Human trafficking is the dark side of migration. Rising global inequalities, visible in gaping wage differentials, together with easier transport and communication technologies, have turned people-smuggling for the purpose of labour exploitation into a thriving business.
Just how big a business it is eludes statisticians, law-enforcement officials and researchers. But the difficulty, as the introduction to “Human trafficking in Europe” makes clear, goes beyond the nature of trafficking as a clandestine activity. There is no generally accepted definition of the crime; no standardised collection of data, even within the EU; and vocal disagreements about who should be defined as a victim, primarily between civil-society groups providing assistance and national authorities.
Gillian Wylie and Penelope McRedmond, the editors of this collection, are careful to acknowledge these difficulties upfront. They also explore the reasons behind the lack of hard data, and, in the conclusion to this volume, return to the importance of numbers as a driver of policy responses.
Their openness about the prejudices that inform much scholarship on trafficking – including, to an extent, their own – is refreshing. Traditionally, researchers of trafficking have tended to see themselves as advocates of helpless victims, have been close to non-governmental groups and have therefore had an interest in playing up the numbers, although the quality of research has improved with maturity.
The editors also concede that, in line with most research and public interest, the book's empirical chapters are “skewed towards...trafficking in women for sexual exploitation”, when, actually, a significant share of trafficking, perhaps in the order of around one-third, takes place for the purpose of other forms of forced labour.
Nevertheless, these empirical chapters – on Russia and Ukraine, Albania and Moldova, and, on the demand side, the UK, Greece, Cyprus, Germany and Ireland – add nuance to our understanding of trafficking, and remind us of the horrific crimes that often accompany trafficking.
What makes this collection more valuable are the conceptual and policy discussions, above all in McRedmond's chapter on trafficking and organised crime. She criticises the tendency – evident in a new EU directive on fighting human trafficking adopted in April, but also in a UN convention whose definitions have informed most other instruments – to describe all forms of trafficking as organised crime. This, she says, obscures the true nature of the crime. More seriously, such sweeping definitions would not appear to have made successful prosecutions easier; they are still far below even the lowest estimates of human trafficking in Europe.
Human trafficking in Europe – character, causes and consequences
Editors: Gillian Wylie and Penelope McRedmond (230 pages)
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. €70.00
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