Chet Mitchell Memorial Lecture: Constructing Modern Slavery: Law, Capitalism and Unfree Labour

Wednesday, March 4, 2026 from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm

• In-person event
• 2017, Dunton Tower, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6
• Cost: Free

Constructing Modern Slavery: Law, Capitalism and Unfree Labour illustrates how legal meaning is shaped by cultural political economy and how law’s technicalities, in turn, shape what we understand as unfree labour. Although not defined in law, as an umbrella term ‘modern slavery’  highlights the unfreedom captured by legal concepts – slavery, forced labour, and human trafficking – defined in different international laws. Focusing on forms of unfree labour that cross national borders (international immigration and global supply chains), the book provides a novel socio-legal genealogy of the concept ‘modern slavery’ over a quarter century using five linked, multi-scalar case studies: the United Nations and the United States; Walk Free Foundation; the International Labour Organization; the European Union, and the United Kingdom. It develops the ideas of transnational law, legal jurisdiction as an assemblage of scale and governance, and reconfigured sovereignty. It reveals how modern slavery laws (supply chain transparency and mandatory human rights due diligence laws) and laws prohibiting human trafficking are attempts to mediate the escalating tensions around borders and markets created by neoliberal capitalism’s reliance on managed migration and free trade as economic drivers.

About the Speaker

Judy Fudge is Professor emeritus of Labour Studies at McMaster University, which she joined in July 2018. She was Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University (1987-2006), Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria (2007-2013), and Professor of Law at the University of Kent (2013-2018). She has held visiting professorships and fellowships at several universities, including the University of Oxford, the European University Institute, and Melbourne University. In 2013, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; in 2014 she received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Law at the University of Lund in Sweden; in 2019 she received the Bora Laskin Award for her distinguished contribution to Canadian Labour Law; and in 2025 was awarded the Bob Hepple Award for Lifetime Achievement in Labour Law by the Labour Law Research Network.

Judy takes a socio-legal approach to studying work and labour. She has published widely on Canadian labour law history, precarious work, the right to strike, the labour/migration law nexus, and feminist approaches to labour law. Her most recent work focuses on labour exploitation, modern slavery and unfree labour in the context of labour migration and global supply chains. In 2025, she published Constructing Modern Slavery: Law, Capitalism and Unfree Labour with Cambridge University Press.

Refreshments will be provided. Please register below if you wish to attend.