Despite growing popular and policy interest in 'new' slavery, with contemporary abolitionists calling for action to free an estimated 40 million 'modern slaves', interdisciplinary and theoretical dialogue has been largely missing from scholarship on 'modern slavery'.

Part I: Past. - Chapter 1. Slavery and the Revival of Anti-Slavery Activism; Laura Brace and Julia O'Connell Davidson.- Chapter 2. Contextualizing Slavery's Wrongness; Tommy Lee Lott.- Chapter 3. The Liberty of Naming; Mary Nyquist.- Chapter 4, Historicizing Freedom of Movement: Memory and Exile in Political Context; Charlotte Sussman.- Chapter 5. Immigration Restrictions and the Politics of Protection, Nandita Sharma.- Part II: Present. - Chapter 6. Prison Labour, Slavery, and the State; Genevieve LeBaron.- Chapter 7. From Victims of Trafficking to Freedom Fighters: Rethinking Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East; Mark Johnson.- Chapter 8. "Back home, It Would Have Been Worse Anyway..." Vietnamese Wives' Perspectives on Their 'Arranged' Marriages With Chinese Men; Caroline Grillot.- Chapter 9. Moral Economies and Child Labour in Artisanal Gold Mining in Ghana; Samuel Okyere.- Part III: Revisiting the Politics of Antislavery. - Chapter 10. Abolitionist Anti-politics? Capitalism, Coercion and the Modern Anti-slavery Movement; Neil Howard.- Chapter 11. Empowering Women: The Contradictions of Feminist Governance; Srila Roy. - Chapter 12. Abolition Terminable and Interminable; Jared Sexton.