**1. Introduction**

In April 2013 a factory building collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh [1]. As a result of the disaster, approximately 1100 workers of several garment factories died, and 2500 sustained injuries. Amnesty International's Polish-language blog reprinted an article in which the event was described as the result of 'a callous alliance between business and politics in Bangladesh and around the world' [2]. Let us add only one, crucial piece of information: the workers did not want to enter the building after major cracks had been discovered on the walls, but they were forced to do so. Were they deprived of liberty, brutally intimidated or beaten? No, they were assured that everything was all right and that it was their duty to provide work. This was a fraud, but also an instance of very subtle and sophisticated coercion, which resulted in a mass violation of these people's rights, the right to life included. The tragic accident and its circumstances bring into focus everything that needs to be considered when talking about forced labour at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Therefore, the event will be the starting point for the next considerations.

These ought to begin by emphasising that forced labour constitutes a social phenomenon that is difficult to acknowledge, difficult to fathom and difficult to accept, mainly due to its absolutely extraordinary character [3]. Forced labour entails the enslavement of a person in such a way that their intellectual potential, their physical strength or their sexuality can be used against their vital interest. In other words, it is a situation when one person treats another person like a thing that can be used, which—from the legal point of view—is called slavery. Are we ready to accept this situation in the twenty-first century?

On the level of intuitive reaction, a negative answer seems obvious. Yet it becomes less obvious when we look at the facts that will be discussed here at length. By way of a tentative hypothesis, let us say that our civilisation appears to ignore forced labour. This is chiefly because the modern human knows precious little about this phenomenon, fails to understand it and seems not ready to find out more and to comprehend. Precisely this will be the subject of the reflection presented in this chapter.

According to my research, every third Pole is aware of the phenomenon of human trafficking and forced labour [4]. The percentage is admittedly low, which gives rise to another question: why is that so? I believe that the Poles' (similarly as many others') social awareness of human trafficking and forced labour is low because these phenomena are not subject to public debate, enjoy negligible interest from public authorities, are hardly ever written and spoken about in the media, and are not subject of regular research. As a result, societies are not accustomed to this subject matter and hence find it difficult to learn about forced labour and modern slavery in general. That is not only because they do not want to, but because a phenomenon such as forced labour does not fit into the cognitive patterns of the contemporary human raised to follow humanistic values. The information 'forced labour exists and could occur somewhere around you' cannot find the right place in the recipient's mind, a place where it could be stored and internalised. And if so, then in order to avoid the discomfort caused by cognitive dissonance, it is only natural to suppress problematic facts.1

Additionally, the relatively low level of awareness of human trafficking and forced labour may be a negative result of the language we use to describe these phenomena. Since both are crimes, we depict them as serious breaches of criminal law punishable by severe penalties, or as human rights violations, including with regard to the rights to life and freedom. No wonder, then, that we eagerly resort to language characteristic of law and criminal justice. On the other hand, both human trafficking and forced labour have an economic, a market dimension, which means that the language of economy, with concepts such as supply and demand, becomes appropriate. Moreover, this approach enables us to perceive forced labour from the perspective of the labour market, where the exploitation occurs [6]. Next, forced labour and other forms of enslavement are a negative consequence of mass migration movements. This dimension should likewise be taken into consideration because it is indisputable that the fundamental change of domicile and the accompanying phenomenon of severing one's cultural roots results in higher vulnerability to abuse [7]. In this case, we use concepts from the domains of politics, social geography and citizenship. And finally,

<sup>1</sup> Leon Festinger described this discomfort as cognitive dissonance, see [5].

*Perspective Chapter: Defining Forced Labour – A Real Challenge for the World in the Twenty-First… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109996*

yet another perspective places human trafficking and forced labour on the civilisation plane and depicts them as a denial of humanity and a defiance of the basic requirements of modern culture [8]. This approach requires us to use the language of sociology, anthropology and the humanities. Thus, in order to properly comprehend human trafficking and forced labour, we need to perceive these phenomena as very serious crimes, as violations of the main human rights, including the right to dignity, as a negative result of migration, as a pathological consequence of a faulty labour market regulation and finally, as a conduct that does not fit with the canons of civilisation, which has been erected for decades upon pillars such as humanistic values, equality or common safety [9]. Each of these points of view calls for a different language, each of which needs to be included in a new definition of forced labour.

In this chapter, I would like to draw attention to the need to draft a definition that will take into consideration the above. The purpose, however, is not to define for defining's sake, but to develop an operational definition that will enable us to look at the phenomenon in question from the perspective of the twenty-first century. To this end, I will attempt to demonstrate the weaknesses of the current understanding of human trafficking and forced labour as well as propose a new model of analysis. The essence of the new approach is to change the language we use to describe forced labour from the language of positivism and criminal law to language typical for the cultural variable, symbolic interactionism and humanistic approach.
