Or : how corporations brought back and rebranded debt slavery.
Obviously, trigger warning for a description of slavery practices both fictional and historical, and for mentions of every kind of abuse integral to slavery.
Background
Historically, debt bondage, also known as debt slavery, bonded labor, peonage or indentured servitude, are all terms used when a person incurs debt and pledges to work in a fashion that will reimburse that debt. However, because they are forced to cede control over just about every part of their lives as "security" for the repayment of the debt, and as their situation of extreme poverty compounded by the threat of even worse legal consequences leave them virtually no recourse, the situation is rife for abuse as the person will become entirely subordinated to the services their employers demand on conditions their employers set, with the employers' best interest lying in prolonging that situation indefinitely. It is so horrific a thing that it's one of the first things democratic Athens - one of the historic slave societies where slavery existed on such a scale it had become a vital component of Athenian economy, society and hegemonic culture - abolishes. The variety of forms and names associated to the practice is a testament to its recurrence throughout history, and debt slavery is the most prevalent form of slavery today in the world.
Indentured servitude is a specific form of debt bondage in which a person is contracted to work without a salary for a specific number of years, and could be entered "voluntarily" for a variety of reasons, most of them boiling down to debt repayment, or could be imposed by a court of law. In the US and Canada (i.e. the places most people at BioWare would come from), the term would be predominantly associated to the practice in British America, where would-be immigrants from Europe and Asia would agree to an indenture in exchange for the costly passage to America across the ocean ; naturally, the situation degenerated into exploitation immediately, with East Asians especially used for hard labor.
Another major antecedent in the Western public consciousness is the form of debt bondage prevalent in Ancient Rome, where a person might choose to agree to a limited form of bondage if they defaulted on a loan they couldn't repay. In theory at least, the bondsperson retained their citizenship, their legal rights and personhood in regards to the law, which made that fate infinitely preferable to that of bona fide slavery (which completely denied their personhood as they legally became property) or death, the other common punishments if you couldn't pay back your debts. Corporal punishment and sexual abuse (on paper at least) were forbidden, and they couldn't be sold or killed at will ; often, parents would enter one of their children as collateral, so that they could remain free and earn money to buy back their child. The practice was abolished three centuries before the fall of the Roman Republic because it was conducive to abuse, especially sexual abuse.
In the universe that we choose to deal with
In Mass Effect, two societies at least engage in debt slavery as indentured servitude :
in the Batarian Hegemony, there are "indentured servants" distinct from "slaves" laboring in the mines of Aratoht ; likewise, 300 batarian "indentured workers" from Khar'shan had been recaptured by smugglers bound for the Yungiss system during the Reaper War ; hence my belief that the Batarian Hegemony engages in indentured servitude as distinct from chattel slavery, which I expanded and expounded upon in my headcanons here.
and quite obviously, Illium is the most infamous and extensive example, since it's what I'll be talking about. Note that indentured servitude is an integral part of Illium's economy
These are not the only instances of slavery in the canon. In the secondary canon, namely in Annihilation's prologue, we learn that Oliver Barthes, a native of Eden Prime, was displaced by the geth attack in 2183 and reduced, alongside his parents, to slavery in the Terminus Systems — specifically, bought by Aria T'Loak, with Oliver forced to hard labor in Sigurd's Cradle. Oliver eventually saved up to buy his freedom and sent most of his wages to Aria to keep her from shipping his parents to hard labor until he could buy their freedom (that is, SPOILERS, until he was murdered in late 2186). This sets up Jalosk Dal'virra's later remark (p.203) that only batarians get vilified for selling slaves when non-batarians get no heat for buying them (to which the correct answer is : why not both ?). Omega in particular seems to be a center of slave labor in the Terminus Systems : a human slave with a locator bracelet enslaved by a volus is mentioned as early as Ascension (2008), and the corporations Jenera Relocation Services and Jenera Staffing services (both owned by batarian Ruthoss Jenera) caught then enslaved and sold the local Omega vorcha. So I would argue that the Terminus Systems (with perhaps the exception of Omega) are societies with slaves, whereas the Batarian Hegemony and Illium are slave societies.
More surprisingly, Peebee (very drunk and bitter) casually remembers "being on Hyetiana during my indentured service as a student" when she meets Ryder in the museum on Aya. It's possible (even probable) that Peebee is being metaphorical here and that she is (insensitively) equating the drudgery of being a student (where she was forced to "follow in someone else's footsteps") to being like a slave on Illium ; but if she is meant to be taken literally, this would constitute a major retcon, as that would mean Hyetiana, in the Asari Republics, engages in the same practices than Illium, an independent world — I say retcon, because the Codex entry very much puts forward how Illium is "infamous for its abusive labor practices and legalization of nearly everything except murder" and specifically puts forward, front and center the "lucrative" practice of "legal indentured servitude" : the phrasing suggests that Illium is an outlier and that indentured servitude, when it exists elsewhere, is illegal.
But on Illium itself, the biggest source of information is the ME2 quest "Illium : Indentured Service", where you find out a slave trader unable to sell an indebted quarian. The slave broker (and the quarian) asks Shepard to persuade a Synthetic Insights rep to buy the quarian's contract. The quest is the closest look we get at how indentured servitude works on Illium, how hard it tries to distance itself from chattel slavery by presenting itself as an entirely reasonable and safe option, and how horrific it really is if you pay close attention to the details.
Before we start making valid criticisms, I want to stress that the game itself is antagonistic toward the asari slave broker : while she is insists this is not slavery but "indentured servitude" and that they "prefer the term 'indentured servants'" (in a classical use of euphemism to obscure how shitty and horrific this all is, i.e. rebranding), literally everyone else in the quest - from Shepard, to the Synthetics Insights rep, to the fucking Citadel Council - considers this is slavery, 100%, a view validated by the narrative itself as the subtitles deny the euphemism and indisputably dub the asari "Slave Broker". This is important to keep in mind, as the Slave Broker is written to sound empathetic toward the quarian and even reasonable (to paraphrase the Wiki), not out to exploit and abuse the quarian but to make a minor profit out of a mutually beneficial arrangement. This is all surface level stuff.
(Note that, when push comes to shove, the Slave Broker can't deny that indentured servitude is slavery : if the first thing you tell her is to free the slave now, she states that she knows that "batarian slavers have made humans understandably prejudiced against slavery", i.e. if Shepard behaves as they do it's because they are prejudiced against slavery, i.e. what she is engaging in right now, the subject of this conversation. The downside, of course, is the sly insinuation that opposition to indentured servitude is prejudice.) (Worse, if you choose not to persuade the Synthetics Insights rep not to buy the contract, the Slave Broker slips up when she greets you with, "You again. Did you talk to Synthetic Insights about purchasing my slave's contract ?" I mean, why pass up a good shorthand…?)
It's also notable that the victim here is a quarian. Quarians are consistently shown throughout ME2 as downtrodden, exploited and victims of flagrant racism (see also : Kenn on Omega ; Lia'Vael on the Citadel). This is meant to be another example of how quarians are ground between the cogs of uncaring systems.
So how does it work ?
Someone on Illium (not necessarily a citizen, since this is a quarian here) loses all their money. Here, the quarian "tried to play the stock market" because she thought she had "a good way to make unlimited money" ; instead, she "lost everything", leading her to take "a credit line", which she also lost, leading her to take "an illegal loan".
The slave broker (who would call themselves a "contract broker") approaches the debtor with an offer : paying off their debts and agreeing to an indenture, i.e. a set number of years of debt slavery ("Five years from now", our quarian will be free ; the IndentuTech commercial (see below) suggests five years is a standard period), or an indefinite period of slavery "until agreed-upon conditions are met" (presumably, until all the debt is paid off and the contract owner has made enough of a profit). "Illium must approve all contracts" beforehand, presumably at "the contract office" where they will also get emancipated. The price of the contract is proportionate to the skills of the debtor (i.e. how much profit whoever owns the contract can hope to wring out of them) ; in the case of our quarian, who is an AI programmer, she merited "a contract of several hundred thousand credits".
There is some shame associated with agreeing to becoming an "indentured servant" (see below with the IndentuTech ad : "the only shame is in doing nothing"), but slave brokers can persuade debtors to sell themselves into debt slavery by arguing that choice is "honorable and safe", and by promising they'll personally take care of the enslaved debtor.
The debtor "voluntarily" signs the "indentured service contract", transferring their "responsibility" to the slave broker. The responsibility seemingly includes housing and feeding : the "strict health requirements and diets" of quarians makes them "expensive" as enslaved people relative to other species. Presumably, this responsibility passes on to whoever buys the contract, with outlays in this case including "constant suit repairs and clean-room facilities" — which does suggest that, to some extent, this is stipulated for quarians and actively monitored.
Beside being responsible for the debtor's health, the contract owner is also "legally responsible for [their] behavior", as with most official kinds of slavery IRL : in Rome, if a slave committed a murder, they couldn't be indicted because they had been stripped of their personhood and were just property looking like a person, but the owner was liable for damages, and they could very well choose to damage (torture) and/or destroy (kill) their property as revenge. While I don't think this would be the case on Illium, it does mean that any offense, felony or crime an indentured slave would commit would also engage the legal responsibility of the contract owner before a court of law.
(There is an option where you can persuade the Slave Broker to free the quarian despite the massive loss of income : while it's directed in a way where we're meant to feel the Slave Broker feels shame because she promised the quarian she'd take care of her and the quarian is innocent and disappointed, it's complicated by the fact the Slave Broker says "Keeping you would endanger your health. I can't risk that." In a context where the Slave Broker admitted she can't pay for the "constant suit repairs and clean-room facilities" and is legally responsible for the quarian's health, we can read between the lines and deduce that, sure, maybe there's some compassion in there — but the Slave Broker probably will lose less money if she frees herself from the consequences on the quarian's life by freeing the quarian instead of risking the quarian's death and a very costly trial later on. That's why I find that mission fascinating : you've got three layers — the "slavery is bad" mindset the player is assumed to come with ; the emotional performance of the Slave Broker trying to sanitize her job (and herself) ; and the sordid reality of it all, plain to see if you pay attention to what she is saying instead of how she is acting. I'd bet money this was written by Trick Weekes, but I may be wrong.)
Chillingly, "the law also limits what restraint or corrective options" a contract owner can use, and "what tasks [they] can legally assign to" the enslaved debtor — "chillingly", because this means that some "restraint" (presumably limited movement, and perhaps the equivalent of NDAs ?) and some "corrective options" (i.e. punishment) are legal, possible, and done everyday. "Abuse is strictly forbidden", but we don't know what constitutes abuse — and if you can sign off on slavery if you're poor enough, can you sign off on physical abuse if you get your contract to end faster ? Sorry, I'm speculating out loud here.
On the other hand, the limitation on the tasks an enslaved debtor can do is a positive, for as long as the tasks are strictly and unambiguously worded. The clause in the quarian's contract asserting that the debtor "must remain on Illium" is clearly included to further protect her, as she doesn't "want them [i.e. whoever would buy her contract] to take [her] off to a mine somewhere." That being said, that clause could double as a "restraint" (see above), as it would ensure she stays within Illium's jurisdiction and that she works only for Illium-based corporations to bolster Illium's GDP.
There are practices in place to keep Illiumite slavery from degenerating into abuse and exploitation, for instance if the broker lost the debtor's paperwork or came up with a reason to hold them longer (i.e. what happens most often IRL) : "All contracts are monitored by Illium Law Enforcement [i.e. the police, the force Detective Anaya and Officer Dara work for]" If the owner of the debtor's contract tried any of that shit, "the burden of proof" would be on them, i.e. they would have to prove the debtor's paperwork has effectively been lost or they would have to prove the reason they want to hold on to the debtor is valid, and if they can't, nothing changes.
(Basically, if we were to take the Slave Broker at her word, Illium's form of debt slavery is a moral kind of slavery ! invented to provide a last chance for the most unfortunate among us in today's competitive job market ! without compromising on our fundamental principles ! i.e. barely two seconds into the future from our current capitalist bullshit.)
The slave broker has no use for the debtor themselves, but tries to get someone else interested in the debtor's skills to "purchase [their] contract". A slave broker runs "a minor profit at best" (define "minor" here, since she had enough money put aside to pay off the quarian's debts).
When a would-be employer accepts to hire the debtor, they send a contract to the slave broker, who will transfer the indentured service contract to the employer once the transaction is complete.
After the indenture runs out (in this case, in five years), the former debtor is entitled to a "fresh start" and "excellent work references" — so it would be a win-win ! Yay ! Huzzah !
Presumably, if the slave broker cannot sell the contract, they are responsible for the enslaved debtor until the contract runs out. That means they're losing money to both housing and feeding because of their legal responsibility for the debtor's health, and they're not making up the huge loss of money they made by repaying the debtor's debt.
If the contract owner - whether the slave broker or the employer - were to free the enslaved debtor before the set end of their "service period", they must pay a "fee for early emancipation". The feeling we get is that Illium's government and laws very much count on this kind of slave labor to feed their economy and have a vested interest in the enslaved debtors working for as long as legally possible in Illium-based corporations (see also the use of "lucrative" in the Codex excerpt above). Illium is a slave society.
One Paragon (!) resolution of the conflict is if Shepard persuades the Synthetics Insights rep to purchase the contract "minus the fee for early emancipation" then free the quarian "and garnish wages for reimbursement", i.e. free the quarian, hire her, but take money out of her salary to settle the debt early emancipation incurred. When the asari says "we look good for hiring a quarian, and we can say that we freed slaves out of the goodness of our hearts", the reality is that Synthetics Insights is hiring expert labor at a discount, and that, since the quarian is now free again, she will be responsible for her lodging and food.
The other Paragon resolution of the conflict is if Shepard won't persuade the Synthetics Insights rep to purchase the contract and encourage instead the Slave Broker to find a loophole that would allow her to release the quarian, in this case a "clause that lets you release someone for health reasons", allowing the Slave Broker to "claim medical necessity". This effectively nullifies the contract, freeing the quarian, and "80% of [the Slave Broker's] contract price will be refunded ! It was never meant to apply to quarians, and they'll close that loophole after we use it, but it will work for us !" In other words, the Slave Broker is going to make 80% of "several hundred thousand credits" (the presumed contract price) for her pains of, uh, exploiting poor people with no recourse. Given the phrasing, claiming medical necessity seemingly happens when someone develops a debilitating condition you, the person responsible for the health of your enslaved worker, cannot take care of.
The way the Slave Broker talks suggests she works independently (she keeps saying "I" when talking about the responsibility for the quarian's life and wellbeing), but indentured servitude is far from a small business on Illium : in Nos Astra, we hear two commercials for a company called IndentuTech, an indentured servitude contract provider.
The first is meant to appeal to potential slaves, i.e. poor and desperate people : "Bad luck on the stock market ? Debt piling up ? Perhaps you need to explore other options… [An endorsement from an aged male voice, with an accent meant to suggest the working class, follows.] 'IndentuTech paid off my debt and helped me gain valuable job skills. Now, just five years later, I'm a free man again.' [The cadence, with marked pauses between some words, suggests that the person is reading a written message aloud, and therefore suggests insincerity. The original asari voice returns.] Talk to IndentuTech to see if indentured servitude is the right career option for you. Remember, the only shame is in doing nothing."
But the second is clearly aimed at potential employers, i.e. contract owners : "Tired of training employees only to lose them to your competitors ? Perhaps IndentuTech can help ! The leading provider of cutting-edge indentured service, IndentuTech can provide contract-guaranteed labor for any technical area. Contact IndentuTech today. You've been a slave to your employees for too long — shouldn't it be the other way around ?" Again, the indentured servitude industry tells on itself by admitting that what they're doing is slavery, and even joking about it with those who feel like perpetual victims, i.e. the rich and powerful. At the same time, they decry any (seemingly long-standing) association with chattel slavery, which might cause the "indentured servitude market" to lose value.
The contrast created by those two ads playing close to each other really shows the hypocrisy and sinister duplicity of Illium under all the honeyed words. It also shows the incentive for employers : employees you don't have to pay working for you for a time they can't negotiate, instead of leaving with all the added value you gave them to work for the competition because they want to be paid well and to work in decent conditions, the ungrateful fucks.
Purchasing slave labor - including debt slaves like "indentured servants" - is something the Council "disapproves of", with probable consequences if a company engages in such practices. Moreover, Synthetics Insights is responsible for its "strict non-discrimination policy" before Illium's Trade Bureau, but (thank fucking God) it doesn't consider that refusing to hire slaves falls within its purview, just refusing to hire quarians.
In practice, let's consider the following :
how "voluntarily" can you agree to indentured servitude when the alternative is probably worse and you are fucking poor ?
what does it mean when your life is entirely dependent on some incompetent asari who thought she had "an easy sale" but is wrong-footed the second it becomes slightly complicated and whose only reassurance is "I'll think of something", and if some random stranger hadn't showed up you might have been sentenced to hard labor to pay off your debts ? And because this is hard labor, your body would probably be ruined if your survived the experience ?
Like, the Slave Broker assumed Synthetic Insights would hire an AI tech. But Synthetic Insights has been hardly hiring anyone since the geth attacked the Citadel and public opinion soured on AI research. That was two years ago. The Slave Broker is written to be incompetent, and she is gambling with the quarian's life.
I mean, when you don't cajole or coerce the SI rep into buying the quarian's contract, the Slave Broker admits : "I knew this was a stupid risk. The economy is too unstable to be taking on risky projects." With a Renegade option, Shep can call her out on all "that 'No, I'm a good slaver' garbage".
"No system is perfect" — yeah, I'm sure that, if the service contracts are monitored by the police, who are depicted in the same game as overworked and trampled by their superiors, nothing can go wrong — and that's not even taking into account the possibility of uuuuuuuuuh corruption.
we also have no idea how stringent the burden of proof on the various ways to further make a debtor's life misery is. Since there are "safeguards to protect all parties", I'm not sure the balance of forces is skewed in the debtor's favor, for some reason…
sure, the Council "disapproves" of slavery, so there probably are sanctions of some kind… but it doesn't forbid it, and it only starts limiting it in 2185.
you may have "excellent work references", but you're still fucking poor because you didn't get paid for five years - you have no fucking money at all, in fact - and why would someone hire you when they could buy the contract of another indentured servant to do the same job, but for far cheaper ? If there's a minimum wage on Illium, then you don't get hired ; if there isn't a minimum wage, then you're paid basically nothing, and you're poor forever, never even getting by, and likely to become indebted and an indentured servant again. It might probably be the best economic choice for you. It may be why the abolition of the minimum wage on Anhur was seen as tantamount to "relegalizing slavery", which sparked the civil war known as the Anhur Rebellions.
"claiming medical necessity" : so, if I get some kind of disease working for you and caring for it costs too much and you cannot be liable for my ailing health and death, that means unless (hopefully) I can prove this disease is the result of working for you in the conditions you set, suddenly I'm dying, unemployed, homeless and without any money in my bank account. Great. "Abusive labor practices" is an understatement.
REMEMBER KIDS ! "WHEN ANYTHING GOES, IT GOES TO ILLIUM !"
Hot take: pretty much all the vorcha we meet/talk to in Mass Effect speak with poor grammar, which makes them sound unintelligent and violent, but we definitely see vorcha are capable of understanding complex conversations and concepts. They aren't as technologically advanced or maybe as intelligent as a lot of other species, they canonically primarily use nonverbal communication, but they still have a language.
Which leads me to believe that they don't speak like that because they're dumb, but because nobody ever bothered to make good vorcha-English translator? Whoever programmed it got some basic vocabulary but clearly didn't bother with grammar. Maybe the vorcha language is very heavy on using context clues & body language, and nobody thought it was important enough to put in that amount of effort.
Asari, turians, salarians- they're all important enough that a lot of work/effort went into translating their languages perfectly into human ones, but nobody actually cares about the vorcha and having them seen as stupid and violent and dehumanized (for lack of a better word) probably suits everyone else just fine. Idk the vorcha aren't my favorite aliens but I like overthinking sci-fi translators and space sociolinguistics and I think the weird little guys deserve better
