Forced labour in the era of Industry 4.0: A systematic map protocol of the technology used, its impact, and the opportunities, barriers, and challenges of adopting smart systems to reduce forced labour in global supply chains
Creators: name: Nayak, Rounaq
name: Dora, Manoj
name: Randall, Nicola
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Human Geography
subject: FOS: Social and economic geography
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Sociology
subject: FOS: Sociology
subject: Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance
subject: Geography
subject: forced labour
subject: Industry 4.0
subject: smart systems
subject: systematic map

description: 1. Background The 2017 report by the International Labour Organization (ILO), Walk Free Foundation and the International Organization for Migration estimated the number of people in forced labour worldwide to be 25 million (McQuade, 2019), 11% of whom were in the agriculture, forestry and fishing (i.e., agri-food) sector. This is primarily due to a failure of global and national governance systems designed to ensure social justice and a respect for human rights (International Labour Organization, 2019). The rising number of forced labour incidents in Europe and Central Asia indicates that it is not only the product of poverty, but also inadequate political will, an endurance for social injustice, and a heavy focus on immigration regulation (Van Dyke, 2019). The 2014 Forced Labour Protocol and Recommendation promotes the adoption of four strategies to address forced labour: (1) prevention; (2) protection; (3) remedies; and (4) enforcement (International Labour Organization, 2014). Prevention aims to address the socio-cultural, economic, legal, and political factors that push/pull people into forced labour through constant monitoring (International Labour Organization, 2019). Monitoring mechanisms currently used primarily involve audits. However, there are limitations to traditional audit mechanisms such as physical and language barriers, and the transparency of audit systems. Audits also represent a snapshot in time, thus, making the process linear and mechanistic, leading to the compartmentalisation of symptoms – this would lead to observers being prevented from seeing the whole complex picture, which is important especially as forced labour is often hidden. Although alternative monitoring mechanisms such as building a partnership with suppliers and promoting a culture of trust has been suggested (Anti-slavery, 2021), there is no mention of how a culture of trust and transparency would be achieved. Additionally, complex employment practices involving intermediaries such as labour recruiters, middle-men, and subcontractors distributed across global geographies makes it difficult for companies to identify forced labour. Although technology, especially smart systems, has been touted as the answer to these issues, current tools used to detect and prevent forced labour in global supply chains are limited due to the multiple layers in supply chains, and need further development. Akhras (2000) defined smart systems as technological interventions which incorporate functions of sensing, actuation, and control to describe and analyse situations/incidents, and further help make decisions in a predictive and adaptive manner. Thus, smart systems aid in performing smart actions. However, to enable a fully informed development process, evidence must be collated regarding specific traits required to provide support to monitor and prevent forced labour in the global supply chains.