Captives at Large: On the Political Economy of Human Containment in the Sahara

• Author: Judith Scheele,Julien Brachet
• DOI: 10.1177/00323292211014373
• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Date: 01 June 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00323292211014373

Politics & Society

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DOI: 10.1177/00323292211014373

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Article

Captives at Large: On

the Political Economy

of Human Containment

in the Sahara

Julien Brachet

IRD–Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Judith Scheele

EHESS–Centre Norbert Elias

Abstract

A closer look at recent reports of “modern slavery” in the Sahara, particularly

the exploitation of sub-Saharan migrants in contemporary southern Libya, shows

that they speak of other forms of captivity, such as debt bondage, forced prison

labor, and hostage taking for ransom. Such forms of exploitation have an equally

long history in the region but are more obviously enmeshed with contemporary

phenomena: repressive migration policies, state incarceration, and the worldwide

ranking of nationalities. This article seeks to understand them for what they are,

using fieldwork and historical examples. Understanding shifts the blame for the

migrants’ plight from “local culture” to the international political economy and

grants migrants a degree of agency that blanket condemnations of slavery often deny.

It also opens up more general questions about links between labor, mobility, and

captivity; the relationship between state and nonstate systems of political control,

their boundaries and overlaps; and the different ways value is accorded to individual

lives—or actively created, negotiated, or denied—in the Sahara and beyond.

Keywords

slavery, migrants, hostages, prison labor, debt, Libya, Chad, Niger, Algeria

Corresponding Author:

Judith Scheele, EHESS–Centre Norbert Elias, Centre de la Vieille Charité, Marseille, 13002, France.

Email: judith.scheele@ehess.fr

1014373PASXXX10.1177/00323292211014373Politics & SocietyBrachet and Scheele

research-article2021

2022, Vol. 50(2) 255–278

Wealth in people was a regime of quality as well as quantity.

—Jane Guyer

In November 2017, under the captivating title “People for Sale,” CNN published an

exclusive report on how migrants are being sold by smugglers in Libya.1 In the accom-

panying video we first hear a gruff voice off against a black screen, speaking in Arabic.

Then the scene is set in writing: “Unknown location, Libya, August 2017.” The first

shaky footage appears, taken on a mobile phone, of a dark courtyard with three young

black men. One has a brown hand on his shoulder, pushing him forward. The Arabic

voice continues, reciting figures, while the English commentary explains the scene:

A man addressing an unseen crowd. Big strong boys for farm-work, he says, four hundred,

seven hundred, eight hundred. The numbers roll in. These men are sold, for twelve

hundred Libyan pounds [sic], four hundred dollars apiece. You are watching an auction

of human beings.

We then see other young black men, inside the house, reclining on mattresses on the

floor.2 The video cuts to a car driving around Tripoli in daylight, and we finally meet

the reporter: Nima Elbagir, a Sudanese raised and educated in Britain, who has already

won several awards for her reports from Africa and the Middle East.3 She and her team

are searching for another auction, in an unnamed town in northern Libya. Night falls

again, the car stops at a house, the door opens, and we get a few glimpses of scenes

similar to the ones described above; quickly, the journalists are asked to leave.

The video then takes us to the Tariq al-Sika Migrant Detention Center in Tripoli,

which was then officially run by the Libyan Directorate for Combating Illegal

Migration (DCIM, created in 2012), but has since, like almost all migrant detention

centers and other governmental institutions in Libya, come under the control of local

militias.4 The center has all the exterior trappings of a prison: bars, restricted entry and

exit, guards. Inside, the paint is peeling off the walls. We see dozens of black men,

mostly sitting on the floor on mats or mattresses, waiting. Elbagir again:

These men are migrants with dreams of being smuggled to Europe by sea. . . . It is hard

to believe that these are the lucky ones, rescued from warehouses like the one in which

we witnessed the auction. They are sold when these warehouses are overcrowded or if

they run out of money to pay their smugglers.5

The camera zooms in on one of the migrants, a young man from Nigeria, to the

backdrop of his and many others’ complaining, “No food, no water.” “Victory,” says

Elbagir, “was a slave.” Answering her direct question, Victory confirms that he has

been “sold,” his words subtitled for the ease of viewers less used to Nigerian English.

He and other migrants point to their ankles and forearms, exhibiting traces of beating.

We then meet our first Libyan, the “supervisor” of the detention center, working,

Elbagir says, “with no international support.”6 He is first shown talking to two young

256 Politics & Society 50(2)