Unfree labour

Unfree labour is a generic or collective term for forms of work, especially in modern or early modern history, in which adults and/or children are employed against their will by the threat of destitution, detention, violence (including death), or other extreme hardship to themselves, or to members of their families. Many of these forms of work may be covered by the term forced labour, although this tends to imply forms based on violence. Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery. (Although serfdom is technically a form of unfree labour, the term "serf" is usually only used in relation to pre-modern societies, under feudal political systems.)

Payment for unfree labour

If payment occurs, it may be in one or more of the following forms: it does not exceed subsistence or barely exceeds it; is in goods which are not desirable and/or cannot be exchanged, or; the payment is wholly or mostly comprised by cancellation of a debt or liability that was itself coerced, or belongs to someone else. Unfree labour is often more easily instituted and enforced on migrant workers, who have travelled far from their homelands and who are easily identified because of their physical, ethnic or cultural differences to the general population, since they are unable or unlikely to report their conditions to the authorities.

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