Over the past two decades, the global issue of modern slavery has become increasingly prominent within development thinking and practice. Efforts to address it largely focus on criminal prosecutions of immediate ‘perpetrators’, for instance those who are direct employers or middlemen. This article adds to a growing call from critical scholars to look to the structural drivers of such highly exploitative labour relations. Drawing on an unfree labour approach that views debt bondage as embedded in and reproduced by capitalist accumulation, this analysis explores the diffuse drivers of unfree labour through the experiences of indebted farmers who have migrated from rural areas to work in and around Phnom Penh as debt‐bonded brick‐kiln labourers. The study demonstrates how debt discipline in the context of unregulated microfinance lending in rural Cambodia creates the conditions for unfree labour to emerge. Evidencing links between risky lending practices and unfree labour, the article strengthens calls to understand modern slavery as unfree labour and, in doing so, highlights the failures of the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 8 and other similar policies to make these crucial connections.

中文翻译：

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现代奴隶制的广泛驱动因素：从小额信贷到柬埔寨的无自由劳动

在过去的二十年中，现代奴隶制的全球性问题在发展思想和实践中日益突出。解决该问题的努力主要集中在对直接“肇事者”（例如直接雇主或中间人）的刑事起诉。这篇文章增加了批判学者的呼声，他们越来越关注这种高度剥削性的劳资关系的结构性驱动因素。该分析利用非自由劳动方法，将债务束缚视为资本主义积累的内在根源并由资本主义积累所复制，该分析通过从农村地区迁移到金边及周边工作的负债农民的经验，探索了非自由劳动的分散驱动因素。保税砖窑工人。该研究表明，在柬埔寨农村小额信贷无管制的背景下，债务纪律如何为无自由劳动的产生创造条件。该文章证明了高风险借贷行为与非自由劳动之间的联系，从而加强了人们对将现代奴隶制理解为非自由劳动的理解，并在此过程中强调了联合国可持续发展目标8和其他类似政策在建立这些关键联系方面的失败。