From an event to a process: Reimagining modern slavery rescue

This article conceptualises rescue as a complex, relational process, rather than a singular, one-off event against ‘modern slavery’ and human trafficking. This processual understanding of rescue highlights the inter- and intra-group dynamics among and within saviours (state actors, NGOs), victims (rescued workers) and offenders (employers), and shows how competing motivations between and within these groups shape rescue outcomes. By shifting the analytical focus of rescue from an event to a process, the article provides a robust conceptual foundation for rethinking rescue as a site of negotiation, contestation and structural critique. Drawing on a Delhi-based multi-sited ethnography involving 47 rescued workers across sectors such as sex work, brick kiln labour and construction work, and 20 law enforcement officials and civil society actors, the article also responds to long-standing calls to de-exceptionalise sex work in critiques of rescue by considering other labour sectors and genders.