The present-day abuses of migrant labour, human trafficking and bonded labour worldwide deserve long-overdue investigation by business academics into their causes and dynamics. Utilising data from NGOs and IGOs, the news media and the limited academic sources in other disciplines, this paper indicates the extent of the phenomenon. The author argues that given its inroads into the global supply chains, exploited labour cannot be ignored by corporations and by governments, much less by consumers and citizens. By their research silence business academics may be culpable in perpetuating this socio-economic injustice in many developing economies, not least in Africa.
