Defining Trafficking

Abstract

The moral imperative that sex trafficking is a problem might appear to be something that should be intuitively understood. However, as we have already begun to demonstrate, perceptions of the ‘problem’ of trafficking differ depending on your value judgements about the harm of sex work. This chapter extends these discussions about the ‘problem’ of trafficking as they emerged in policy debates surrounding the definition of trafficking — firstly, at the international level and, secondly, in legislation in Australia and the United States. Definitions of trafficking adopted by legislators offer a key insight into what the harm associated with sex trafficking is perceived to be, where the harm is located and in what contexts is something deemed harmful. We interrogate whether the problem is one of force and coercion in the procurement of labour or whether the problem is the type of sex that takes place. When we examine non-sexual forms of labour, the issue of trafficking is clearly one of ‘force, fraud, or coercion’. When it comes to sex trafficking, however, the problem is not only force, fraud and coercion but also the involvement of a woman migrant in sex work. As we shall see, the harm of sex work is very clearly aligned with a more intense form of trafficking harm and this is very clear in US definitions of sex trafficking, where all migrant sex work is defined as sex trafficking.