Land invasions and contemporary slavery

Do landless social movements reduce labor coercion? We examine this question using a panel dataset on contemporary slavery and land invasions in Brazil from 1995 to 2013. On average, a single land invasion reduces the number of enslaved workers by 15–20% in a municipality-year. To ground the empirics, we develop a formal model of how invasions alter landowners’ incentives to employ coerced labor. We further show that invasions do not raise the likelihood of government audits, indicating that their impact works directly through liberation and deterrence rather than expanded enforcement. The effect is strongest in Brazil’s Northeast, a large, poor, and rural region. These findings demonstrate how civil society action can complement weak state capacity in enforcing basic labor rights.