The rumour of trafficking

Abstract

A poorly addressed women's issue in the early 1980s, 'human trafficking' is now high on the political agenda. Couched in the language of human and migrant rights and the depredations of transnational organised crime, anti-trafficking discourse describes the trafficker as the source and means of migrant exploitation in the global migration economy. Human trafficking, in the words of a G8 ministerial communiqué, is the 'dark side of globalisation'.