'The Graduate School of the Humanities, Utrecht University'
Abstract
This dissertation examines the topic of ‘trafficking’ in women for the sex sector in
Europe. The term trafficking is usually intended to signify transportation of persons
by means of coercion or deception into exploitative and slavery-like conditions. I
approach the theme of trafficking from the perspective of women from ‘eastern’
Europe ‘trafficked’ into street prostitution to ‘western’3 Europe. Taking as its starting
point the accounts of women who have reached Italy though trafficking networks, this
dissertation critically assesses the conceptualisation of trafficking in the fields of
current academic and political discourses. In particular, my work engages and
challenges the categories of ‘victim’ and ‘organized crime’ as the main analytic
framework within which trafficking is commonly discussed and researched. I propose
instead to approach trafficking from the perspective of migration. Examining
trafficking from the migration perspective allows, as I show in this dissertation, to
broaden the interpretative framework as to propose a more nuanced analysis able to
account for the complexities of the trafficking process