Trafficking in women and the politics of mobility in Europe

Abstract

This dissertation examines the topic of ‘trafficking’ in women for the sex sector in Europe. The term trafficking is usually intended to signify transportation of persons by means of coercion or deception into exploitative and slavery-like conditions. I approach the theme of trafficking from the perspective of women from ‘eastern’ Europe ‘trafficked’ into street prostitution to ‘western’3 Europe. Taking as its starting point the accounts of women who have reached Italy though trafficking networks, this dissertation critically assesses the conceptualisation of trafficking in the fields of current academic and political discourses. In particular, my work engages and challenges the categories of ‘victim’ and ‘organized crime’ as the main analytic framework within which trafficking is commonly discussed and researched. I propose instead to approach trafficking from the perspective of migration. Examining trafficking from the migration perspective allows, as I show in this dissertation, to broaden the interpretative framework as to propose a more nuanced analysis able to account for the complexities of the trafficking process.