Forced Labour in the Czech Republic Abstract The submitted dissertation thesis examines so far neglected issue of forced labour in the Czech Republic in its complexity, i.e. both its lawful (e.g. work performed by imprisoned persons) and unlawful forms. It seeks to discover whether the present law (and extra-legal regulation) on this topic is sufficient. For this purpose it examines not only the corresponding law across individual branches of law, but also its place in the historical and moral- philosophical context. In the first parts, the submitted thesis deals with the existence of free will as a precondition of considering a work freely chosen and with the existence and content of objective morality as a precondition of considering anything morally right. Special attention is dedicated to forced labour during Protectorate and communist regime in Czechoslovakia. The core parts of the submitted thesis consist of an analysis of corresponding international, European and national law. The attention shifts from first international conventions dealing with this issue adopted by International Labour Organisation to rich case law of the European Court of Human Rights and finally to Czech legal order where e.g. transfer of an employee to alternative work without his or her consent, transfer of employees' rights,...

“The Gulag and Soviet Society in Western Siberia, 1929-1953” examines the history of forced labour during the Stalin era in Western Siberia, or present-day Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Kemerovo Provinces. The region was a key site of Stalin-era repression, as it was home to numerous Gulag camps including Siblag, one of the longest lasting and most economically diversified of the many prison-labour camps scattered throughout the former Soviet Union. Western Siberia was also one of the main areas of exile for peasants and, later, displaced ethnic groups. The dissertation traces the seeming contradictions in the development of the Gulag by juxtaposing the very modern, bureaucratic “Gulag” as it appeared on paper, with the “Gulag” on the ground that relied heavily on informal practices, data falsification, and personal connections. The Gulag is thus emblematic of the “neo-traditional” modernization of the Soviet Union under Stalin. The dissertation also examines points of illicit and condoned interaction between the Gulag and surrounding population centres, thus challenging Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s seminal and enduring depiction of the Gulag as an isolated archipelago of concentration camps. Illicit interaction included widespread black-market activity, the smuggling of correspondence, sexual affairs, and, surprisingly, even instances of locals sneaking into the camps to use camp facilities. Condoned interaction took place at the level of local economic planning (the transfer of prisoners for help with specific projects), a striking overlap in cultural and propaganda campaigns, the contracting out of prisoners to local enterprises, and the granting of unescorted status to large numbers of prisoners, who thus had the right to move outside of the camp zones without guard. Because many of Western Siberia’s camps were located in and around major urban centres, including Novosibirsk and Tomsk, the region is important for examining issues of interaction. The dissertation draws extensively on sources from four archives in Moscow and four archives in Siberia, as well as Gulag newspapers, published and unpublished memoirs, document collections, and archival collections available in the United States. Many of these sources are under-utilized, including Communist Party documents from the local camp administrations, personal files of prisoners, and NKVD operational orders.

“The Gulag and Soviet Society in Western Siberia, 1929-1953” examines the history of forced labour during the Stalin era in Western Siberia, or present-day Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Kemerovo Provinces. The region was a key site of Stalin-era repression, as it was home to numerous Gulag camps including Siblag, one of the longest lasting and most economically diversified of the many prison-labour camps scattered throughout the former Soviet Union. Western Siberia was also one of the main areas of exile for peasants and, later, displaced ethnic groups. The dissertation traces the seeming contradictions in the development of the Gulag by juxtaposing the very modern, bureaucratic “Gulag” as it appeared on paper, with the “Gulag” on the ground that relied heavily on informal practices, data falsification, and personal connections. The Gulag is thus emblematic of the “neo-traditional” modernization of the Soviet Union under Stalin. The dissertation also examines points of illicit and condoned interaction between the Gulag and surrounding population centres, thus challenging Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s seminal and enduring depiction of the Gulag as an isolated archipelago of concentration camps. Illicit interaction included widespread black-market activity, the smuggling of correspondence, sexual affairs, and, surprisingly, even instances of locals sneaking into the camps to use camp facilities. Condoned interaction took place at the level of local economic planning (the transfer of prisoners for help with specific projects), a striking overlap in cultural and propaganda campaigns, the contracting out of prisoners to local enterprises, and the granting of unescorted status to large numbers of prisoners, who thus had the right to move outside of the camp zones without guard. Because many of Western Siberia’s camps were located in and around major urban centres, including Novosibirsk and Tomsk, the region is important for examining issues of interaction. The dissertation draws extensively on sources from four archives in Moscow and four archives in Siberia, as well as Gulag newspapers, published and unpublished memoirs, document collections, and archival collections available in the United States. Many of these sources are under-utilized, including Communist Party documents from the local camp administrations, personal files of prisoners, and NKVD operational orders.

The following thesis is an investigation of the actors, the forces and the conditions contributing to the phenomenon of forced labor in the Brazilian countryside. The paper begins by providing a relevant historical background to the problem of coercive labor, starting with the colonial legacy of slavery, dating back to the 16th century and leading up to the present. The aim is to explore the role of local actors, in particular landowners, gatos and the ‘enslaved’ (or workers coerced into forced labor) in constituting and re-constituting this phenomenon. At the same time the influence of local actors is contextualized in light of broader transnational processes, such as the spread of capitalism and neo-liberal globalization.

Thesis (B.A.Hons. 1979) from the Department of History, University of Adelaide.

The aim of this study is to explore how agencies in Gävleborg operate and collaborate in cases concerned with trafficking for forced labour. The study also aims to investigate the agencies employees’ perception of how the collaboration affect the result of their work. The collaboration in Gävleborg is an interdisciplinary collaboration which the social services is a part of. Since the authors of this study are students of the social work program, the social worker’s role has naturally been reflected and slightly more focused on. The theories used in this study are team typology and influencing factors. The theories provides an explanation of how different professions work together and what factors influence their work. By doing semi-structured interviews with five employees from different collaborating agencies the authors have found out more about the collaborative work done in Gävleborg and the perception the employees have of the collaboration. The result shows an overall positive attitude towards the collaboration and that the interdisciplinary collaboration contributes to a developed work process that benefit the victims of trafficking for forced labour.

The Nazis' deployment of foreigners (Ausländereinsatz) between 1939 and 1945 established one of the largest forced labour programs since the abolition of slavery during the nineteenth century. Foreign civilians from across Europe were deployed in Germany's war economy. Between 350,000 and 400,000 Belgian civilians were deployed in Germany during the Second World War- roughly half of these workers went to Germany voluntarily, but under a degree of pressure due to the Military Administration's economic policies in occupied Belgium. This thesis examines the implementation of the Nazi forced labour program through the analysis of the lives of Belgians who worked in Germany in the period 1940-1945 and by using a variety of original sources, including the records of the German Military Administration in Belgium and German and Belgian labour officials and the accounts of those who lived and worked in Germany. This thesis proposes a social history of the Nazi foreign labour program with a strong focus on the history of everyday life, drawing extensively on records such as letters, diaries, photographs and personal accounts of Belgians who worked in Germany during the Second World War, as well as hospital, police and judicial records. The employment patterns and experiences of Belgians deployed in Germany are examined through detailed case studies of Berlin and Düsseldorf, industrialised cities where Belgians were deployed in significant numbers. The Nazi regime divided Belgium's population along linguistic lines: Belgians were officially subject to differentiated treatment based on whether they were Flemings or Walloons. Examining the treatment of Belgians by the Nazi regime and comparing Nazi racial policies and practice, this thesis emphasises the key role played by local authorities, employers and individual Germans in shaping the experiences of foreign workers. It is argued that an important distinction must be made in relation to the material advantages western European workers enjoyed due to their elevated position in the Nazi racial hierarchy and the benefits individual foreign workers were able to secure by virtue of their employment skills, linguistic skills and greater confidence. The experiences of Belgian workers are also compared and contrasted with those of other national groups and are related to the broader history of foreign labour in Nazi Germany. This study also examines the experiences of Belgian women. While Belgian women represented close to 15 percent of Belgians deployed in Germany, studies of Belgian labour in Germany have largely overlooked their experiences. Utilising the limited available sources, this thesis contributes to an understanding of women's experiences. By focussing on the social history of the Ausländereinsatz and the stories of individual Belgians, this thesis maps the varied experiences of Belgians in Germany during the Second World War, illustrating convergence and divergence from Nazi racial policy and the fundamental role ordinary Germans played. More importantly, however, this thesis shows that Belgian civilian workers were not just passive victims of the German occupation. The decision to go to Germany to work was a personal one for many Belgian volunteers, based on individual circumstances. In difficult economic times and with no end to the war in sight, Belgians sought to navigate the best course for themselves and their families. While conscripts were by definition not free, as western Europeans Belgians were afforded greater rights and legal protections, which ensured they had room for manoeuvre and were able to exercise a significant degree of control over their own destinies.

Yearly, hundreds of thousands of people are trafficked across borders, most often against their will or without their knowledge. Albeit having been a part of our history, our present and, sadly, probably our future, this form of modern slavery remains rather unexplored in quantitative research due to the lack of reliable data. By using a gravity model, this study investigates how trafficking is affected by prostitution laws. The strength of this paper lies in being able to disentangle the effect of prostitution laws on different types of trafficking and to look at both total trafficking flows as well as only cross-border flows. The results point towards there being a mostly negative correlation between legal prostitution and trafficking inflows, however, most results become insignificant when adding rule of law (a proxy for legal enforcement) to the specification. Allowing for third party involvement and solicitation might be correlated an increase in the inflow of victims exploited for sexual services, this is, however, statistically insignicant. For victims of forced labour, results are more equivocal, illustrating the potentially misleading conclusions that might be drawn in studies looking only at the effects of prostitution laws on total trafficking flows.

The problems of forced labour and degrading work persist within modern sectors of contemporary economies. This presents both a practical and a theoretical challenge, as reflected in the literature on new slavery and on unfree labour. Analysis of the production networks within which forced labour and degrading work are found, however, has yet to form a central theme within these bodies of literature. This thesis contributes to filling the above-mentioned gap in the literature by exploring the role of the labour dynamics of production networks in two cases of 'slave labour' in Brazil. The first case involves internal migrant workers in sugar cane while the second case involves cross-border migrants in garment workshops. The thesis addresses the question of whether, and how, the labour dynamics of production networks contribute to 'slave labour' and degrading work in the Brazilian sugar cane and garment sectors. The analysis is a cross-disciplinary one, rooted in development studies but also drawing on economic geography, sociology and economics. A case study method is used, relying principally on archival sources, a focus group and semi-stuctured interviews. Drawing on and developing the Global Production Network (GPN) framework, dynamics of production networks are conceived of as sets of power relations which structure the constraints and opportunities for the various actors who negotiate within them. These interlocking sets of relations include, among others: relations between workers, producers, suppliers, buyers, market intermediaries, civil society groups and the state. The labour dynamics of production networks are the subset of these dynamics involving or impacting relations between workers and employers and thereby structuring conditions of employment. Conditions of employment for migrant workers are examined in each case to show how these constitute 'slave labour.' Degrading conditions and restricted freedoms are found to exist to different degrees and along a number of dimensions. At the extreme, these conditions are labelled 'slave labour' in Brazil. It is argued that 'slave labour' in these cases is therefore a symptom of a wider problem of degrading work. The labour dynamics of production networks are analysed to reveal how producers at labour-intensive stages of production in both cases face increased levels of competition, and their strategies in response to these pressures intersect with the strategies of migrant workers and labour market intermediaries to produce outcomes of 'slave labour' and degrading work. Race, gender and migration status play a complex role in creating categories of workers vulnerable to degrading work and 'slave labour,' drawing attention to the way that production is necessarily embedded in particular socio-economic contexts. The analysis highlights the importance of accounting for and intervening in production networks within efforts to address 'slave labour' and degrading work.

King Ngungunyana was the lord of the mighty Gaza Empire, covering most of the interior Mozambique south of the Zambezi and parts of present Zimbabwe, when the Portuguese in 1885 were requested by the Berlin Congress to accelerate their colonization. The small enclaves around certain port towns were no longer sufficient, in order to claim the territory as one's colony. "Effective occupation" was the new precept, leading very soon to conflict with King Ngungunyana and, in 1895, the defeat of the Gaza Empire. Thus began Portugal's factual colonization of Mozambique. A few years earlier, Protestant missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission bad attempted to begin mission work within the Gaza Empire. Although invited by the King, the effort failed and the missionaries settled near the town of Inhambane, within the Portuguese realm. Catholic Missions, which had been successful during the previous centuries, had ceased to function in all Mozambique, as Religious Orders bad been prohibited since 1834. Seemingly, the arrival of Protestants to Inhambane and also to Lourenço Marques, however, stimulated the Catholic Church into action, and around 1890 new Missions were established "to combat the Protestant propaganda". Meanwhile, the American Board missionaries withdrew, and from 1893 we find American Methodists working in their stead. Part Two of the dissertation deals with the time of the Republic in Portugal, from 1910. Strongly anti-clerical, the Republicans enforced the separation of the Church from the State. This led to difficult times for the Catholic Missions in Mozambique, while it facilitated, somewhat, the task of the Protestants. However, the urge to "civilize the natives" gradually made the Republicans accept the Catholic Missions as "civilizing factors". The spirit of this period allowed for the development of the first Independent African Churches in Mozambique, as well as a first African attempt at political independence. Part Three, 1926-1960, pictures the firmer political grip of "0 Estado Novo", under dictator Antonio Salazar. Forced labour and oppression were the lot of the people, and the Portuguese Catholic Church became the "spiritual arm of the State". "Portugalization" was the new formula. This placed all education of the Africans into the bands of the Catholic Missions, simultaneously closing all Protestant village schools. The period is characterized by a "tug-of-war" between Catholics and the Protestants, who survived by experimentation with new methods and, paradoxically, grew in numbers. The final part of this dissertation, 1961-1974, deals with the Liberation Struggle of FRELIMO, and the Portuguese response. The Portuguese Catholic Church was still, unfailingly, supporting the political regime and its war efforts. Gradually, a growing force of opposition within the Church became courageously active. Meanwhile, Protestant Missions prepared for the future by "africanizing" their structures, and some were made to suffer for alleged subversion, before the "Carnation Revolution" in 1974 put a sudden end to war activities. I suggest that several elements within the Church history of Mozambique contributed to the negative attitude towards religion, which was displayed by FRELIMO during the first years of independence.