**1. Introduction**

Human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and enslavement are global phenomena, public health concerns, gross violations of human rights, and crimes against humanity and the state [1, 2]. These criminal activities seriously violate the fundamental human rights of victims as enshrined in international laws and the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights.

Human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and enslavement are widespread and fastest-growing global criminal industries that sell and use men, women, and children for profit [3, 4]. They have been linked with a host of other crimes, including gang activity, drug operations, property crimes, organized criminal operations, and other violations of state, federal, and international law [5].

Human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and enslavement undermine labor relations, health, safety, and security of all nations serving as sources of victims, transit points, or final destinations. In contemporary times, enslavement is often perpetrated against kidnapped or coerced vulnerable men, boys, women, girls, and children [6]. The victims are often subjected to unimaginable human rights violations, including loss of freedom, control, involuntary actions, and exploitation for personal or commercial gains. The traffickers treat their victims such as commodities and animals, trampling on their fundamental human rights to decision-making, freedom of movement, and choice to work wherever and for whom they choose [7].

In spite of these realities about these phenomena, the literature appears to be sparse on the psychosocial dimension of twenty-first century slavery in Africa. Minimal scholarly attention seems to be paid to these even in the global north [2, 8–10]. For example, Lazzarino, Wright [8] in a scoping analysis of the characteristics of provision and types of mental health support available to survivors globally, reported that most of the service providers for the female population were located in Asia and South America and could be categorized as Christian faith based. They further noted that little information on evidence-based interventions and monitoring and evaluation was found in Asia and South America. More so, Quirk and Broome [11] and Weitzer [12] claimed that the hidden nature of these phenomena made it difficult to obtain an accurate picture of how many people are enslaved in global or African communities.

Thus, no systematic literature review has been conducted on the psychosocial exploration of human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and enslavement in Africa to date. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze the existing literature on the psychosocial effects of twenty-first century slavery in Africa.

## **2. Conceptualization of terms related to slavery and enslavement**

The following concepts are defined as used in this study:


*Twenty-First Century Slavery: A Psychosocial Exploration of Human Trafficking, Migrant… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113170*

persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation [13].

