The Case of the “Missing Victims” of Modern Slavery: A Comparison with Domestic Abuse

Victims of modern slavery are poorly understood and badly counted. This is because modern slavery is a vague, contested and largely invisible crime. When it does reach the political and public conscience it is usually in the context of illegal migration and a specific loss of life that hits the newspaper headlines. This confuses the issue of victimization with the issue of border control and creates the conditions in which exploitation persists. These dynamics share much in common with domestic abuse. This chapter explores the response to the victims of modern slavery through the lens of the successes and failures of the response to domestic abuse to achieve three things: (1) to identify common themes from criminological thought, (2) to consider ideological influences for both crime types, and (3) to explore how solutions to domestic abuse might be used to tackle modern slavery. By learning lessons from the more recent response to the victims of domestic abuse this chapter concludes with recommendations about how to conceptually clarify, better estimate, and more effectively protect the victims of modern slavery. Drawing on Christie’s (1986) concept of the ‘ideal victim’, the chapter argues that the victim of modern slavery remains lost in the overarching ideologies of capitalism and nationalism and their associated concerns with transnational organized crime and border control. The chapter provides an original comparison with the victims of domestic abuse who have often been similarly invisible due to patriarchy and its associated forms of family life.