BETWEEN UTOPIA AND REALITY: REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY SLAVE LABOR AND THE CONCEPT OF DECENT WORK

Abstract

This article aims to relate international labor regulations and the expression "decent work", coined by the International Labor Organization (ILO), to studies related to contemporary slave labor, focusing on the disputes about the conceptualizations, meanings and various mechanisms of precariousness that operate in the current world of work. If, on the one hand, the normative production of international human rights instruments on social issues makes itself sound apparently unrestricted, on the other hand, the attempts to empty the concept of contemporary slave labor or even the rhetorical use of the ideal “decent work”, for example, account for the artifices used as a way to justify the very precariousness of work. To this end, far from exhausting the theme with the necessary depth, a brief sketch was presented about international labor standards, especially the ILO resolutions dealing with forced labour, followed by the problematization of the two central concepts - contemporary slave labor and decent work - and, finally, it was concluded that the meanings attributed to one and the other are shaped from the maintenance of the logic and rhetoric of maximum capitalist exploitation.