New Thinking: Tackling Modern Slavery
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2020
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Naomi Paxton looks at the impact of the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, talking to researchers Katarina Schwarz and Alicia Kidd who are trying to measure and improve its effectiveness.
Katarina Schwarz from the Rights Lab at Nottingham University works with the Wilberforce Institute at the University of Hull on a project looking into what makes people from particular countries vulnerable to being trafficked and exploited, including in the UK.
Over the past five years, over 75% of people identified as potential victims of modern slavery in the UK represent only ten nationalities. The top 20 nationalities make up over 90% of referrals to the authorities. Rights Lab and Wilberforce Institute are working on research that interrogates the legal, policy, economic and social situation in these top 20 countries.
The Wilberforce Institute at the University of Hull, together with partners, is working on a project to develop a package of workshops targeted at front line practitioners, businesses, recruitment agencies and NGOs in local areas across the UK. Rather than relying on often dry and theoretical traditional workshops raising awareness on forms of modern slavery, the workshops will be based on real life situations. Alicia Kidd is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute working on this training project.
These projects are part of the work done through the Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence Centre. This episode of Free Thinking is put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as one of a series of discussions focusing on new academic research also available to download as New Thinking episodes on the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast feed. You can find the whole collection here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90
Producer: Robyn Read
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.2 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:37.1 | Hello, I'm Naomi Paxton and thanks for listening to this episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast, |
| 0:42.1 | which is part of our series New Thinking, looking at new research in UK universities. |
| 0:47.1 | Car washes, fast fashion and hospitality are just some of the industries where workers have |
| 0:51.9 | been found to be coerced, trapped and exploited. |
| 0:55.4 | But how much do we really understand about the realities of modern slavery? |
| 0:59.1 | When five years ago the UK government passed the Modern Slavery Act, Theresa May said, |
| 1:04.2 | more than 100 years ago the world condemned slavery to the history books, |
| 1:07.7 | but the stark reality for around 40 million men, women and children is that they are still trapped in modern slavery. |
| 1:13.6 | Today I'm going to find out what impact that Act of Parliament is having on this issue, hearing about research projects that are aiming to improve things further. |
| 1:21.6 | Katarina Schwartz from the Rights Lab at Nottingham University works on a project looking into what makes |
| 1:28.1 | people from particular countries vulnerable to being trafficked and exploited. |
| 1:32.4 | Katerina, hello. |
| 1:33.2 | Hi, lovely to be here. |
| 1:34.6 | And the Wilberforce Institute at Hull University is working with a host of other partners |
| 1:39.0 | to develop a package of workshops to help people understand the issue of modern slavery. |
| 1:43.3 | And Alicia Kidd is a postdoctoral |
| 1:45.7 | researcher at the Institute working on this training project. Alicia, hello. Hello. So let's get a |
| 1:50.8 | sense of what we're talking about. Katarina, what sort of conditions and situations does the term |
... |
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