantaisistes-les-chiffres-sur-le-nombre-de-disparus_a90341.html (July 5, 2016).

8. Johann Michel, Devenir Descendant D'Esclave: Enquête sur les régimes mémoriels Rennes: PUR, 2015.

9. Diagne reported that Taubira “a voulu éviter que l'on fasse la confusion entre l'esclavage historique dont on célèbre l'abolition aujourd'hui et l'esclavage moderne.” [has wished we could avoid confusing the historic slavery, whose abolition we celebrate today, with modern slavery.] Madiambale Diagne, “Passeurs de la Méditerranée : Hollande s'en prend aux «négriers modernes»,” [Mediterranean Smugglers: Holland Takes on Modern Négriers] Le Quotidien, 2015. http://www.lequotidien.sn/index.php/international/passeurs-de-la-mediterranee-hollande-s-en-prend-aux-negriers-modernes (July 5, 2016).

10. Black, Max, Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), 44Google Scholar.

11. See, for example, Sunstein, Cass R., “ On Analogical Reasoning, ” Harvard Law Review 106 (1993): 741CrossRefGoogle Scholar (“Reasoning by analogy is the most familiar form of legal reasoning”).

12. See, for example, Restatement of the Law, Third, Foreign Relations Law of the United States, §102, Reporter's Note 6 (“Such [jus cogens] norms might include rules prohibiting genocide, slave trade and slavery, apartheid and other gross violations of human rights… .”).

13. Treaties including slavery as a non-derogable norm include: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 8 (slavery, slave trade, and servitude); European Convention on Human Rights, Article 4(1) (slavery and servitude); American Convention on Human Rights, Article 6(1) (slavery, involuntary servitude, and slave trade); and African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Article 5 (slavery and slave trade).

14. See, generally, Martinez, Jenny S., The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

15. Filártiga v. Peña-Irala,  630 F.2d 876 (2d Cir. 1980), 878.

16. White, Richard Alan, Breaking Silence: The Case That Changed the Face of Human Rights (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

17. Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, 630 F.2d 876.

18. 28 U.S.C. § 1350.

19. Martinez, Jenny S., The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 114–39Google Scholar.

20. Ibid., 152–54.

21. Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. Precise statistics about unauthorized migration are difficult to come by, particularly with regard to migrants who overstay initial visas. But at least until very recently, most migration to Europe was by routes other than the Mediterranean, and that is likely still the case. When both lawful and unauthorized migration are included, the number of migrants arriving by boat forms a minority of those immigrating. See Phillip Connor, “Illegal Immigration by Boat: A Dangerous but Common Way of Entering Europe,” Pew Research Center Spring 2014. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/30/illegal-immigration-by-boat-a-dangerous-but-common-way-of-entering-europe/ (July 5, 2016); “Migration and Migrant Population Statistics,” Eurostat Statistics Explained, Spring 2016. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Migration_and_migrant_population_statistics (July 5, 2016).

23. Olga R. Sanmartín, “España pierde 200.000 extranjeros en sólo un año,” El Mundo Winter 2014 [“Spain loses 200,000 foreigners in a single year”] http://www.elmundo.es/espana/2014/01/17/52d913e9268e3e9b5b8b4577.html (July 5, 2016).

24. “España, entre los diez países con mayor número de inmigrantes,” ABC España Fall 2013 [“Spain, among the ten countries with the highest number of immigrants”]. http://www.abc.es/espana/20130912/abci-espana-inmigrantees-201309111955.html (July 5, 2016).

25. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in a 2001 report noted that since 1994, this group had “taken up the cases of over 200 domestic slavery victims, mostly originating from West Africa.” Siliadin v. France, 2005-VII Eur. Ct. H.R, para. 49, 350. The council further noted that “In the last few years a new form of slavery has appeared in Europe, namely domestic slavery. It has been established that over 4 million women are sold each year in the world.” Siliadin.

26. Siliadin, Section 225–13 defining offense as “obtain[ing] from an individual the performance of services without payment or in exchange for payment that is manifestly disproportionate to the amount of work carried out, by taking advantage of that person's vulnerability or state of dependence.”

27. Siliadin,  para. 26. Section 225–14 defines the offense as “subject[ing] an individual to working or living conditions which are incompatible with human dignity by taking advantage of that individual's vulnerability or state of dependence.”

28. Siliadin judgment, paras. 92–95.

29. Siliadin, para. 96.

30. Ibid, para. 98.

31. Ibid., para. 112.

32. Ibid., para. 121.

33. Ibid., para. 122.

34. C.N. and V. v. France (No. 67724/09).

35. C.N. v. United Kingdom (No. 4239/08).

36. Also largely undiscussed in the judicial decisions is the role of gender, social context, and the network of familial relations in which some of the cases took place, in which the victims either labored in the households of relatives or at the behest of extended family. See, for example, C.N. v. United Kingdom (noting that “a relative named S. and a Mr. A helped her obtain a false passport and a visa to enable her to enter the United Kingdom” and that S. was paid for her labor, although Mr. A did not pass the money on to her).

37. See, for example, C.N. v. United Kingdom, para. 5 (“She claimed that she had been raped several times in Uganda and that her purpose in travelling to the United Kingdom was to escape from the sexual and physical violence which she had experienced”).

38. See Siliadin, para. 94 (“Her freedom to come and go had been limited, her passport had been taken away from her, her immigration status had been precarious before becoming illegal, and she had also been kept by Mr and Mrs B. in a state of fear that she would be arrested and expelled. She considered that this was equivalent to the concept of self-imposed imprisonment described above.”); and C.N. and V. v. France, para. 20 (“The applicants further alleged that they had been physically and verbally harassed on a daily basis by their aunt, who regularly threatened to send them back to Burundi to punish them …”).

39. Johnsen, Rosemary Erickson, Contemporary Feminist Historical Crime Fiction. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 2–3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. Hesse, Mary “Aristotle's Logic of Analogy,” The Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1965): 328–40Google Scholar.

41. Slavery reparations lawsuits brought in the United States against corporations said to have profited from slavery in the nineteenth century have all been dismissed on various substantive and procedural grounds.  See In re African-American Slave Descendants Litigation, 375 F. Supp. 2d 721 (2005), aff'd in part and rev'd in part and modified in part, 471 F.3d 754 (7th Cir. 2006); Cato v. United States, 70 F.3d 1103 (9th Cir. 1995). Here, we focus on the European postcolonial context and do not address the North American context.

42. See Matthew Weaver, “British Slavery Reparations Q & A,” The Guardian Fall 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/30/british-slavery-reparations-qa. (July 5, 2016).