Human Trafficking Essay

In recent years there has been a large increase of academics focusing on ‘human trafficking’. This review looks at the body of academic literature that seeks to define what ‘trafficking’ means, the regulations that seek to combat the issue and the realities of ‘trafficking’. Therefore this review will follow these three main themes found in academic literature. The first section will look at the general definition of a ‘trafficking’, while the following two sections will look at trafficking through the more specific strand of sex ‘trafficking’. This is not because ‘sex trafficking’ is anymore or less important, it is due to the collection of academics focus more prominently on the subject. This literature review seeks to asses and evaluate

However broadening the criteria of who it includes still leaves the dispute of who it continues to exclude (Kelly 2003). Furthermore, academics have acknowledged three main critiques of the Palermo Protocol. The first of which is when the Protocol is dissected it covers three different aspects of trafficking; ‘process’, ‘means’ and ‘outcomes’ - all of which are subject to contestation (O’Connell Davidson 2006). The second issue discussed by O’Connell Davidson (2006) is that the phrase ‘exploitation’ is not clearly defined thus countries can interpret these terms differently. The final critique is that, “people’s, experiences of exploitation, abuse, powerlessness and restriction ranges along a continuum” (O’Connell Davidson 2010 p.250). The question is raised at what point on this continuum is a person defined as being ‘trafficked’. Anderson and O’Connell Davidson (2003) continue this point in asking thus what is inacceptable exploitation and acceptable

That is to say that a ‘trafficked person’ has been placed within this category by social and political doing (Weizter 2007). With all three themes within the critique, there is an assumption that an individual will cleanly slip into the categories of ‘trafficked’. However academics argue that this is more of a grey field and it is not as simple to draw distinctions between ‘trafficked’, ‘smuggled’, ‘undocumented’, ‘illegal’ and in some cases ‘legal’ migrants (Steinfield 2001). This argument continues into assessing the ‘imagined’ lines between ‘freedom’ and ‘restriction’ and when there is ‘appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’ exploitation of force. This critique essentially brings to the forefront ‘voluntary and consensual’ versus ‘involuntary and non-consensual’ migration (O’Connell Davidson 2010). The Expert Group on Trafficking in Human Beings addressed some of these issues:

“…policy interventions should focus on the forced labour services including forced sexual, services, slavery and slavery-like outcomes of trafficking – no matter how people arrive in these conditions – rather than (or in addiction to) the mechanisms of trafficking itself’ (European Commission, 2004: