Delivering research to aid the global antislavery effort: Dr Akilah Jardine. 

Dr Akilah Jardine is a Visiting Fellow in Anti-Slavery Business at the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham. She collaborates on publications with colleagues in the Rights Lab's Business and Economies Programme and Communities and Society Programme, including publications about modern slavery in high-risk sectors, and about business engagement. Rights Lab is the world's first large-scale research platform dedicated to ending slavery by 2030 (part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals).

What does Rights Lab do and what are their main over-arching objectives?

The Rights Lab is one of the University of Nottingham’s six Beacons of Excellence, areas the University has identified as having the capacity to be world-leading and to deliver research solutions to some of the greatest challenges facing the world today.

 The Rights Lab is the beacon that focuses on modern slavery. It is the world’s largest group of modern slavery researchers and home to many leading experts in the field. We have a transdisciplinary research culture, drawing from across all of the University’s faculties and leveraging theories and methods from numerous disciplines to progress understanding of the problem and solutions needed to address modern slavery.

Through our research programmes, the Rights Lab delivers new and cutting-edge research that provides rigorous data, evidence and discoveries for the global antislavery effort.

What inspired Rights Lab to write a report on trafficking through sport? What has it found?

Through conversations with Mission 89, an organization focusing on the exploitation of young athletes, we realized that trafficking in and through sports had received relatively little attention from governments and sports bodies.

 We recognized that there is a growing body of literature on this problem, however, there was a lack of data and evidence on the nature and scale of the problem.

 It remains an area that is poorly understood, with uncertainty around its nature and scale, and the effectiveness of current anti-slavery and anti-trafficking approaches in addressing this unique type of exploitation.

Our report therefore aimed to set an agenda for future investigation and action in this area. It aimed to progress understanding of the problem of sports trafficking (which captures both trafficking in and through sports), migration patterns, nature of recruitment, nature of exploitation, and current response and challenges to addressing this issue.

We found various forms of exploitation and abuse associated with trafficking in and through sports, which predominately impacted young athletes and children. 

For many young people, playing sports is more than a leisurely activity and many have aspirations and dreams of becoming a professional player. For those facing limited opportunities, sports are seen as an opportunity to better their livelihood.

However, the recruitment of athletes can involve a deception by fraudulent sports agents who take advantage of the athletes and their families’ aspirations. We found that while the majority of research on sports trafficking focused on football, there were other sports such as hockey, baseball, basketball, rugby, where individuals may be trafficked for, though research is still very limited.

Considering the scale of Modern Slavery through sport, why do you think the issue still persists around Mega sporting events?

Further research is needed to understand the true scale of sports trafficking and whether this problem is fuelled around Mega sporting events.

However, Mega sporting events add to the popularity of sporting activities, attracting the interests of not only fans and supporters, but also of young people with aspirations to professionalise their technical skills so that they can be successful.

Many aspiring athletes admire professionals taking part in these events, particularly those from their home country or those coming from similar circumstances who have become internationally recognised sports figures. These professional sports figures may exemplify the possibility of attaining success, though the reality of becoming a recognised world-class player is rare.