The campaign to address severe forms of labour market exploitation in markets around the world has led activists, unionists, policymakers, and legislators to explore the role of corporations in driving human trafficking and modern slavery (LeBaron, 2020). Based on the understanding that lead firms are not merely complicit actors but active contributors – through their purchasing and sourcing practices – to violations of workers’ human rights and labour standards, the focus on corporations seeks to expand corporate responsibility to working conditions throughout global value chains (GVCs) (Anner, 2015). In this chapter, we compare two labour governance models that have developed in the quest to combat modern slavery.

To better comprehend the structural aspects of efforts to eradicate modern slavery within GVCs and the dynamics created around them, as well as the measures pursued and their implications, we further develop and employ our analytical concept of ‘anti-trafficking chains’. This term refers to the provision of anti-trafficking services by both non-profit and for-profit entities to multinational corporations (MNCs), mirroring the logic and structure of supply chains (Barkay et al., 2024). The comparative analysis presented here focuses on two types of anti-trafficking chains: one that has proliferated following the enactment of State Anti-Trafficking laws in various countries and another that emerged from the deployment of the Worker Social Responsibility (WSR) model. This analysis seeks to discern the extent to which State Anti-Trafficking laws provide the expected hardening of soft-law anti-trafficking tools and to identify the conditions under which anti-trafficking chains may transform corporate behaviour and serve as drivers of change in human trafficking in GVCs. To this end, this chapter offers a structural analysis of the governance models behind State Anti-Trafficking laws and WSR and of the power dynamics created by each.