John Bowe's Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy is an examination of slave labor in the United States. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Bowe asserts that slavery is very much alive in the United States. The cases profiled in the book are not unique incidents themselves, but rather show how slavery can exist in diverse ways in the contemporary global economy, despite the fact that it is rarely noticed.

The book focuses on three separate cases of slavery: the enslavement of immigrant laborers in Immokalee, Florida, temporary workers in Tulsa who came from India and were locked up at their factory, and Chinese garment workers in the United States territory of Saipan who are paid little and are horribly treated. Bowe describes the day-to-day lives of people working in these diverse areas to draw out common themes of horrific working and living conditions coupled with direct or implied threats of violence or reprisal should the "employees" complain about their situation. He also explores the difficulties inherent in prosecuting these cases, difficulties that unfortunately often have as much to do with inadequate laws as they do a lack of investigative resources. Interestingly, all of the cases examined in the book have to do with immigration, examining how the enslavers are able to hold immigration status--or in some cases physical papers--over forced laborers. The slaves are often indebted to their employers who have assisted them in getting to the United States or its territories, but then are essentially powerless to stop their abuse because of this relationship. Of the chapters in the book, the one dealing with the immigrant workers in Immokalee is the most interesting and even inspiring, as it discusses how workers have been able to organize to challenge slavery. This challenging of slavery has included assistance in the prosecution of slavery cases, while being part of a larger effort to improve the treatment of farm workers in South Florida.

Unfortunately, throughout much of the book, Bowe's narration gets in the way of the cases of slavery that he talks about--often deflecting attention from the very real labor abuses that he reports. Many readers will likely find themselves distracted by Bowe's comments and his own feelings--skepticism about allegations of slavery, his difficulty in relating to his own employed "researchers" and what that says about "slavery," comments that "greed and senseless aggression" can simply be "the nature of power" rather than "evil"--as he relates them throughout the book. Especially in the brief interlude chapters in which Bowe uses simplistic arguments and analysis to place contemporary slavery within its historical context, Bowe's own psychological conflicts over the nature of slavery are annoying at best.

Despite Bowe's narration, Nobodies does provide some useful discussion of contemporary slavery in the era of globalization. However, the utility of the book is limited in that so much of the focus is on Bowe's process--how he went from place to place interviewing people and what he saw as he went there--that the information frequently gets lost. Moreover, it lacks an overall context from which readers can understand contemporary slavery and instead slavery seems to be something motivated by simple "greed" rather than something occurring within an overall global economic system. To his credit, Bowe does get to this context in the final section of the book, but the discussion is too brief and too simplistic.

John Bowe, Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy, (Random House, 2007).