Modern Slavery, Victim Identification and the ‘Victimized State’

Joshua Findlay

The British Journal of Criminology, 2025, vol. 65, issue 3, 504-520

Abstract: Resistance to entering the UK government’s modern slavery victim identification mechanism is widespread and part of normal practices of state evasion that shape the lives of large numbers of insufficiently documented people. This article provides evidence of the role practitioners play in producing referrals into that mechanism in spite of such resistance and in spite of the harms caused by the identification mechanism itself, which is integrated into the immigration system. Though referrals are driven by practitioners, those entering the mechanism are said to be ‘abusing’ the system. This dynamic is considered in relation to a common trend of the liberal state, in which state practices are externalized onto others, while it claims to itself be the victim of violence.

Keywords: modern slavery; human trafficking; National Referral Mechanism; undocumented people; immigration system; the state (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/bjc/azae061 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:crimin:v:65:y:2025:i:3:p:504-520.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The British Journal of Criminology is currently edited by Eamonn Carrabine

More articles in The British Journal of Criminology from Centre for Crime and Justice Studies Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().