In the last decade, human trafficking has emerged as a new area of research for sociologists and other scholars across a wide range of fields. Globalization has exacerbated the illicit trade of people and their parts within and across territorial borders, generating concern among activists and academics and prompting the development of a burgeoning literature with varying concerns and viewpoints.
The words above are from Stephanie Limoncelli, from an article called Human Trafficking: Globalization, Exploitation, and Transnational Sociology. What do we know about human trafficking dynamics and trends? What are its causes and current responses, including critiques of anti-trafficking efforts? While much work remains to be done in simply mapping current trafficking activities, a transnational sociological framework can help to move theory and research on trafficking forward.
Her new work, The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women reveals how integral the study of gendered colonization is to the investigation of the emergence of international and transnational political organizing. Sex trafficking is not a recent phenomenon. Over 100 years ago, the first international traffic in women for prostitution emerged, prompting a worldwide effort to combat it. The Politics of Trafficking provides a unique look at the history of that first anti-trafficking movement, illuminating the role gender, sexuality, and national interests play in international politics.
Initially conceived as a global humanitarian effort to protect women from sexual exploitation, the movement’s feminist-inspired vision failed to achieve its universal goal and gradually gave way to nationalist concerns over “undesirable” migrants and state control over women themselves.
International non-governmental organizations have the ability to challenge state power. A complex variety of motivations exist for state involvement in humanitarian issues pertaining to women. We need to probe more deeply into the importance of gender and sexuality to state officials engaged in nation building.
According to Cynthia Enloe, Clark University, author of The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire:
So many sex trafficking debates remain unresolved today. Should foreign women in prostitution be automatically deported to their country of origin? Should fraud and duplicity be added to outright coercive force among the criteria used by authorities when determining whether a woman has been trafficked? Are young girls in more need of protective action than women?
Thus, a more thorough understanding of the historical nexus of states, immigration, and the control over sexual labor is necessary the global debate surrounding the complex origins of both trafficking and anti-trafficking politics. According to Leila Rupp of the University of California, Santa Barbara:
Limoncelli provides a necessary and enlightening history for understanding the present world of women’s sex work and for thinking about the role transnational non-governmental organizations play in making policy in conjunction with both states and the United Nations. No one interested in the fraught struggles over sex work and trafficking can afford to ignore this history.