Endorsements

This book is a testament to the power and virtue of ethnography at its best. Original and compelling, it illuminates how the reframing of British youth involved in ‘county lines’ drug dealing in the UK as victims of ‘modern slavery’ continues colonial logics and cements existing racialized and classed inequalities. Rather than challenging such inequalities . . . the language of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘slavery’ has been woven into a humanitarian narrative of salvation that facilitates new forms of state surveillance, control and punishment. Remarkably, Drugs, Race and the Politics of Modern Slavery Law not only exposes the structures of racial and class domination that are concealed by this narrative, but also renders visible the resistance and humanity of those most negatively impacted by state racism and the enduring coloniality of the law. Truly innovative and beautifully written, this book makes a ground breaking contribution to understandings of race and the politics of ‘modern slavery’. Julia O’Connell Davidson, Professor in Social Research, University of Bristol Rigorous in method and breathtaking in its ambition . . . this pathbreaking study challenges those who link the recruitment of the young Black dispossessed into the illicit economy to the collective pathology of a community that needs to be saved from itself . . . Koch’s exhilarating and energetic ethnographic approach leads her to befriend Glodi—the first young man ever convicted for human trafficking in a county lines case, and the mothers and sisters of other defendants . . . In the process, Koch opens a window onto the dangerous world of the ‘hood economy’, which we live alongside, though the middle class all too often fail to see. Crucially, Koch develops a searing analysis of the state building project inherent in modern slavery prosecutions. At one and the same time, both heart-breaking and inspiring, Koch’s painstakingly constructed narrative arc ensures that we will never see the criminal justice system—a bureaucratic carceral monster reconfigured under liberal imperatives of ‘white saviourism’—in the same light. Drugs, Race and the Politics of Modern Slavery is far more than an academic study. It is a work of counter-hegemonic political labour that foregrounds—and supports—everyday resistance. It is a labour of love. Liz Fekete, Director, Institute of Race Relations, London Great ethnography sometimes requires good fortune—being in the right place at the right time. Drugs, Race and the Politics of Modern Slavery Law is a fortuitous product of the right person being in the right place, just when needed. Following the publication of her groundbreaking Personalizing the State, Insa Lee Koch returned to ‘Park End’ as UK police turned their attention to ‘county lines’—an apparently new phenomenon involving drug dealing networks, operating across geographical boundaries, drawing on the labour of exploited youth . . . The ethnography brings into focus the British state’s persistent refusal to reckon with its histories of slavery and it subverts these silences in the most important way—by providing a platform for those who ought to shape the narrative from here on. On publishing this book, Insa Lee Koch gifts British criminology with yet another exemplary piece of ethnographic work, which will be of value for a long time to come. Roxana Willis, Assistant Professor of Law, London School of Economics and Political Science Drugs, Race and the Politics of Modern Slavery Law is a powerful, unflinching ethnography that exposes the contradictions at the heart of modern Britain. Through years of deep, multi-sited fieldwork, Insa Lee Koch walks the reader through the day-to-day lived realities of those caught between victimhood and criminalization, revealing how race, identity, and even economics continue to shape the contours of justice and vulnerability in today's UK . . . A must read for those wish to understand the mutations of class today. Kojo Koram, Professor of Law and History, Loughborough University