Modern Slavery in Pakistan: How workers and their families live in and strive against debt-bondage

With the core objective of exploring ways to strengthen labour unions, support communality and empower families (particularly, women) in helping the coerced workers reclaim agency in their work-lives, this research seeks to explore the following research questions:

1. How do workers make sense of their life in and strive to escape the conditions of debt-bondage?
2. How do labour unions help workers reclaim agency in their agency-denying context of forced labour?
3. How and under what conditions do families, particularly women of the family, respond to forced labour? Can actions of women’s empowerment help the family escape the enslaving conditions? (Study 3)

Our data collection and analysis will follow grounded theory principles (Corbin and Strauss, 1990; Charmaz, 2006). We seek to answer the research questions by employing inductive qualitative methods, making use of a combination of semi-structured interviews, observations, and secondary data. We chose this specific research setting and population because fishing and farming are considered important occupations that help contribute to global food security as well. Pakistan has a long coastal line where fishing communities live and the country’s plain grounds offer a vast farming area. Economic surveys of Pakistan (2024-25) estimate that about 37% of the national workforce is engaged in agricultural activities (including both farming and fishing), and that these activities contribute 23% of the country’s GDP.

Second, families and communities tend to remain involved in these occupations for generations, creating strong bonds of support and solidarity within these occupational communities. At the same time, debt-bondage is prevalent in these occupational contexts.

Finally, the contexts of fishing and farming face climate change related extremities and unpredictability as well. As a result, on one hand, the labour processes are becoming increasingly risky. On the other hand, the labour outcomes are often unpredictable, which can result in either easing the possibility of escape from debt-bondage or worsen it further. The study will recruit participants who are in debt-bondage, who have escaped debt-bondage as well as their adult family members, labour union representatives, and government officials.

Co-PIs:

Saba Saeed is an AFSEE Senior Fellow and researcher and practitioner from Pakistan with over a decade of experience in education in poverty struck contexts. 

Dr Sandra Nuñez is an Assistant Professor, Department of Management, LSE. Her research explores how people and organisations sustain or alleviate inequality, with a particular focus on employees and entrepreneurs who carry stigmatised social identities. 

Research Team: 

Muhammad Aqeel Awan is an Assistant Professor in the Leadership, Management and Organizations (LMO) division of the Nanyang Business School (NBS), Nanyang Technological University. He completed his PhD in management (organisational behaviour) in 2026 from the London School of Economics (LSE). His research interests lie in studying precarious work. In his dissertation, he draws on his ethnographic data from the fisherfolk of Pakistan, to explore the cognitions and behaviours of the disadvantaged, disenfranchised and vulnerable working-class populations performing precarious work - marked with insecurity, unpredictability, risk and/or exploitation. Aqeel will be leading the research – including data collection, analysis and co-authoring academic/non-academic outputs – of the project.  

Shahjahan Channa, farmers occupational community member. He has been working as a social worker for the rights of farmers in Sindh, Pakistan.  

Qadir Dino is a member of the Sukaar Welfare Organization, a grassroots community development organization working in Sindh Province in Pakistan established by a group of young community development professionals, human rights activists, researchers, and concerned citizens. 

Muhammad Talib Kutchi is General Secretary of the Fisherfolk Forum, a fishing community rights body based in Pakistan. He comes from the fisherfolk occupational community and has authored several books on lives of Pakistan’s fisherfolk.

Muhammad Arif Yousuf Zai is a social worker and activist for labour rights in Karachi, Pakistan.