After “Freedom”. The Right to Effective Remedy Through the Voices of Workers Subjected to Slave Labor in Brazil

Abstract

In the past two decades, the word slavery jumped out of the history books to the pages of the newspapers, putting in check the belief that the capitalist modern society abolished slavery. In the legal terms, slavery was indeed abolished. However, the enforcement of the regulations that was supposed to guarantee the end of this gross violation of human rights has failed. In 1995, Brazil became one of the first countries to recognize the existence of contemporary slavery, in an attempt to overcome the shameful record of being the last one in the Western world to abolish slavery, in 1888. The country established a framework to combat the new face of slavery that targets mostly black and brown men living in vulnerable conditions. When workers are rescued by government’s agents from slave labor, the remedy measures seem inadequate to guarantee that they will overcome vulnerabilities. To understand the challenges preventing the effectiveness of the remedy system, this research worked with the narrative of workers subjected to slave labor in rural areas. I was possible to reveal absences, defined as a lack of practice of rights, related to what is missing and why it is missing in the policy of remedy.