The Political Economy of Sex Trafficking
In a world of heightened political discourse, trafficking victims, particularly those who have been sexually exploited, occupy a unique space outside the traditional area of topical discussion. National rows persist over healthcare, taxation and culture wars yet, when it comes to topics like sex trafficking, there is a sense in which ‘the public’ can unite itself and universally condemn such atrocities. For many of us from more privileged backgrounds the impacts of human trafficking are certainly an issue, but an issue located in a place and time different to ours. We can feel the rise in costs of living hit our purses with every hiked up energy bill, but the problem of (by and large) women and children being forced into sexual services with no means of escaping exists elsewhere: On special news bulletins, in dramatised television and movies, and the charity campaigns of celebrity philanthropists.
However, for many, the portrayal of a typical victim underlies the discussions over what human trafficking is, and how we go about solving it, with several misconceptions. This informs a push towards arguments that suggest a clearer, more instrumentalised understanding of how the mechanisms of sex trafficking function. Recently, scholars and activists alike have argued that to coordinate a more coherent international response to sex trafficking, we need to understand that the issue of sex trafficking has several, often ignored economic undertones.
Ratified at the 2000 Convention Against Traditional Organised Crime as one of three adoptions of the Palermo Protocol, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children is the UN’s most explicit policy action taken against sex trafficking, and has gone on to inform the majority of political and academic definitions of the topic:
“Trafficking in persons” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion… for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation… The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth [above] shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth [above] have been used.”
A debate has arisen over the extent to which the protocol has been successful in its aim of providing a clear definition of human trafficking. These criticisms extend to the policies adopted towards trafficking, and sexual exploitation specifically, in a variety of countries. For most states, the trafficking of humans more broadly is an issue of security and border control. These are often the institutions responsible for dealing with both victims and perpetrators. Human Trafficking: The Government’s Strategy outlines the British Conservative government’s policy response. The document’s purported key focus is ‘multi-agency action at the border’ and ‘coordination with law enforcement.’ In 2000, the US Department of State issued the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Largely following the same definitional outline as the Palermo Protocol, and with a focus on prevention at the border, it generated a minimum standard of protection for trafficking victims. This year, the Report to Congress on 2022 Trafficking in Persons Interim Assessment Pursuant to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act suggested that 45 countries, including many with relatively developed economies with larger GDPs, such as South Africa, Hong Kong, Ireland and Pakistan, appeared on a watchlist for states that do not comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards.
Even without compliance to universal standards, trafficking policy responses being located within the domain of security can be a source of harm to victims. In 2016, Dr Haezreena Abdul Hamid conducted a series of interviews with 29 trafficked women in Kuala Lumpur. Although Malaysia is not included in the list of 45 countries, she found that victims whose journey was intercepted by the Malaysian border authorities often found themselves essentially detained in “semi-carceral rescue centres.” Arguably, policy prevention of human trafficking, for sexual or other forms of exploitation, will always include border enforcement at some level, as the existence of borders is required for the process to be illegal in the first place. Yet security policy seems to prioritise dealing with criminal activity rather than alleviating the suffering of victims. Thus, what academics like Dr Hamid (2016) and activists, including the prolific Siddharth Kara (2007) have argued is for policymakers to expand beyond the domain of security and border control.
Like any business, profit is the main driver of sex trafficking’s persistence across the world. And sex trafficking is indeed profitable. On the supply side, the millions of people in extreme poverty provide an abundant source of labour. There are numerous modes of transport available to perpetrators, and the recent ease of freedom of movement keeps transaction costs extremely low. Yet the continual conception of trafficking as a problem for “other” places often prevents policymakers from recognising the familiar business organisation and methods that underlie the inner workings of sex trafficking. Smaller business-enterprise groups, rather than either the territorial governance of some organised crime syndicates or the actions of individual perpetrators, seem to pervade identified instances of human trafficking. These business structures consist of three or more criminals collaborating on the trafficking of victims as a central element of their activities. This contrasts governance-style organised crime, most commonly portrayed as associated with trafficking operations, where criminals control a particular territory and have involvement in multiple illicit markets beyond trafficking.
Kara specifically asks us to acknowledge that trafficking for sexual exploitation has its own economic mechanisms that can be intervened with. According to the UNODC’s 2020 Global Report On Trafficking In Persons, out of the court cases analysed for the report, 57% of victims involved in the cases were reported to have been trafficked by a business-enterprise type criminal group, rather than an individual trafficker or a ‘formal’ governance-type criminal organisation with territorial control. Using the UN protocol’s definition, that same report found that, among the total number of court cases analysed, 50% of victims were trafficked for the purposes defined as sexual exploitation, with forced labour accounting for 38%, criminal activity for 6% and forced marriages, begging and mixed forms accounting for 1–1.5% each. Among women victims, 77% were trafficked for sexual exploitation out of the 12,162 detected, compared to 3,762 men, of which 17% were sexually exploited.
Globalisation has not only provided these incredibly advanced developments in freedom of movement but has plunged vast regions of the world into deep poverty, creating an immeasurable number of vulnerable potential victims. Impoverishment certainly existed before the advent of globalisation, but the unignorable prospect of a ‘better life’ elsewhere did not. Such prospects are essential for the role of luring trafficked humans. Statistics are not easy to quantify when it comes to the methods by which traffickers acquire their victims. Given the legal implications of acquiring information, first-hand accounts are among the few forms of evidence available to researchers. As such, it is difficult to identify common practices through which trafficking takes place. What is apparent, according to Kara, is that abduction is just one of many forms of acquisition by criminal groups (2007).
Other methods of acquisition by these groups include recruitment by former trafficked victims, deceit, and sale by families. According to Kara, many victims are subject to grooming and promises of better prospects by ‘loverboys’, whose sole purpose is seduction. The UNODC report found that violence was only used by larger-scale operations, the court cases analysed showing that direct contact, fake advertisements and operating under the guise of ‘recruitment agencies’ were more common methods of acquisition, with harm increasing after the victim was trafficked. It seems then, either for the victims or families themselves, the allure of a better life is what largely informs the methods of acquisition besides abduction. It is not uncommon for victims to be forced into a form of debt bondage, where traffickers incur the initial transportation costs, in return for the victims to repay from future earnings. Based on 233 court cases analysed for the report, economic need was cited as accounting for 51% of pre-existing factors taken advantage of by traffickers. It may be that this economic element contributes to other factors cited by the report, including immigration status and lack of education, which accounted for 10% and 6% respectively.
On an economic analysis of the industry, this makes sense. Abduction limits criminal organisations with unnecessary transportation costs and significant obstacles to freedom of movement. To minimise external costs, criminals instead use the vulnerabilities and impoverishment of victims to their advantage. It seems evident, therefore, that the economic conditions of trafficking victims play an essential role in their exploitation. The tactics employed by perpetrators depend on these conditions. Debt bondage, seduction and even sale by families are all methods contingent on the concept of a ‘better life’ which itself builds upon a deprived initial situation. Yet our conception of sex trafficking remains welded to the imagery explored at the start of this essay and the notion that sex trafficking is a problem for elsewhere. We can see the divide between international perceptions of sex trafficking and the actual nature of the problem, which is situated in and shaped by a global political economy we all participate in.
Understanding the economic undertones of sex trafficking allows us to re-conceptualise certain domestic political questions. There may be an emphasis on sex trafficking through heightened security and border control, but the same governments who employ this language successively slash foreign aid, certainly not assisting the economic conditions of potential victims. It seems therefore that definitions should recognise the economic nature of sex trafficking to a much greater extent. Several specific policy recommendations have arisen from this notion. The 2020 UNODC report argues that regulating global procurement and supply chains is essential for curtailing the recruitment and subcontracting loopholes abused by traffickers. This entails recognising that tactics beyond abduction are widely used. Were supply chains more regulated, trafficking methods would be faced with significant transaction costs.
The report also argues for the introduction of social ties and safety nets for the groups most susceptible to sex trafficking, along the lines of economic and gender inequality, including international cooperation with grassroots organisations. Implicitly, this includes recognising that, unlike the dominant media narratives, sex trafficking is not just a problem elsewhere. Rather, the extreme inequalities created by globalisation play an essential role in the recruitment and acquisition of trafficking victims, from allowing subcontracting loopholes in unregulated markets to creating an image of a ‘better life’ used by perpetrators to force victims into debt bondage. To truly end sex trafficking seems to require more than just the regulation of supply chains, but instead a comprehensive, coordinated and international effort to reduce the deep gender and economic inequalities that shape the problem’s existence.
