Unchained? Think again by Virginia Robertson

Every June 19th, the United States commemorates Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas were finally informed of their emancipation, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. And while the fireworks pop and the speeches echo “freedom” with the gusto of gospel choirs, there’s a question we should be asking ourselves: Are we really free from slavery? Or have we just rebranded it with spreadsheets, job ads, and offshore blind spots?

Let’s not delude ourselves with sanitized progress. Slavery has evolved. It has swapped its chains for contracts, its auctions for agencies, its plantations for sweatshops and it’s very much alive. Only now, it’s wearing a suit, speaking legalese, and operating under the polished banner of “labour markets” and “economic necessity.”

Juneteenth is not just about a historic date; it’s about justice postponed and rights intentionally withheld. It reminds us of how long it can take for liberty to reach the most oppressed among us. And tragically, that delay is still happening. Not in the cotton fields of 19th-century Texas, but in textile factories in Bangladesh, fishing boats off the Thai coast, construction sites in Qatar, and kitchens in suburban London and Manhattan.

Think that’s far from you? That shirt you're wearing, the shrimp on your plate, the nanny who lives with that rich couple down the street, all potential products of modern slavery.

One of the most insidious forms of modern slavery is deceptive recruitment for labour. Desperate individuals are lured with promises of opportunity, only to find themselves locked into exploitative contracts they can’t escape. Domestic workers are forced to surrender their passports. Migrants are told their travel expenses must be “paid off” through years of underpaid labour. It’s the modern twist on indentured servitude, with fewer legal protections and more public indifference.

And don’t get me started on domestic servitude. That’s the sanitized term we use to describe people, mainly women, working 14-hour days behind closed doors for little or no pay, often subjected to abuse, humiliation, and threats of deportation. You can call it “live-in help” if you want. I’ll call it what it is: slavery with curtains.

Slavery today hides in plain sight because it’s good for business. It drives down costs, increases profits, and provides cheap labour with minimal risk. And governments? Well, they’re often too busy courting investments or managing border optics to care about who’s mopping the floors of those five-star hotels or stitching labels into “ethically sourced” yoga pants.

We live in a world where children mine cobalt for your electric car batteries while corporations market “sustainability.” Where undocumented workers clean offices overnight while CEOs tweet about diversity and inclusion.

This is not just a Western problem. It’s a global pandemic, one we barely whisper about. From child labour in African cocoa farms to sexual exploitation in Eastern Europe to the forced marriages of young girls in parts of Asia, the virus of modern slavery thrives on poverty, migration, and willful ignorance.

And let’s not forget financial exploitation, a more invisible yet equally devastating form. Predatory lending, debt bondage, and wage theft are all part of the same chain, forging lives into economic imprisonment. These aren’t isolated cases, they are an economic system’s dirty little secret.

So yes, we should mark Juneteenth. Not with performative hashtags and vague acknowledgments, but with fire in our bellies. We should remember that freedom delayed is still freedom denied and that the legacy of slavery is not just in our history books, but in our wallets, our wardrobes, and our daily conveniences.

Juneteenth should not be a quaint reminder of the past, it should be a global rallying cry. A demand to look into the hidden corners of our economies, our laws, our neighbourhoods, and even our homes. It should remind us that until we free the workers in sweatshops, the children in mines, the women behind locked doors, and the migrants too scared to speak out—we are all still shackled, in one way or another.

Let’s stop congratulating ourselves for abolishing slavery when we’ve only outsourced and rebranded it. Let’s start recognizing Juneteenth as a mirror, not just of history, but of our complicity.

Because until we do, we’re not just living in a post-slavery world. We’re living in a post-truth one. And truth, like freedom, must be universal or it’s just another word we’ve stolen.