Human Trafficking and Migration

Abstract:     
This chapter, part of a forthcoming book entitled Human Rights in Crisis (A. Bullard, ed; Ashgate:London 2008) contributes to the interdisciplinary discussion surrounding human trafficking, offering the perspective of human trafficking as a migration issue. Through years of conflating human trafficking with other political agendas, most particularly immigration and the related fear of opening the floodgates to masses of migrants, it has been lost to law makers that human trafficking is in fact a migration issue. It is people who seek or need to leave their present circumstances and move elsewhere who are at risk and who are in fact sought after by traffickers in human beings. Only through a closer look at the motivations compelling trafficking victims to move, which in turn requires a look at the motivations of all migrants, will it be possible to begin to eradicate human trafficking.

Keywords: migration, immigration, human rights, international law, human trafficking

Accepted Paper Series