The Wrong Debate: Reflections on why Force is not the Key Issue with Respect to Trafficking in Women for Sexual Exploitation

This short piece is a contribution to debates within feminism and beyond about trafficking in women. A charge that the research unit (Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit, London Metropolitan University) I work in is now very familiar with, is that we fail to make distinctions between women who are 'forced ' and those who are ‘migrant sex workers’. Rather than explicitly defend our work and practice[i], I want to use this opportunity to argue that this is the wrong debate to be having, if we are interested in making a difference in the lives of women and girls. This is for two reasons: firstly, that most definitions of trafficking are much wider than ‘force’; and secondly because to focus on force alone plays into the hands of both traffickers and exploiters who will escape sanction except in the most extreme cases and those law enforcement officials who arrest, detain, prosecute and summarily deport women and girls detected in other countries. Just to place my cards squarely on the table, I do think trafficking for sexual exploitation and human smuggling[ii] are serious problems throughout Europe. From the work we have done, and our contacts with many activists and practitioners in central and eastern Europe we can tell horror stories: of girls dumped out of speed boats in Vlore, Albania; of women spread against walls and beaten in Macedonia; of young women kidnapped and raped in Kosovo; of weekly murders of