Covid-19 Risk and Response: Impacts and Mitigations for Modern Slavery Victims and Survivors

Funder: Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
Duration: July 2020-November 2021
Project Lead: Vicky Brotherton
Programme: Communities and Society
Partners: University of Sheffield, the Survivor Alliance, the International Anti-Human Trafficking Network (IAHTN), the Human Trafficking Foundation (HTF), Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) and Anti-Slavery International / the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group (ATMG).

Victims and survivors of modern slavery are at greater risk of ongoing exploitation and re-exploitation because of the pandemic. Yet while there has been an increasing number of risks being articulated across the anti-slavery sector since the pandemic started, they have not been gathered and assessed in a robust, coherent way. Nor has there been an attempt to comprehensively map the interventions and mitigating responses to these risks, and their success. Through this project, speaking directly with survivors and mapping the available literature, we will attempt to answer the question: what are the accrued risks and mitigating responses of Covid-19 for victims and survivors of slavery?