An overview of human trafficking in Europe

Abstract

Trafficking in Human Beings (THB) is a global issue and takes place for many reasons, one being for the purpose of sexual exploitation and forced prostitution in women and children. This form of THB is a serious crime through which its victims are treated as “commodities” and are traded and sold for financial gain by their traffickers. Trafficking has been taking place for many years, but its occurrence has only recently started to get recognized in the past few decades. THB was initially viewed in terms of prostitution or any other form of sex work, causing for the rise of the “abolitionist discourse” and later on the “sex work approach”. A few years later, international scholars together with policy makers, started to understand this phenomenon in terms of being an exploitive form of sexual work through the use of coercion, force, deceit and threats. This led to the development of a generic definition of the term THB in Europe. However, it was only in recent years, that scholars began to recognize a correlation between illegal migration and THB for exploitive purposes. This was further discussed in this paper. This research sets out to describe the complexities of THB and its definitions across Europe which make it nearly impossible to comprehend. This paper intends to fill the gaps between the unrecognized involvement of trafficking in relation to migration and the sexual industry. The extent of this phenomenon will be explained in this study, through three themes which examine: (1) the measuring of prevalence of THB, (2) the geographical and organisational mobility of trafficking flows and (3) the legal and policy framework in place in terms of this illicit crime. The overall purpose of the research, is to present an overview on the incidence of this exploitive crime across Europe, that is THB, in regards of its leading factors, operations, intricate crimes, policies in place and the limitations which hinder for the controlling and eradication of this crime.