Debt bondage, also called bonded labour or debt slavery, is a form of unfreedom in which a person is bound to work because of a debt. It differs from chattel slavery in legal form because the relationship is framed as repayment rather than ownership, but it can become slavery-like when the debt cannot realistically be cleared, the length or nature of service is undefined, or children and other family members inherit the obligation.
The 1956 United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery identifies debt bondage as an institution or practice similar to slavery when personal services are pledged as security for a debt but the value of the work is not applied toward repayment, or the term and conditions of service are not limited and defined.[1] The International Labour Organization treats debt bondage as one route into forced labour, especially where workers or their families are compelled to remain with an employer or recruiter to repay advances, recruitment fees, inherited debts, or manipulated accounts.[2]
Historically, debt bondage has often grown from ordinary vulnerability: crop failure, taxation, medical costs, funeral expenses, migration fees, or household crisis. Creditors could turn those pressures into control through interest, inflated charges, restrictions on movement, threats, caste or status stigma, and the use of family members' labour as security. Because the bond may begin as a contract or customary obligation, it can be harder to identify than open sale of a person. Its defining feature is not debt alone, but the conversion of debt into a durable loss of practical exit.
Debt bondage has appeared in many societies and should not be treated as identical everywhere. In South Asian history, bonded labour could intersect with caste, agrarian dependency, household service, and colonial legal categories; British India's 1843 withdrawal of court enforcement from slave-property claims did not by itself abolish bonded labour or caste-bound service. In modern settings, debt bondage may involve migrant recruitment fees, withheld documents, threats of deportation, underpayment, or violence. These patterns show why abolition law expanded beyond formal slave ownership: coercive control can survive by presenting itself as debt, custom, contract, or repayment.