Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter examines how neoliberalism reshapes the role of the state in constructing and sustaining unfree labour. Rejecting narratives of state retreat, the chapter shows that neoliberal governance redeploys state power to restructure markets, reconfigure rights, and expand coercive labour practices. It analyses how contractualism operates at macro, meso, and micro levels: as an ideological framework that reframes social relations as reciprocal obligations; as an institutional logic driving privatization, outsourcing, and conditional welfare; and as a field-level mechanism that masks coercion through the language of consent. Through examples from workfare, prison labour, immigration detention, and internships, the chapter demonstrates how law mediates and legitimizes these practices by transforming rights into conditional claims and narrowing judicial oversight. It concludes that neoliberalism not only tolerates unfree labour but also actively generates and normalizes it through legal, political, and economic structures.</jats:p>