As the Black Lives Matter movement highlights the legacies of transatlantic slavery and racial empire, the British state has launched a new moral crusade: the fight against 'modern slavery'. Enshrined in the Modern Slavery Act 2015, this agenda no longer treats modern slavery solely as a transnational crime but also as a domestic threat occurring within Britain's borders. Today, the most frequently identified 'slaves' are boys and young men from the country's deindustrialised working-class...

Liberal democracy appears in crisis. From the rise of 'law and order' and ever tougher forms of means-testing under 'austerity politics' to the outcome of Britain's referendum on leaving the EU, commentators have rushed to explain the current conjuncture. Starting with dominant theories that have seen these developments as indicative of a rise in 'penal populism' or 'popular authoritarianism', Personalizing the State revisits one of the central paradoxes of our times: the illibera...