Labor Migration, Trafficking and Border Controls

In the last decade there has been unprecedented international interest in addressing the crime of human trafficking. Often described as the third largest form of transnational criminal activity (cf. Jayagupta 2009), human trafficking is typically understood to involve the forcible movement of women and children across borders for the purposes of exploitative labor, usually in the commercial sex industry. This understanding is enshrined in the 2000 United Nations Trafficking Protocol which contains three key elements that in combination are said to determine whether a case of human trafficking has occurred. These are: (1) an action (e.g., recruitment); (2) a means (e.g., coercion or deception); and (3) a purpose (exploitation). According to this definition, consent is irrelevant once it is established that deception, force or other prohibited means have been used in recruiting a "victim" of trafficking.