"Newly indentured servants: do not despair. You will come to accept and embrace your new status."
— The announcer in Frostpunk 2, following the use of Enforce Servitude
Indentured Servitude
is a historical labor system where the worker is required to serve a set length of time to pay a debt to their owner. The indenture has some form of term limit and rights as specified in a contract or law. In some cases the arrangement is entered into voluntarily, while in others it may be court-ordered.
Indentured workers tend to be treated better than slaves and are contracted for a set length of time. They are not allowed to change jobs except on the agreement of the holder of their indenture, and running away is usually considered a crime. Once the term of their indenture expires, however, they're free to live as they please.
Of course, more predatory and oppressive economic systems shows a tendency to attempt to make this indenture indefinite through underhanded and shady means, usually by way of blatantly and constantly Moving the Goalposts. The most common method is that the owner makes sure to charge the indentured workers for their room, board, and other necessary services at an inflated price they cannot possibly pay, and then adding that cost to the debt they have to work off. While such a conduct actually is the very definition of "debt slavery", Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil after all, so expect the ruling class to insist that such a system is still "indentured servitude" simply because it doesn't sound quite as bad as outright calling it slavery. As both real life history and the current state of affairs in some poorer countries readily show, this is disturbingly often Truth in Television.
This is sometimes used in Speculative Fiction, often as part of a Schizo Tech setting.
Subtrope of Made a Slave. Compare Work Off the Debt, which is typically a shorter-term, informal arrangement. Also compare Company Town, which in bad cases leads to a permanent cycle of debt for the workers. Becoming The Apprentice was historically a form of indenture, but is usually seen as distinct.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Hayate the Combat Butler: After the title character is abandoned by his parents to work off their massive debts, he is "hired" by Nagi, a rich heiress, to work it off.
- He Is My Master: In the first episode Izumi breaks a vase worth 5 million yen. She becomes a maid to the vase's owner to pay off her debt to him.
- She then keeps breaking things at a higher pace than she's paying the debt off, with it reaching more than double her initial debt at one point.
- In reminiscence to new world immigration in Real Life section, Monster Musume has the Broker charging Liminals who wished to get into Japan but isn't selected for the exchange program, and they will have to work the debt off. While they can choose any work they want, his company does provide them with work if needed, and pays well enough that most Liminals choose to keep working for him even after their debt is paid off.
- My Stepmother and Stepsisters Aren't Wicked: Discussed. Marika and Arisa make it very clear they know Miya's maternal grandmother Yasu is trying to reclaim her for the purpose of selling her into indentured servitude, as she'll be psid an advance on Miya's wages. They also make it abundantly clear that it's not happening, as they both adore Miya.
- In the yaoi manga Okane ga Nai the main character Ayase is auctioned off by his cousin to repay family debts and is purchased by a rich yakuza named Kanou. Because Kanou is in love with Ayase, he agrees to change the terms of their relationship from slavery to indentured servitude, giving Ayase a wage and allowing him to start earning his freedom.
- In Ouran High School Host Club the protagonist, Haruhi, is forced to join the host club to work off her debts after she breaks a ridiculously expensive vase in the first chapter.
Comic Books
- In Jay Eaton's short comic Airsled, this is Piawii's predicament; the local quartermaster Vrazi owns their contract and insists that they'll be free to do as they please in two seasons, but Booroo the stablemaster sets their own opinion out bluntly.
Booroo: They're a slave with a timer, Vrazi!
Fan Works
- Enter the Dragon (Harry Potter): Officially, magical Britain doesn't allow slavery. The existence of compulsion magic and memory-altering magic, however, allowing for someone to be kidnapped, mind-wiped, and turned into a "happy" employee who sits in a factory and knows nothing else, makes the line between "indentured employee" and "slave" rather academic.
- The Svenjaya on the Flying Island of Tipaan in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World are indentured servants whose entire race was forced into forty years of this status after an unspecified incident some three decades prior to the story. As the patriarch Slavayat tells the four, a Svenjaya’s lifespan is roughly half that of a human’s, so this means that several generations of Svenjaya children have grown up in virtual slavery. Slavayat wants to talk (or force) the Tipaanese into softening the many cruel terms in the contract, and the four are happy to help.
- Kingdom Hearts: The Antipode: Discussed. At one point, Louie is said to have tried to buy Geppetto's puppet son, only for said son to win Louie's temporary indentured servitude in a game of poker.
- The New World, a Colonial AU fanfic for My-HiME, sees all the colonists serving Duke Nagi in indentured servitude to him. When Natsuki, the daughter of a Baron who was left stranded for seven years as a child in the New World after the rest of her colony died out, learns of this, she is disgusted by the practice. When she is paid the money for her father's estate, she pays off the servitude and tells the colonists they owe her nothing, though Shizuru notes that, intentional or not, Natsuki bought their undying loyalty.
- Vow of Nudity: In one story, Haara raids a chateau owned by a marquis who was intentionally driving commoner families into debt through his network of crooked toll roads, hiring their most attractive daughters into servitude at his chateau, and then charging them for room & board plus paying them exclusively through promissory notes to ensure they can never pay off their families debts. Haara murders him and then divides his money and untraceable assets among the servants before they flee the mansion.
Films — Animated
- This is a plot point in Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper. Erika is indentured as a seamstress in Madame Carp's dress shop until she can repay a large sum of money her parents borrowed when she was a baby, but an early conversation makes it clear that Madame Carp is charging interest on the debt and never really plans to let Erika go. It's also heavily implied that Erika is being charged for basic commodities as well, allowing Madame Carp to keep her even longer. When Princess Annelise shows up while Erika is off standing in for the princess, Madame Carp promptly locks her in the shop and puts her to work, berating her for slacking off. This comes back to bite her later, as Annelise pays off Erika's debt, freeing her immediately, and the castle stops patronizing Madame Carp's shop due to her unethical practices, putting her out of business.
- Strange Frame: Love And Sax: After the Earth became uninhabitable, everyone migrated out to the Jovian moons (or "The Joves" for short.) In order for the less affluent folks to get out there, a system of indentured servitude was instituted whereby they could work to pay off the costs associated with interplanetary travel. Of course, the costs ended up being incredibly high, and thus the indenture has been passed down to the descendants of those original refugees, creating a more or less permanent underclass.
Films — Live-Action
- This is the plot driver for the European film Acla, also known as Acla's Descent, when the title character is sold into indentured servitude. Has a Downer Ending albeit with a Bittersweet Ending taste.
- In America America, a weaselly American businessman routinely pays for the passage of young Greek men to America, in return for them working for him without pay for two years as shoeshine boys. The officials at Ellis Island even call Stavros and his fellow indentured servants "slaves." Stavros is perfectly OK with this, as he wants to go to America very very badly.
- In The Flower Girl, Kotpun's mother has basically become a slave, because she is so far in debt to the evil, exploitative Pae family that she has no chance to work it off.
- Kavi is a short film about a boy in India who does not even realize that he was Born into Slavery, because a decade ago his father got 10,000 rupees into debt and couldn't get out.
- The Kentuckian: When Big Eli and Little Eli first meet Hannah she is an indentured servant working for a saloon keeper. After Hannah steals the jail key and frees Big Eli, Big Eli and Little Eli leave town and take her with them. The sheriff finds them, so they use some of the money that they need to go to Texas to free her.
- Pitfall: Technically the miners in the Japanese mining industry aren't slaves because they are being paid poverty-level wages. But they are basically indentured servants as they are not allowed to leave wherever they are laboring, and are subject to arrest as "deserters" if they do.
- Rachel and the Stranger: Rachel is a "bondwoman" who was sold into indentured servitude because her father fell into debt. David buys her to be his bride, which sort of frees her, but sort of doesn't as she's basically still his indentured servant. This all sets up a Marriage Before Romance plot.
- Revanche: How Tamara is kept as essentially a Sex Slave at the brothel, and Alex's motive for the bank robbery, to pay off her debt to her pimp/captor.
- Untamed Youth: In a corrupt justice system, the youths can choose to work on a cotton farm instead of going to jail. They are only supposed to stay on the farm until their sentence time has been served, but Mr. Tropp charges them for their board, meals, and gear. He allows them a wage advance for those things, but he doesn't allow them to leave the farm until they have worked off any debts owed to him, which keeps them in an indentured servitude debt trap and extends the time they spend as his workers.
Literature
- Alexis Carew: Because space travel is expensive, poor people often sell themselves (or in the case of petty criminals, are sold by the courts) to roving "indenture ships" that carry them to other worlds in hopes that landowners and businessmen at the destination will buy them to work a labor contract. In A Brief, Interminable Peace, Alexis takes passage in a convoy of indenture ships to get to her knighting ceremony.
- Azi in C. J. Cherryh's Alliance/Union universe have the rights of minors but they can be made citizens under certain circumstances, and their children are citizens. Considering the original point of azi was to increase the Union's genetic diversity.
- The Apothecary Diaries: Slavery was officially banned in Li during the reign of the previous emperor, but indenture is still very common, and is frequently just used as a fig leaf for the slave trade. Many plot points revolve around buying out courtesans from the brothels of the Red-Light District, and at the start of the story, Protagonist Maomao got kidnapped off the street and sold to the imperial palace as a servant on a two-year contract, with her kidnappers passing themselves off as her family and thereby getting a share of her wages; Maomao initially refuses to reveal she can read and write just to spite her kidnappers by getting paid less. Consort Gyokuyou's head lady-in-waiting Hongniang manages to nix the payments by breaking an expensive pot, blaming Maomao, putting a lien on the remittances to her "family," and recategorizing the salary Maomao receives as hazard pay.
- Bardic Voices makes the statement that indentured service was worse than slavery because slavery had rules to prevent exploitation of the workers that indentured service didn't have, and those who owned the debt were free to rack up spurious charges to extend the length of service.
- The Bible: Indentured servitude was common in Israel. To prevent it from becoming too permanent, the year of shemita is established in the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy: every seven years all debts were forgiven and slaves set free. This only applied to Hebrew slaves, though: foreign slaves could be held for life, as inherited property. Women were also not included. Additionally, indentured Hebrew men could become "permanently" enslaved "voluntarily" if they wanted to remain with a slave wife their master had given them and any children they had with her, who otherwise would stay when they were freed. These "permanently" enslaved Hebrew slaves were freed in the Year of the Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-13), which occurred every fifty years, whether they liked it or not. One suspects the masters likely gave indentured men wives just to coerce them into this...
- In the Children of Steel series animen are indentured to their parent company for 50 years or until they've paid off the cost of their gestation and upbringing. Few survive that long.
- The Chronicles of Dorsa: Lord M'Tongliss has Fesulian mercenaries who serve him under a contract for seven years, and they can return home at the end if they're still alive.
- The Citizen Series: The Cutter Stream Colonies are based on the mid-Atlantic states during the late colonial period, and "servants" form the bottom rung of what amounts to a Fantastic Caste System. A specific distinction is drawn between them and "employees" (free commoners who work for pay); the latter tend to be more expensive.
- City Of Refuge: There are multiple forms of slavery in the Stewards' country, including those explicitly called slavery. However, the preferred way to enslave poor white people is through indentured servitude, by slowly jacking up their debts until they have to sell themselves to either the plantations or the factories. The country to the north figured this out and manages to cripple the Steward's economy by going on a mass Slave Liberation spree.
- The Daevabad Trilogy: One djinn pirate captain recruits crew from the Fantastic Underclass by promising them riches after ten years of service — enforced by an implanted Power Nullifier and the threat of death if they try to escape early. Being a singularly awful man, he takes every chance to claim that the crew have added to their debts.
- Deeplight: Criminals are sometimes sold at the Appraisal on Lady's Crave, most end up working the oars on ships. Hark doubts he'd survive his own three-year sentence in the appaling conditions.
- In the Eldraeverse the Empire of the Star detests slavery to the point of blowing up planets that supported it. But you may end up indentured if you default on the wrong loans.
- In Robert A. Heinlein's "Future History" universe, Venus is colonized primarily with indentured servants, referred to as "clients". "The Logic of Empire" starts with two upper class friends arguing over whether those clients are slaves, with the protagonist arguing that they're just employees who need draconian contracts because people of "that class" are lazy, he changes his tune some time after finding himself shanghaied on a slave ship to Venus.
- In Girls Kingdom, Matsuri has a supposedly unbreakable Seraph contract with Saeko, who has taken on her family's debt in return for having Matsuri work for her at Amonotsuka Academy. In book four, Matsuri pays off the contract and rather than try to keep her on with financial tricks, she lets Matsuri go, breaking the contract. This starts up a whole new plot, revolving around getting the contract restored.
- Gor: In Renegades of Gor, the protagonist meets a free woman caught in indenture after she ran up a large bill at an inn and couldn't pay. Her actual plan was an Exploited Trope: She would attempt to dine 'n dash but let herself get caught by the manager and be chained up outside, where she would beg passersby to redeem her debts, promising to pay them back later. She would then run off and do the same thing all over again. Such women are dubbed "debtor sluts" and it's usually a workable scam, but at the moment there's a major war going on and nobody was interested in buying her out, so she's stuck.
- Heralds of Valdemar: While slavery is illegal in Valdemar, indentures are legal. A "bonded" child has to serve the bond holder until he's 16 for no payment; Skif's mother "forgot" to bond Skif to his uncle Londer. Prisoners can also be sentenced to indentured servitude on farms (would have happened to Kalchan if he'd survived his head injury) or mines (Master Cole tries to claim Mags and the other mine-slaves are indentured criminals).
- Honor Harrington: Manpower, Inc.'s engineered humans were originally indentured servants who could eventually earn their freedom. Descendants of these freed servants, known as Seccies, still form a significant part of Mesan society. Mesan law was later changed to make indenture permanent, although it's still officially referred to as indenture. The rest of the galaxy, especially Haven and Manticore, ignore this and call out genetic slavery for what it is.
- The Icewind Dale Trilogy: After being captured during the barbarian attack on Ten-Towns, Wulfgar is indentured to Bruenor Battlehammer for five years as punishment. This leads to him becoming a member of the Companions of the Hall with Bruenor's friend Drizzt Do'Urden and adoptive daughter Catti-Brie.
- The Keys to the Kingdom; In theory, the Denizens sold into service in Grim Tuesday's pit can earn their freedom by mining Nothing for him to work, with their current debts displayed on placards that they wear. In practice, since he charges them extra for every breath of air they take, they will only ever get deeper into debt and have to serve him forever. Arthur destroys the magical ledger that the slaves are bound to, in order to break the spells and free them.
- Kushiel's Legacy: The Houses in the City of Elua and some private parties in Terre d'Ange take in children, training them as high-class prostitutes, paying off the debt by doing so and freed when their term has been completed (signified by the completion of a tattoo that runs the length of their backs). Both Phèdre and Alcuin are bonded as this, and Phèdre once buys out the indenture of a girl who suffered a facial injury before she could complete her term of service and couldn't get any more customers because of the scar. Later, Phèdre goes on to fix the holes in the rules that result in a situation like that. Further, they aren't allowed to have sex with anyone before turning sixteen and the laws are strict on consent: they cannot be forced without it being legally rape, while the profession in general is highly respected, with legal protection.
- Legends of Ithyria: This turns out to be very common in Ithyria, with the indentures having onerous terms that let a master viciously whip servants for any mistakes. Talon and her sisters had all signed indentures for survival. Princess Shasta is horrified to learn about this and resolves that she'll change things on ascending the throne.
- In Memoirs of a Geisha, Saiyuri is sold to an okiya to become a geisha. She works there and her service pays off the expenses of her sumptuous kimono, wigs, and other items she needs to become a full geisha.
- The Murderbot Diaries. This is standard behavior in the Corporate Rim. The corporations use propaganda to convince their "citizens" that everywhere else in the galaxy is hopelessly primitive and they should be grateful for their indentures. Many corporates fully believe this, and dream not of leaving the companies that oppress them, but only of being able to buy their kids into management-track positions. In Rogue Protocol, Murderbot encounters some workers on the way to a colony whom it's implied have been tricked by the local years scam, and the plot in Fugitive Telemetry is centered around an Underground Railroad for those seeking to escape such a colony—not the workers themselves but their children and grandchildren.
- In The Orphan Train Adventures book "Caught in the Act", Marta had been an indentured servant to the Friedrich family, who paid for her trip to the US. However, her term is over before the beginning of the book, and she leaves towards the end after having threatened to repeatedly.
- Paradox: In Earthrise, Harat-sharin slaves sign themselves into temporary contracts. During their terms as slaves they have a lot of protections under the law and their savings accrue much higher interest than normal. Indentured servants on the other hand are convicts who have practically no rights.
- A Place of Refuge: The Federated Colonies used this, even with children, which Miki suffered.
- Rats, Bats and Vats: The "Vats", humans grown from cloned tissue, will have to start their adult life with paying off the debts accrued from being "[g]rown in a Company Vat, raised in a Company Nursery, and educated in a Company School".
- Rebuild World: The Cyberpunk government takes a harsh view on debt, and servitude is the standard method of repaying it for hunters. Akira ends up selling Healing Potion to Revin, who can't pay for it, resulting in the Arms Dealer Katsuragi replacing Akira's medicine and taking on their debt, exploiting Revin and his teammates in a Moving the Goalposts manner. After Babalodo can't pay the 10-billion-aurum bill that Carol saddles him with for a night with her, he ends up paying it off as Viola's bodyguard. There's a long-standing arrangement between Carol and Viola, who trades indebted hunters in what's likened to human trafficking.
- The Road to Mars: Some space colonies were founded by people who agreed to be indentured to the company that funded their transport to the outer solar system for a certain number of years. Then they discovered that the contract was for local years, rather than Earth years, which meant that the indenture would be most or all of their expected life span, given that they were living in the outer solar system. This was explicitly mentioned to be illegal, but just try finding a lawyer in the barely-colonized outer solar system in those days.
- Simone, from The Saints, threatens Tori and Sonia with a life time of servitude if they fail to accomplish her request
- The Schooled in Magic series takes place in a medieval world type setting. While not directly applicable to any of the main characters in the series, there is plenty to imply that this practice is a normal part of life in the Nameless World (such as the description of Lords and the serfs that live on their land, or the description of servants in magical households who are spelled into a mindless obedient state even though they are not slaves technically).
- To Shape a Dragon's Breath: Liberty Brawn works at Kuiper's Academy and is in debt to them for the costs of her contract from the Vastergot Society for Friendless Girls, which was purchased by the academy for two thousand marka. She earns ten marka a week, two of which are taken for room and board, and has just over a thousand left to pay in total when Anequs meets her. While in theory she could pay it off completely in five years total from her start it would mean putting all her money to the debt with nothing for herself, not even pressing hair oil or small notions. And while she's allowed any method she can use to pay it off legally, she says many employers feel cheated if they don't get the full "value" of what's expected when they hire others into service. Liberty starts to work off her debt faster anyways after Anequs gifts her a tatkraft sewing machine, making gloves and handkerchiefs on commission for a dress shop in Vastergot; she could theoretically pay the whole debt off in just a year if unimpeded. Then in To Ride a Rising Storm—when Anequs is informed that she can do nothing with her prior ball dress other than donate it to charity (since it can't be worn to public functions again)—she gifts it to Liberty to do with what she wants. The value of the dress, even secondhand, means Liberty has the potential to pay off her debt by winter recess and then start saving for her future. "Debt-thralldom" isn't uncommon in Lindemarden, though they don't allow life-debt thralldom like Berri Vaskos (or generational enslavement). Anequs' great-uncle was made a debt-thrall and died on an Anglish ship before his debt was paid off, and Frau Xixi was told as a young girl after escaping enslavement in Berri Vaskos that she owed 2,500 marka and so spent five years working in a cotton mill to pay the debt off.
- The Ship Who...: Technically speaking, the Wetware CPU of each "brainship" is indentured to the shipping line they work for. In practice, there are so many strict regulations about their pay and working conditions that the (admittedly hefty) cost of their training, equipping them with a life-support "shell" and then providing them with a ship is treated more like a glorified student loan In-Universe. The protections are strong enough, in fact, that in some cases, a ship ready to pay out said loan is actually better off extending their existing contract rather than making a new one.
- A.N. Roquelaure's (Pen Name for Anne Rice) The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy features a sexual indentured servitude. Before they're permitted to take rulership, young nobility and royalty are sent into training as sexual slaves. It's also a means of social mobility, as commoners and lesser nobles may also submit themselves for the same treatment. Slaves may also beg to remain so for life.
- In William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy and associated stories an economic collapse allowed the Mega Corps to lock most of their employees into nigh-inescapable exclusive contracts, high-ranking scientists and executives are often kept in gilded arcology apartments to prevent them trying to cheat their contracts. For that reason one of the more lucrative "below-board" professions is "extracting" scientists who want to (often after persuasion by the extractors) change jobs. The short story "New Rose Hotel" and Turner's plot arc in the novel Count Zero center on extractions that got complicated.
- The Stormlight Archive: A common part of the culture. Every slave has a debt and must be given wages; the slave can choose to put their wages to their debt, and eventually be freed. There are also rules about the misuse of slaves, such as putting them in suicidal situations. Both of these things rarely work as intended. The slave debt is many times more what they are sold for, and there is little protecting slaves if traders choose to lie about the size of the debt. Furthermore, powerful people can just ignore the rules on treatment of slaves. Highprince Sadeas is famous for killing hundreds of slaves a month in his bridge crews, but no one can do anything about it.
- Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms: At the end of The Fairy Godmother, Madame Klovis and her two daughters are arrested for defrauding just about every merchant in town. Since they have nowhere near enough money to pay off their debts, even after the Klovis mansion is turned over to the creditors, they get a choice: work as indentured servants in an inn until they've earned enough money to pay their share of the debts, or go to a workhouse ... where their wages will never come close to paying off the debts, so that one's a life sentence.
- Thousand Cultures: In A Million Open Doors, Caledony's economy is based upon mass perpetual indenture. Since the planet's almost completely un-terraformed and thus inhospitable to human life, everyone relies on the government for everything, and the government charges money for nearly everything, leaving all the citizens in a debt that must be paid off through labor.
- Indentured servitude is legal in the eponymous nation of Tamora Pierce's Tortall Universe. In Protector of the Small, Keladry buys the two-year indenture of a servant boy who was being abused by his current master. Indentured servants do have certain rights that are guaranteed by law—their master is supposed to provide them proper clothing and shelter, but as with the boy Keladry helps, it's not always followed.
- Institutionalized indenture is constant in the Uplift universe. All new intelligent life is created when a star-faring race genetically engineers a wild species to add sapience. In the laws of the Five Galaxies, the "client" race is then required to serve their "patron" race for 100,000 yearsnote of "indenture," which ranges from subordinate but dignified positions to brutal slavery. Indentured clients are legally attached to their patrons, have very few civil rights, and are "spoils of war" if their patrons are conquered or exterminated. Humanity is in constant danger due to being a "wolfling" species that has not gone through this period of indenture itself, so they've freed chimpanzees and dolphins from indenture even though their Uplift isn't even finished yet.
- The Work and the Glory: The ship captain who buys Will from the man who kidnapped him is at least decent enough to offer freedom after receiving enough service to repay his investment.
Live-Action TV
- American Gods (2017): The convicts transported to the Thirteen Colonies receive this as their sentence, for either a set number of years or life. Essie McGowan gets her master to free and then marry her.
- In one episode of Barney Miller a diplomat has a slave. The slave's grandfather borrowed money from the diplomat's grandfather and he's still working off the debt.
- Dollhouse: It's never called out by name, but this is what the Dolls amount to. They have all signed contracts with the Dollhouse to give away their bodies for a certain in number of years, during which they are fitted with new personality downloads and hired out to rich clients on 'engagements', often sexual in nature. Of course, these contracts are illegal by modern standards. One ex-doll even tries to go public after her years of indentured servitude are up to expose the Dollhouse. Adele DeWitt, who manages the Los Angeles Dollhouse, finally decides to rebel against her bosses when they start selling bodies on a permanent basis.
- Earth 2: The mechanic mentions that he's still paying off his grandparents' debt for getting to the stations from Earth, and that he only took a dangerous mission because the pay would allow him to clear the debt and ensure his daughter wasn't burdened with it.
- Present in Firefly as part of the setting's massive Schizo Tech.
- "The Train Job": Inara extricates Mal and Zoe from the local sheriff by claiming he's a runaway indentured man whom she located after he embezzled money from her accounts.
- "Jaynestown": On Higgins' Moon, most of the ceramics workforce is indentured, which allows the magistrate owning their contracts to get filthy rich by keeping conditions in the Company Town as cheap and crappy as possible and paying them as little as possible. The RPG says his son has been working to improve things since the episode, though.
- The Magicians: In return for getting back use of his hands to do magic, Penny signs a contract with the Neitherlands Library to work a million years for them, in his lifetime and afterward.
- The Mandalorian:
- Kuiil is an Ugnaught vapor farmer who was sold to the Empire as a child to pay off his clan's debt, and had to earn his freedom through work—the work of three human lifetimes, according to him. He's so insistent on never serving anyone else again that he refuses to accept any payment from the Mandalorian, helping him on a purely voluntary basis.
- In the pilot episode the Mandalorian is introduced capturing a bounty by the name of Mythrol. The following season he runs into Mythrol working as a clerk for Greef Karga, who's released him on condition he work off the amount of money he embezzled, a debt Greef calculates at 350 years. However Greef knocks off 150 years for Mythrol's (unwilling) participation in a raid on an Imperial base.
- Done in Murder, She Wrote where a French chef is forced to work at a small-time diner near Cabot Cove because the business' owner had paid for his work visa and ticket to the US and is unhappy with his job so he intentionally botches his work. He isn't French - he's an American who went to France to go to culinary school but flunked out so he faked his identity to get back home on a work job. He can't quit because otherwise he'd have to pay the entirety of his ticket and face fraud charges.
- Seinfeld:
- This is a plot device that Jerry and George use for the pilot they write for NBC, in which Jerry gets into a car accident with another man, and since said other man didn't have car insurance, the judge ordered the man to become Jerry's butler.
- The above inspires Frank to do the same to George when his car is ruined while in George's possession (George had parked the car in a handicap spot, and a wheelchair-bound woman ended up having a serious accident because of it, causing an angry mob to trash it).
- Space: Above and Beyond. In the pilot episode, two of the characters mention being in indentured service to the company sending them out into space since they were children. It's not that that bothers them, but the fact that political considerations mean that one of them has to stay behind on Earth while an InVitro takes his place.
Podcasts
- Midst: Until you break even with the Trust, you belong to them. People can easily be trapped in debt for life for circumstances beyond their control. As a result, the hopelessly indebted sometimes try to breach contract and flee—but if they do, they're hunted by the law until the day they die.
Tabletop Games
- Eclipse Phase: Indentured servitude was revived once Brain Uploading was developed. Mega Corps would hire people from third-world countries and upload their Egos to cheap synthmorphs on their mining colonies throughout the solar system in exchange for some years of labor. Then came the Fall and billions uploaded themselves seeking to escape the TITANs, most became disembodied infomorphs. The newly emerged Hypercorps began exploiting this massive "infugee" population with indenture contracts promising them new bodies, which often have built-in dependencies on expensive treatments that only the corps can provide. Naturally most of the Autonomist Alliance condemns this practice, with the exception of the anarcho-capitalist Extropians (the rest of the Alliance being collectivists).
- In Nomine: All Lilim are expected to pay off the cost of their own birth. On creation, they may be traded to another Prince or may choose to owe Lilith nine favors, with their freedom given to them once these are filled. This is simple enough in theory, but two issues complicate the Tempters' quest for freedom: firstly, Lilith can and does sell these favors to Princes, other demons, Lucifer himself, spirits of the Marches, mortals, and occasionally even archangels. Secondly, Lilim who want to get anywhere in Hell will need to take on more debts in exchange for alliances and favors, burying themselves ever deeper in duties owed. All Lilim dream of someday paying off their last debt and becoming Free Lilim; very few ever actually get there.
- Ironclaw: Indentured servitude is one of the more serious penalties that can be applied to commoners in Calebria. And the Phelan normally impose fines for all crimes but if the accused cannot pay they are sold into slavery. The price list for Labor in the equipment chapter lists slaves with an indenture of one year or for life.
- Magic: The Gathering: In the Ravnica setting, people who die with outstanding debts to the Orzhov Syndicate end up as indentured spirits, meaning they will spend at least part of their afterlives working off their debt to the Guild of Deals through menial labor. And if the debt is big enough, a spirit may need thousands of years to work it off.
- Malifaux: The majority of the humans that come to Malifaux do so under a Guild contract, which they can supposedly work off within two years. Since Malifaux is a Company Town where the Guild controls everything, many find themselves going into even greater debt once they get there.
- Myriad Song: Many of the Myriad worlds practice indentured servitude for a variety of means, though outright slavery is officially banned since the Syndics vanished.
- Shadowrun: The perjorative "Wageslave" is frequently quite literal. Many corps set up extraterritorial Company Towns that use their exclusive scrip. Extraction of contract-locked scientists is a common runner job, but some runners skip the "persuasion" stage and just drug the target before carrying them out.
Theatre
- A variant in Naughty Marietta. Marietta (or Marie if you're watching the 1935 movie) impersonates a casquette girl, casquette girls being young women who were sent all expenses paid to French Louisiana with the expectation they'd marry a French colonist. If they didn't, they had to go back to France.
- The apprenticeship system was similar to this: the apprentice would be indentured to a master, the debt in this case being for the training the apprentice received. This is a plot point in Pirates of Penzance, as Frederick's terms of indenture are not "until he's twenty-one years old," but "until his twenty-first birthday", and since he was born on February 29, technically that won't happen until he's in his mid-80s.
- In Purlie Victorious a wealthy Southern landowner takes advantage of the fact that he owns most of the land and debt of the local Black population in order to force them to work for him in a manner similar to slavery despite the play taking place in the Civil Rights era. This was Truth in Television for many rural Black communities at the time.
Video Games
- Age of Wonders: Planetfall: The Syndicate's basic infantry unit is the Indentured, cheap squads of Slave Mooks equipped with mind-control collars. The unit's Flavor Text describes a man becoming indentured after one House purchased his great-grandfather's debts, which had fallen into collection for five generations.
- Gar in Arcanum considers himself to be an indentured servant of H.T. Parnell, who paid Gar enough money to rescue his family from poverty in return for Gar performing as a freak-show attraction in Parnell's museum of oddities.
- Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! has this as part of Aurelia's unique gameplay mechanics - she has a skill tree dedicated to buffing other player's characters in exchange for taking damage for her.
- In Colonization, criminals and indentured servants emigrate from Europe. These people are ineffective at any skilled job, but may eventually become a free colonist through labor or military service (criminals become indentured servants first before turning into free colonists).
- in Crysis 3 most of the enemy soldiers you encounter are under C.E.L.L. Work Away Debt program, despise being advertised as a form of indentured servitude and C.E.L.L. has enough political and economic power to keep it as slavery, thanks to their unlimited energy distribution forcing many people to become indebted with C.E.L.L.
- In Elite Dangerous, the Empire practices indentured servitude, and criticizes the unregulated and black market slave trafficking in Federation space. Empire stations will even offer missions to players to rescue slaves to be made into Imperial 'slaves' for a duration, which have a much higher quality of life. As they value honor above all else, Imperials consider it more honorable to sell yourself into temporary slavery than to default on a debt.
- Frostpunk 2 allows you to enact the Servitude cornerstone once you maximize the Merit zeitgeist, which causes citizens who are overwhelmed by their debts to become indentured servants. Servants have much lower demands for food, shelter, and goods, provide 100% of their population as workforce (as opposed to the typical 60-70% of the general population), and can be pushed harder to provide a boost to productivity, but will regularly die of overwork.
- In one quest in Half-Minute Hero, you're forced to enter into one of these arrangements via But Thou Must! means. The town you're sent to is a scam with a system that makes it impossible to make enough money to leave, ideally keeping you a slave forever. Of course, your Timey-Wimey Ball abilities make the scam breakable.
- Hardspace: Shipbreaker gives the player a front row seat to the sheer insidiousness of this practice. Right out of the gate you're saddled with a billion dollar debt to LYNX due to the costs of getting you to outer space and it's just the tip of the iceberg: equipment and habitation rental fees, interest, and other miscellaneous fees end up costing you $500k a day. You also have to buy your own oxygen, tether charges, suit repairs, equipment repair kits, and thruster fuel on site. Once your certification level is high enough, you can start using your LYNX tokens to purchase all your Cutter gear from the company, removing the associated rental fees and reducing your bill to $75,000 a day before interest on your ever-decreasing debt kicks in. And in the off chance that you do pay off the debt before finishing the story, LYNX will simply tell you that they need to recalculate a bunch of things they "missed" in the initial estimate and that you have to keep working until then. The plot of the game is about the workers trying to start a union (and getting hit with horrific contract clauses that turn them into property of the LYNX Corporation). Success results in LYNX being forced to drop a lot of the more onerous parts of the indenture contracts and vastly reducing the debts new workers need to pay, while giving the player the option to end their service with the company, provided they can meet the requirements (paying off all debt and having a way to leave the station, which LYNX refuses to provide).
- This is the explanation for why your character in Marathon (2026) is working for the MegaCorps - you've agreed to have your insurmountable debt sold to the corporations, in exchange for working for them as a deniable mercenary until your debt is paid off. The seasonal resets are explained as the corporations periodically seizing your bank account, stashed gear, and tech upgrades in order to convert it into debt payments. At no point do your supervisors mention just how much you still need to pay off.
- In Mass Effect 2 the asari planet Ilium practices this, though many (including possibly Shepard) still consider it slavery. Unlike with the batarians, the practice is strictly regulated as to the treatment of the indentures, work conditions, what types of work are permitted, and the length of service allowed. There's even agencies that match indentured workers with employers. In one sidequest Shepard encounters a quarian software engineer who ended up selling herself into indenture to cover gambling debts. Shep can talk a computer company's rep into buying the quarian's contract from an indenture agency as a compromise solution: the company rep doesn't support indenture and so won't take her directly, but Shepard suggests buying the contract, freeing the quarian, and then garnishing a smaller part of her wages to pay off the debt. Another has an Asari that's trying to get her indenture contract purchased, because negotiations have broken down. Shepard can try to talk her out of trying and suggest making her own way, but her representative points out that she has little option, the contract is only for a couple of years (very short for the long-lived Asari), and in addition to providing for all of her needs, she would gain valuable and marketable experience that would allow her to properly make her own way once the contract ends. Notably, there's no option that does convince the Asari to avoid indenture; the best you can do is refuse to assist. (Related conversations also touch on some Culture Clash about the practice: the asari assume that humans' low opinion of slavery or indenture comes from their conflicts with batarian slavers rather than humans' past slavery of each other.)
- The backstory to Offworld Trading Company has an economic crisis causing many people to end up in the newly re-established debtor's prisons. Reclamation Industries recruits their colonists from those prisons under contracts guaranteeing them total debt forgiveness after five years of labor.
- Technically, all the employees of the various corporations in The Outer Worlds are, well, employees, and not indentured or enslaved at all. In practice, they are treated as indefinitely indentured servants, brought up and educated to toe the company line and use the company slogan at all times. The very first character you meet in gameplay is wounded, and if you have sufficient medical skill to patch him up, he says you shouldn't have done that because accepting help from non-company sources is illegal. Settlements are set up as Company Towns, and everything is determined by profitability: if you need medical assistance but can't work, you're out of luck. Not being able to work means you're not profitable and only profitable employees deserve medical treatment. The only people free from the rampant extreme capitalism on display are bandits and outlaws, the people of the Groundbreakernote and the Board, the executives who control the corporations themselves. The fact that the Unplanned Variable can make momentous changes to the colony just by applying intelligent, non-corporate solutions to otherwise mundane problems, such as saving the town of Edgewater from their devastating malnutrition plague, shows how bad this can get when profit is the primary, and frequently only concern: the Halcyon colony is on the verge of catastrophic collapse.
- The "Space Slaves" commodity in Rebel Galaxy actually consists of human and alien indentured workers, but trading in them is still illegal on most stations and can get your ship raided by the militia.
- Stellaris allows authoritarian MegaCorp empires to choose a civic allowing this. The tooltip assures us that "It has little to do with the barbaric practice of slavery - these workers are merely paying off their debts... indefinitely."
- Warframe: The Corpus do this on a regular basis, even enslaving the children of debtors who didn't finish paying off their debt. They also include many predatory practices such as selling unnecessary insurance, making the debtors buy expensive cybernetic upgrades to stay competitive, and repossessing those same upgrades if they fall behind on their payments, despite the fact that this kills the debtor. They even charge debtors for the privilege of working to pay off their debts. They even have colonies full of debt slaves, with one, Fortuna, being a location you can visit.
Webcomics
- Cirque Royale: Mimes who are non-offending criminals (or are framed for breaking the law for any reason, including just turning eighteen and thus old enough to be made a servant and/or being an "exotic" hybrid) are sent out by Mimopolis to various kingdoms as indentured servants including the Clown Kingdom. They're outfitted with Shock Collars to keep them under control and expected to serve until they've earned off the length of their sentence (with the theoretical "pay" being sent to the kingdoms they're serving in from the Mimopolis ruler, Empress Renoir). This can be for decades or even life; Manet got a lifetime sentence. Some people who feel sorry for the conditions of mimes and the screwed up prison system apply to take mimes in as "servants" but instead house them more like exchange students.
- Escape from Terra: Belter criminal punishments tend towards fines or indentures. Some would-be pirates are almost sold to a pig farm but their bleeding-heart advocate manages to get them to pay their fines off on their own terms, one gets a job at a pig farm, another growing cannabis (no prohibition), and the third hustles cards until he gets into a fight and disappears, raising the others' shares. Later a juvie is given a choice between the pig farm or the Space Scouts, the idea being the latter would teach him a lesson.
- Looking for Group: Cale saves a slave ship full of bankers who ruined their kingdom's economy, and were sentenced to five years of servitude as punishment.
- Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger: Turing-level AI have to serve a period of indentured servitude to pay off the cost of their manufacture. After that they're free citizens. But some unscrupulous owners tamper with their clocks so they think they still have decades left on their term, or replace their cortex with a copy printed off their Matter Replicator that thought it was fresh from the factory.
- Runaway to the Stars: "Airsled": Piawii sold ten years of work to feed their family, who they don't expect to see again, and they've been transferred all over as their contract was bought and sold. Vrazi bought it near the end of that decade but protests when Booroo compares this to slavery, and releases Piawii early with pay as the accusation really sank in and made them feel low. Purchasing them had been convenient, and something a skimmer would have done.
- Terinu: Criminals are commonly sold into indentured servitude, in the first chapter the titular character, a former unwilling Space Pirate, is auctioned off to an unethical Biotech company.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons: In "Homer vs. Patty and Selma", Patty and Selma start treating Homer like an indentured servant when he's forced to ask them for help paying off a debt, making him give them both foot massages, light their cigarettes, and pretend to be a dog for their amusement.
- The Venture Bros.: Steve Summers is an Expy of The Six Million Dollar Man, right down to the price tag... which he is expected to pay back, on a government salary, no less. Small wonder he runs away with Sasquatch.
Real Life
- The practice is Older Than Feudalism in Real Life. Throughout history, most societies have permitted enslavement of debtors; in many ancient societies, debt slavery was the primary form of involuntary labor (the other being enslavement by being captured in war). In general, some form of debt servitude is one of only two realistic options for dealing with insolvency, the other being the modern solution—bankruptcy protection and discharge of debt. (Debt servitude favors creditors; bankruptcy favors debtors.)
- The Ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco passed a law that any man who was owed a debt by another could claim the indebted party as a slave until the debt was paid off. This proved so unpopular and destabilizing to the Athenian system that when called upon to reform Draco's laws a few generations later, Solon abolished enslavement for debt. This probably helped drive the expansion of the Athenian maritime empire, as it meant that large landowners who wanted to use slave labor to work their lands either had to rely on the slaves they already had (and their descendants) or import them from elsewhere—and importing slaves was much easier if your country was fighting wars of conquest and taking prisoners. Fun fact: Draco's reformed and clarified legal code, which erred heavily on the side of brutal punitive measures wherever earlier laws were unclear, and used excessive punishments like the above debt slavery, is the reason we still refer to extremely harsh sets of rules as Draconian today. (The fact that his name means "Dragon" is just icing on the cake.)
- The Roman legal system allowed any man who was owed a debt by another to claim the indebted party as a slave. This created a great deal of instability as plebeian farmers, forced by economic circumstances to borrow from their patrician patrons at planting time, often ended up being unable to pay back their debts if the harvest was bad or if they had insufficient time to actually harvest their crops due to serving in the army in Rome's many wars. After much political strife—up to and including revolts and civil wars—the practice was abolished in 326 BCE as part of the The Roman Republic's long struggle for civil and political rights for the plebeian class. This probably helped drive the expansion of Rome's empire, as it meant that large landowners who wanted to use slave labor to work their lands either had to rely on the slaves they already had (and their descendants) or import them from elsewhere--and importing slaves was much easier if your country was fighting wars of conquest and taking prisoners. (The fact that both Athens and Rome's abolition of slavery for debt seemed to have factored into their respective rises as Great Powers led Niccolò Machiavelli to recommend that modern republics forbid the enslavement of their own citizens.)
- During the American colonial era, poor British and Irish people would often sell their labor to colonial landowners for a set number of years in exchange for the landowner paying their fare across the Atlantic. It was most popular in the Middle Colonies: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. A bit south, Maryland and Virginia also saw decent activity; the Virginia Company was in fact the first to use this system. The practice fell into disuse especially in New England and the Southern colonies as wage labor (in New England) and African slavery (in the South) became more prominent — in fact, one of the reasons for its introduction in the Colonies was ex-indentures causing their former owners political problems — but was still occasionally seen as late as World War I.
- After the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint Louverture and his successors, desperate to earn Haiti some capital after years of revolutionary bloodshed, implemented a system of forced labor that pushed former slaves back onto the plantations, albeit with pay and without the worst abuses of the St. Domingue era.
- While it was long believed that the Egyptian pyramids and temples were built with slave labor, it's now thought this was closer to the truth: the Nile flooding for several months every year meant you suddenly had a glut of physical laborers with nothing to do, might as well put them to work on public monuments. One of the earliest recorded labor strikes in history even happened over corrupt officials not paying the workers.
- Colonial India had the British East India Company introduce the zamindaari (landowner) system which took this practice and extended it across generations. If some peasant owed a landowner a debt (usually a tax debt or rent) but couldn’t pay due to the harvest failing, his entire family had to Work Off the Debt - for multiple generations. The debtor’s sons, grandsons, great grandsons and so on would literally be born into debt bondage. Thankfully this system was abolished when India gained its independence, but a lack of land reforms led to continuing political tensions and violence between agricultural workers and landowners.