Figures

1. 1.1Multi-sided transactions in trafficking/modern slavery 6
2. 1.2Relations of exploitation in multi-sided transactions of trafficking/modern slavery 7
3. 1.3Trafficking chains 8
4. 6.1Trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation 118

Tables

1. 4.1Trafficking/modern slavery estimates: percentage of detected victims by sex and age – UNODC 70
2. 4.2Trafficking/modern slavery estimates: percentage of detected victims by form of exploitation, sex, and age – UNODC 70
3. 4.3Trafficking/modern slavery: number and proportion of persons by sex and age – ILO/Walk Free/IOM 75
4. 6.1Patterns of regulation in the sex trade 120
5. 6.2Civil and criminal laws regulating prostitution in Germany, as of 2002 123
6. 6.3Changes in the German criminal code to transpose the EU 2011 Anti-Trafficking Directive 128
7. 6.4German 2016 Law to Protect Persons Active in Prostitution 130

What is trafficking/modern slavery?

The question ‘what is trafficking/modern slavery?’ is answered through discussions of the definition, the centrality of coercion, the distinctions between chattel and modern slavery, the concepts of harm and consent, the multiple types of trafficking/modern slavery, whether mobility is always present, the multiple epistemologies involved, profit-taking from the exploitation of the vulnerability of others, and the development of the concept of multi-sided transactions in trafficking chains.

Coercion is core to the definition of trafficking/modern slavery (UN 1956; Bales 1999; UN 2000a; Kelly 2003; Brass 2011; Cockayne 2021). Trafficking/modern slavery is the use of coercion to extract profits from activities. It is the exploitation of the vulnerability of others. The use of coercion means that this is not free wage labour. Trafficking/modern slavery will often involve violence, a physical form of coercion, but physicality is not necessary since coercion is sufficient. Coercion may involve the mobilization of debt, or threats against the individual or against their loved ones. It occurs when one party is in a situation of vulnerability. This situation of vulnerability is exploited, using coercion. Coercion and violence are a distinctive form of power not reducible to other forms of power, constituting a specific institutional domain of interrelated practices. Coercion is a form of power in which one person makes another person do their bidding even when they do not want to and are harmed by this, or they are in a situation where they have no reasonable alternative. Consent does not exclude a person from being considered a victim of trafficking/modern slavery. Violence is a form of power in which physical actions are intended to cause physical harms, so all violence is coercive. Coercion is a wider concept than violence since it does not require a physical element.

Trafficking in persons is defined by a UN Convention, known as the Palermo Protocol (UN 2000a), as:

1. (a)‘Trafficking in persons’ shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.
2. (b)The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) have been used.
3. (c)The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered “trafficking in persons” even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article.

Modern slavery is different from chattel slavery. In chattel slavery, the control of another person is both legal and real, while in modern slavery there is not legal ownership, even though the power to control is real (Allain and Bales 2012). The absence of legal ownership in trafficking/modern slavery makes a significant difference, although some reject the concept of modern slavery (O’Connell Davidson 2015). Du Bois describes the difference between chattel slavery and other forms of coerced labour in his account of the failure to fully emancipate slaves in the 19th-century US, which led to highly coercive labour relations despite the removal of the legal entitlement to own another human after the American Civil War (Du Bois 1998 [1935]). Chattel slavery was transformed into a system of coerced labour marked by debt bondage, in an environment hostile to racial equality. There is a continuum of degrees of control in contemporary labour relations (Skrivankova 2010; Hyman 2022; Shahadat and Uddin 2022). International legal instruments created a category of ‘practices similar to slavery’ in 1956 that included debt bondage, serfdom, child exploitation, and forced marriage (UN 1956). There are further related terms in use, including ‘forced labour’ (ILO 1930), and ‘unfree labour’ (Brass 2011).

Consent is not relevant to the legal definition of trafficking/modern slavery. The issue is coercion, not consent. Some consider the two concepts to be close, for example, Cockayne (2021), following Sen (1999), focuses on lack of consent as if it were indicative of harm, while the concept of unfree labour (Brass 2011) similarly assumes such an alignment. O’Connell Davidson (2015) argues that consent is important, and that prioritizing harm over consent leads to an over-extension of the concept of trafficking/modern slavery. Barry (1979, 1995) argues that ‘harm’ should trump ‘consent’ in the justification of public interest intervention into trafficking/modern slavery. Gupta (2008, 2016) objects to O’Connell Davidson’s narrowing of the concept of trafficking/modern slavery which would exclude many cases. In international legal instruments following the Palermo Protocol (UN 2000a), the key concept is coercion in the exploitation of the vulnerabilities of others, rather than harm or lack of consent.

Trafficking/modern slavery is best understood as a single field with multiple sub-types (Gallagher 2010; Allain 2013; Cockayne 2021; ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022). The unity concerns the use of coercion to exploit the vulnerability of others for material benefit. The different sub-types concern the area of activity, and the social relations of the exploiter and exploited. The major types concern forced labour, sexual exploitation, state forced labour, and forced marriage. The different types are articulated in slightly different ways during the development of international legal instruments (Gallagher 2010; Allain 2013). In the Palermo Protocol, the main types are trafficking in human beings for purposes of labour exploitation, for purposes of sexual exploitation, and for other purposes including sale of organs and forced criminality (UN 2000a). Earlier legal instruments concerned forced labour, both state and commercially based (ILO 1930); and practices similar to slavery that includes forced marriage (UN 1956). The step-by-step development of the legal field with its multiple instruments should not be treated as an obstacle to the identification of trafficking/modern slavery as a single field for social science and policy.

Trafficking/modern slavery does not require mobility, nor the migration of people over state frontiers, though this is a feature in around one third of the cases of registered victims (UNODC 2021). The core aspect is control over the person: coercion is sufficient. The Palermo Protocol does not require movement of people, of corporeal bodies, despite the term trafficking seeming to imply movement (UN 2000a). However, flows of people and value are entangled with situations of vulnerability and the exploitative extraction of profits (Boris et al 2023). In practice, contemporary trafficking/modern slavery often intersects with movement over borders, especially of those without legal entitlements to citizenship, since this generates situations of vulnerability that can be exploited (Anderson and O’Connell Davidson 2003). There are flows of value and of people from the periphery to the core, understood in both spatial and social terms (Wallerstein 2011 [1974]; LeBaron 2021).

Epistemologically, three types of entities are active in defining trafficking/modern slavery: victims/survivors, authorities, and scientists. The victims or survivors, who report their experiences to friends and family, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and authorities, or social science investigators, define their own lived experience. Legislatures, political projects, legal, and judicial authorities identify, generate, and adjudicate boundaries as to what is or is not trafficking/modern slavery at both national and transnational levels, as well as in specific individual instances in judicial processes. Scientists (including sociologists, criminologists, political scientists, and other social scientists) generate their own concepts, definitions, measurement practices, and theoretical frameworks within which coercion, trafficking, and modern slavery are analysed. These three epistemologies are distinct and co-exist. However, they are linked via the object with which they are concerned. In this context of multiple alternative concepts and understandings linked to different epistemological stances, this book prioritizes social science. It recognizes and takes account of the lived experience of victims but does not give this epistemological privilege. It recognizes the definitions of international legal instruments, and their significance in structuring trafficking/modern slavery but does not restrict its remit to the legal or democratic domain. This book positions itself as a work of science, evidence, theory, and analysis. It adjudicates disagreements over the concept and consequences of coercion in the economy, over trafficking and modern slavery, drawing on a range of academic disciplines.

Trafficking/modern slavery does not only concern commercial activities in neoliberal contexts. While this is important (LeBaron 2020a), the coercion of labour, activities, and bodies can also be done by states (LeBaron and Roberts 2010; LeBaron 2012; LeBaron and Phillips 2019; Cockayne 2021) and by kin (Anitha and Gill 2017). While trafficking/modern slavery by commercial entities is more often a feature of neoliberal contexts, state forced labour is more likely to be a feature of authoritarian regimes. The people whose labour is forced by the state are likely to be of a different ethnic, religious, national group or political persuasion from those that control the state in authoritarian societies, for example, Nazi Germany (Tooze 2007), Russia in the context of the invasion of Ukraine (Lewis and Blitz 2023), and the short-lived Islamic State (Al-Dayel et al 2022). Forced marriage (Anitha and Gill 2017) is one of the practices similar to slavery identified in the 1956 UN Convention (UN 1956); the proximate beneficiaries may be the parents or wider kin group, structured by regimes of gender inequality. While neoliberal regimes are significant forms of social system that generate trafficking/modern slavery, so too are authoritarian ones, and both are in contrast to more social democratic regimes.

So, is it a market (Hayek 1948; Smith 1986 [1776]; Friedman 2002 [1962])? Trafficking/modern slavery is not a market in the sense of voluntary exchanges, since the exploited person is coerced rather than freely contracting. There are, however, more than two sides to the processes in trafficking/modern slavery, usually including third parties selling the services of others. Trafficking/modern slavery is a multi-sided set of transactions rather than a simple exchange of ownership of a commodity between sellers and buyers, of supply meeting demand (Vogel and Cyrus 2017; Wismer et al 2017). In addition to the person whose work, body, or activities are being sold and the person buying these services, there is a third party that extracts profits from this encounter. It is the profit-seeking third party that drives these illegal activities. In some cases, the multi-sided transactions may be considered a form of platform (Gillespie 2010; Poell et al 2019), which distances the profit-taker from the routine transactions between those seeking livelihoods and customers buying services. Figure 1.1 illustrates the multi-sided nature of the transactions, where the points of the triangle represent: the entities taking profits from the exploitation of the vulnerabilities of others; the vulnerable persons seeking livelihoods; and the entities exploiting the vulnerabilities of others.

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Multi-sided transactions in trafficking/modern slavery

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Without this third-party profit-seeking to drive the repetition of this activity, the activities would likely be small scale and not grow. Illegal markets are often interwoven with legal markets to disguise and hide their illegality (Beckert and Dewey 2017; Mayntz 2017). In trafficking/modern slavery, criminal activities become entangled with legal and legitimate business and market exchanges (Hulme et al 2021). The economy is a larger concept than that of market. Only part of the economy is monetized or commodified (Waring 1988; Walby 2009). Some forms of livelihood are not monetized (for example, domestic servitude, forced marriage) or contain elements where the freedom of the market is restricted (for example, tied visas). The driving force, however, in trafficking/modern slavery is the profit-taker, rather than the buyer of the end services or the victim of trafficking/modern slavery who is treated as the object of this exchange. Figure 1.2 outlines the main sources of profits and sides of the relations where they are taken. It illustrates the sets of relations through which this value is extracted. Profits are derived from profit takers in relation to vulnerable persons through charging fees for migration or job placement, by collecting interest on credits extended to vulnerable persons for paying fees and other expenses, thereby also creating debt dependencies, and from collecting rents for services like housing or transport above the costs of these services. Profits are also derived when profit-takers collect fees and rents for selling the services and labour of vulnerable others to buyers; and these buyers themselves profit not only from exploiting labour and services of vulnerable others through low labour costs, but also from rents collected for services like housing and transport above their cost, and through illegal practices like unpaid wages and unpaid social insurance contributions.

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Relations of exploitation in multi-sided transactions of trafficking/modern slavery

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The concept of ‘chain’ is used to illustrate the processes of extraction and flow of value over space and time. Value extracted at one location or triangle of exploitation flows to another, in spatial terms away from the periphery towards the core of the economic system (Hopkins and Wallerstein 1977, 1994; Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994), and in social terms, as vulnerable persons seeking livelihoods are recruited for profit and sold into exploitative situations. Each specific site and relation of value generation and extraction is linked with others in a chain over space and time, with value sometimes moving across frontiers between states. The concept of a trafficking chain is developed from the literature about commodity, supply, production, and care chains (Hopkins and Wallerstein 1977, 1994; Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994; Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2003; Crane et al 2019; LeBaron 2020a, 2021) to denote those forms where there is coercion, and covered in more detail in the next chapter. We illustrate how the sets of relations of exploiting the vulnerably of others are linked over space and time in Figure 1.3. There may be many profit-taking entities involved in a trafficking chain, each deriving profits in the forms of fees, interest, and rents for a specific part of the process, linked together over time and space. The practices of exploitation include charging excessive fees to those seeking jobs elsewhere (Jaegers and Rijken 2014), extending credits to finance migration and use of social media to control migrants in destination countries (ITUC 2014), and may involve the mobilization of kin networks (Ollus et al 2013; Lawthorn et al 2015). The distinctive nature of the trafficking chain is that it includes coercion at some point along the chain and that profit-taking relies on coercion.

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Trafficking chains

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Emerging multi-disciplinary field

This critical review and development of social theory of trafficking/modern slavery is multi-disciplinary, from political economy to criminology, from sociology to economics, from public policy to business studies, from post-colonial to gender studies. Contributions are to the disciplines of business/management studies, criminology, data science/social statistics, economics, gender studies, geography, law, political economy, political science, post-colonial studies, social work, and sociology. Trafficking/modern slavery is a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field. This book is a contribution to the component disciplines of this multidisciplinary field as well as to building an interdisciplinary field.

This emerging field of trafficking/modern slavery, that theorizes coercion in the economy, builds on several key classic and contemporary writers: Du Bois (1998 [1935]), Barry (1995), Bales (1999), Gallagher (2010), Brass (2011), O’Connell Davidson (2015), LeBaron (2020a), and Cockayne (2021). Bales (1999) demonstrates the existence of trafficking/modern slavery as a form of coercion, violence, and exploitation in the contemporary world, not consigned to history. Brass (2011) argues that unfree labour is an endemic feature of contemporary capitalism, rather than a form of primitive accumulation that will disappear with economic growth. LeBaron (2020a) develops the analysis of the extraction of profits in global labour supply chains. Du Bois (1998 [1935]) analyses the reasons that the attempts to free slaves in the 19th century resulted in only partial success. Cockayne (2021) argues that the international regulation of capital to reduce trafficking/modern slavery is possible. Barry (1995) shows the importance of gendered sexual exploitation as a distinct form of coercion and trafficking/modern slavery. O’Connell Davidson (2015) discusses potential limits to the concept of modern slavery mobilizing concepts of agency and choice. Gallagher (2010) documents over a century of gradual development of this field in international law and the contributions of global civil society to this long process of making coercion illegal in the economy. The chapters in this book return to these key insights in developing theory, and understandings of legal developments and policy pathways.

Root causes

This book develops four contributions to the investigation of the root causes of trafficking/modern slavery. The first concerns whether the root causes of trafficking/modern slavery lie in the individual agency of a few bad individuals or organized criminals, or in social systems. The analysis sets the focus on social systems, while not denying the agency of individual actors. The second concerns whether the root causes are part of universal processes or diverge across varieties of modernity. Building on prior research on theories of society (Walby 2009, 2020, 2021a, 2023), human trafficking/modern slavery is found differently in three varieties of modernities: social democratic, neoliberal, and authoritarian. The third concerns whether trafficking/modern slavery is located in one or more institutional domain, for example, just the economy. Here the contribution demonstrates that trafficking/modern slavery involves all institutional domains: economy, violence, polity, and civil society. The fourth concerns whether the root causes lie in class inequalities and (neoliberal) capitalism or if other regimes of inequality need to be addressed. This book expands the analysis to include regimes of coloniality and gender. An analysis of capital and capitalism is insufficient to understand the root causes, which lie in the intersection of capitalism with coloniality (both legacies and current) and gender regimes.

Law

Legal definitions matter. Trafficking and practices similar to slavery are defined in international legal instruments, most recently those of the United Nations in 1956 and 2000. Core to its definition is the concept of control over another person. This builds on earlier international law on slavery, which made illegal actual ownership of another person, culminating in the 1926 Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery (League of Nations 1926). Thereafter there was the extension of law to forms of control that were not actual ownership:

• 1930 Convention Concerning Forced and Compulsory Labour, developed by the International Labour Organization (1930).

• 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (UN 1956).

• 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (UN 1998).

• 2000 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UN 2000a).

There are multiple areas of law relevant to trafficking/modern slavery. This is not only criminal law. There are several relevant international legal instruments. This is best understood as the development of a single field of trafficking/modern slavery, even though there are multiple bodies of relevant law, leading up to the most recent legal instrument, the 2000 UN Palermo Protocol (UN 2000a).

This international law treats trafficking/modern slavery as a crime. But it does more than that. It mobilizes several bodies of law, some of which are not usually thought of as criminal law. The 2000 UN Palermo Protocol (UN 2000a) mandates the use of these wider bodies of law and of policy to implement them effectively. The new laws reach out beyond criminal individuals to groups, practices, organizations, and institutions, thus, potentially reaching into root causes not only individuals. These laws are applied to the economy, to the regulation of supply chains in which trafficking/modern slavery might be located, to the regulation of welfare to support the mitigation of harms to victims of trafficking, to the activities needed to prevent trafficking/modern slavery, and to the regulation of conduct during war. The interpretation of the limits and boundaries to the concepts are subject to negotiation in civil society, so the practical definition of what counts as sufficient exploitation and vulnerability is settled according to their meaning in different national contexts.

There are, however, simultaneous legal developments that run counter to these developments and are conducive to trafficking, perhaps by reducing regulations in the name of economic development. The outcome is a balance, that changes over time.

There is a history of development of laws over more than two centuries to prevent the slave trade, slavery, practices similar to slavery, forced labour, and trafficking in human beings. Each has a slightly different emphasis and consequences. There are divergences, even fractures. One of these concerns the significance and legal strategy to address trafficking/modern slavery in relation to gender and sexuality. The complex debates on this are addressed further in Chapter 6 on sexual exploitation. The nuanced analysis of these polarized issues as developed in this book offers a way forward to overcoming some of the divisions in research on trafficking/modern slavery.

Trafficking/modern slavery laws are global, ranging historically from before the foundation of the League of Nations to the current United Nations. However, the interpretation of key concepts and the implementation by courts are the tasks of national and regional states and polities. The varied interpretation and implementation can have diverse outcomes. The significance of the global in issues of ‘law and order’ challenges some understandings of sovereignty.

Changes in these laws are embedded in the struggles of global civil society, including transnational feminism (Barry 1995; Gallagher 2010); in contexts of war, civil war, empire and coloniality (Tooze 2007; Al-Dayel et al 2022; Lewis and Blitz 2023); and in which states supported or resisted these changes (Du Bois 1998 [1935]).

All aspects of society are involved in the developments and implementation of these laws. They concern coercion and violence, polities (both global and national), the economy (since this is about economic exploitation and the regulation of processes that are understood to be in the economy), and by civil society. They are structured by multiple regimes of inequality: capitalism; empire and coloniality, in which (modern) slavery originated and has been reproduced; and the specificity of gender and sexuality in varieties of gender regimes. Law is a key point of condensation in society of all these matters.

Data

Data on trafficking/modern slavery is used to test theories and to evaluate policies. A range of data has been collected in different ways using administrative methods and population surveys, at local, national, regional (EU), and international levels. There are debates over the priorities over data collection and over the selection of the indicators that summarize the data. This is a new and important field under rapid development.

There are quantitative estimates of the extent and nature of trafficking/modern slavery using data gathered in several ways.

One statistic concerns the number of victims identified by the authorities with whom they have registered for assistance. Another concerns the number of traffickers (investigated/suspected or arrested; prosecuted; and convicted). These are data on people in contact with the authorities in specific countries.

Estimates of the number of victims in the population (including those not in contact with the authorities) have been generated by population surveys. There are gaps in data which are filled in various ways, including statistical modelling and expert judgements. Data on trafficking/modern slavery is often disaggregated by the type of exploitation (whether labour, sexual, forced marriage, other), and by the sex and age (adult/child) of the victim. There can be data on other characteristics, including migration status and country of origin.

The process of setting the priorities for indicators, which summarize complex data, and data collection is important, since indicators can crystalize a field of enquiry. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN 2015) comprise a measurement framework that is supported by the authority of the UN, which might be considered a data ‘platform’. The UN SDG Goals, Targets, and Indicators help to set the framework for priorities of other UN organs and agencies, and other actors.

The collection of data is challenging, as the phenomenon is illegal. There are debates as to the reliability of the data. The quality of the estimates require improvement through further research.

Policy

The way to address trafficking/modern slavery is contested. Is the prosecution and conviction of traffickers the best way to stop trafficking? Or are such ‘traditional penalization and rescue approaches’ Chuang (2015a: 1519) ‘carceral’, merely leading to further forms of inequalities (Bernstein 2010)? Or does this underestimate the range of forms of regulation, including multiple bodies of law beyond criminal justice used in multiple sites of intervention (Ayers and Braithwaite 1992; Gallagher 2010)? Do critiques of anti-trafficking/modern slavery underestimate the range of support for victims that is provided, wider welfare supports, and strategic interventions into the institutions and systems that are the root causes of trafficking? What would a comprehensive approach to policy interventions look like? Reducing inequalities and poverty and ensuring access to a way to obtain a livelihood is an important part of policy to reduce situations of vulnerability to trafficking, including of women and migrants. Could trafficking/modern slavery be prevented if political capacities to regulate and govern were deployed more appropriately and the depth of democracy increased? The following are areas of policy under investigation and development.

There has been a call for better coordination at the UN level (Cockayne 2021). Trafficking/modern slavery policy and law is shaped in global arenas (Gallagher 2010), including the UN, transnational civil society including global feminism, and multiple entities linked to the UN that have trafficking/modern slavery in their remit, including the International Labour Organization (ILO), UNODC, International Organization for Migration (IOM), UN Women, UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Slavery, Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, World Bank Group, and the UN Statistics Commission.

Global financial investment is subject to some forms of global governance. The UN has developed as a platform for setting standards, including the Sustainable Development Goals (Cockayne 2021). The World Bank Group adopted the Sustainable Development Goals in 2016 (World Bank Group 2016), with implications for their policies relevant to trafficking/modern slavery as part of their conditions for financial investment. However, not all financial investment is governed in this way, with China a particular exception (Cockayne 2021).

All polities have strategies to encourage economic growth and have preferred forms of development. In many countries, this strategy includes prioritizing some industries over others in ‘industrial policy’. Some activities and parts of the economy are more prone to trafficking/modern slavery than others. The sex trade is prone to trafficking/modern slavery (Europol 2015a), as are domestic labour, seasonal agricultural work, and seafaring. Hence industrial policy, to ban or constrain industries that are conducive to trafficking, is a relevant, if controversial, policy tool.

Businesses are increasingly being made responsible for trafficking/modern slavery in their supply chains. In some jurisdictions, companies are required to report on their due diligence (UK Modern Slavery Act 2015). The use of voluntary codes has been growing but is relatively weak in effect (LeBaron 2020a, 2020b). There is emerging development of laws and policies with sanctions.

Businesses are subject to local and national regulations. This may include licensing, for example, to regulate the recruitment industry that supplies labour, and for health and safety matters.

Regulations standardizing and protecting labour and regulating employment relations can reduce opportunities for exploitation. The loosening of restrictions on temporary and contract labour, the expansion of outsourcing, the rise of non-standard employment, and the legitimation of private recruitment and brokering in the ‘management’ of temporary labour migration (Barrientos 2013; Fudge and Strauss 2014; Theodore and Peck 2014) open a ‘low road’ to economic growth that increases opportunities for exploitation and trafficking/modern slavery. The use of restrictions on migrants, such as temporary and tied visas, further increases opportunities for exploitation. Preventing trafficking/modern slavery by improving regulation is a significant strategic development, but it depends upon state capacity and democratic activity to mobilize this capacity appropriately. In the context of trafficking/modern slavery concerning labour exploitation, the cooperation of trade unions can be important; in the context of trafficking/modern slavery concerning sexual exploitation, the cooperation of NGOs can be important. In both contexts, organizations supporting migrants, ethnic minorities, women, and diaspora can be important.

Ensuring the rule of law and the elimination of corruption are important in preventing trafficking/modern slavery. Criminal justice is a necessary part of combatting trafficking; of using the authority and capacity of the state to stop the powerful exploiting the weak (Gallagher 2010). Potentially the criminal justice system is a social justice project on the side of the weak; but it can be punitive and exacerbate inequalities if poorly targeted. This is especially the case in relation to migrants. This rearticulates some of the classic debates in criminology between punitive and welfare-oriented criminal justice systems (Garland 2000; Braithwaite 2023) in the context of trafficking/modern slavery. Further, the successful prosecution of traffickers has proved challenging. This is partly the case when it is cross-border, as criminal justice systems remain largely national in jurisdiction; and partly because it is intrinsically difficult to prosecute the powerful in a crime that is often divided into relatively modularized sections of a chain over space and time (Kirby and Penna 2010). Moving forward with criminal prosecution requires the identification of appropriate points of prosecution along the trafficking chain and transnational action on enforcement (European Commission 2022a).

The depth of democracy (Walby 2009; V-Dem 2022) is significant for the policy and legal developments to reduce both impunity of the exploiters and to reduce situations of vulnerability to trafficking/modern slavery (Global Initiative against Organized Crime 2021). Deeper democracy supports the rule of law, the reduction of corruption, greater welfare support, and the more effective involvement of civil society.

Developing welfare provision helps to prevent the development of vulnerable situations. This includes provision of income support, housing, health care, and other services. But this wider welfare provision depends on state funding, which is only varyingly available (see Chapter 5, on policy). Further, the exclusion of those without full citizenship because of migration status leaves those excluded in situations of vulnerability. Migration policies attempting to restrict these migration flows generate forms of vulnerability that can be exploited by traffickers (Anderson 2010, 2014a).

Assistance is needed by victims of trafficking/modern slavery; it is legally required for victims who are registered with the authorities. The services mandated under the UN Palermo Protocol (UN 2000a) can include residence for non-citizen victims, though sometimes this is only for the duration of the prosecution after which survivors are returned to the vulnerable situations from which they came (Lindquist 2013a). Programmes to more fully support victims to rebuild their lives, for example, through training and integration in viable economic activities, have been recommended, but not always funded.

Sexual exploitation

The sex trade contains elements of trafficking/modern slavery. The effectiveness of different interventions to stop the elements of the sex trade that are trafficking/modern slavery is debated. The debate is polarized along several dimensions: whether the sex trade is inherently oppressive to women regardless of trafficking/modern slavery or not; and, whether the intervention of the criminal justice system is appropriate or carceral, especially because of entanglements with migration policy. The questions that have arisen concern evaluation of both theory and policy. They include philosophical as well as social scientific questions as to the nature of freedom, agency, choice, consent, and intention. They concern the nature of social systems of contemporary forms of capitalism, varieties of gender regime, the legacies of empire and coloniality in borders, migration and ethnicity, and global processes. They concern practical policy issues as to what works at the intersections of the multiple inequalities and illegalities of trafficking/modern slavery for purposes of sexual exploitation, forced commercial sexual exploitation of adults, commercial sexual exploitation of children, and sexual slavery.

There is a tendency in the existing debates to polarize between calls for decriminalization or for more criminalization of the sex trade. Two distinctions contribute to more nuance in resolving or at least broadening the parameters of the debate. The first is to distinguish between different bodies of law, between criminal and non-criminal law, and different forms of non-criminal law including the regulation of profit-taking through licensing and company law, due diligence, labour rights, enforcing labour standards, and welfare. Second is the distinction between three sides of the relations constituting trafficking/modern slavery, each of which can be the object of regulation: the seller; the end user; the profit-taker. The argument is to shift the focus of regulatory activity from seller and end user to the profit-taker, the person or entity, that is benefitting from the vulnerability of others at the peak and across the links of trafficking chains.

Empirically, the different regulatory approaches are investigated with a focus on Germany, in comparative context with the UK, Sweden and the US. Like all EU Member States and signatories to the UN Palermo Protocol (UN 2000a), Germany has criminalized coercion, but at the same time it has legalized all sides of the sex trade. The intent to implement the UN Palermo Protocol and to transpose the EU Directive on Preventing and Combatting Trafficking in Human Beings (European Commission 2011) led Germany to enact a major reform of prostitution law in 2016, in an attempt to regulate the legal sex trade to eliminate coerced sexual exploitation. The evaluation of this attempt is informative for building theory as well as for policies to eradicate trafficking/modern slavery both specially in the sex trade, and more broadly.

Approach of this book

This book contributes to the development of the theory of change needed to inform the development of the policies, law, and data required to prevent trafficking/modern slavery. Next, Chapter 2 on theory engages with theories and research on trafficking/modern slavery across multiple disciplines. Theory is necessary to provide the connection between the pieces of empirical data to support an understanding of what works to prevent and eradicate trafficking. Theory is constructed at multiple levels and has a range of key concepts that specify the objects used in the theory and the potential relations between them. This is followed by Chapter 3 on law. The legal instruments for ending trafficking/modern slavery begin with the laws to end the slave trade and span the last two centuries. International law has played an important role in efforts to end trafficking/modern slavery. The United Nations is an important agent in this endeavour, including through the 2000 Palermo Protocol. Chapter 4 on data provides information on the extent and nature of trafficking/modern slavery and addresses the ways in which data collection is being, and can be, improved. Chapter 5 on policy develops a comprehensive analysis of policies to reduce trafficking/modern slavery. At the most abstract level, this concerns sustainable development, democracy, and war. The detailed policy fields include finance, industrial policy, business regulation, employment regulation, welfare, building democratic institutions, international security, criminal justice, human rights, specialized services, and research. Chapter 6 offers an empirical study of changes in the regulation of the sex trade, the context for sexual exploitation mainly of women, and a contested policy field among feminist scholars. The chapter moves beyond the polarized debates about abolition or empowerment in the sex trade, by mobilizing the analyses of all sides of selling, buying, and profit-taking in the sex trade, and examining the different bodies of law, civil and criminal, that attempt to regulate coercion out of the sex trade.

The contribution of this book, summarized in Chapter 7 (Conclusion), lies in the analysis of the root causes across different institutional domains, regimes of inequality, and varieties of modernities. The conclusion returns to the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach developed in this book, to argue for more research and debate, including between development, criminal justice, human rights, gender, migration, and labour research.

Introduction

This book builds a theory of trafficking/modern slavery in society at the intersection of coercion and the economy and of multiple regimes of inequality. It develops the concept of trafficking/modern slavery as a single field and identifies its ‘root causes’. Trafficking/modern slavery is generated by the whole society; hence root causes are located within a theory of society. The chapter builds the theory across three dimensions of social systems: institutional domains; regimes of inequality; and varieties of modernity. Trafficking/modern slavery is generated within all the institutional domains of economy, violence, polity, and civil society. It is shaped by the intersection of multiple regimes of inequality: capitalism, coloniality, and gender. It exists in different levels and forms across different varieties of modernity: social democratic, neoliberal, and authoritarian.

The book makes the following contributions to social theory. First, it develops the concept of trafficking/modern slavery as a single field. Second, it identifies the significance of third-party profit-taking in trafficking/modern slavery, in multi-sided transactions, entwining legal and illegal activities. Third, it develops the concept of ‘trafficking chain’ as flows of value that involve coercion, building on and adapting the concepts of commodity and supply chain. Fourth, it includes coercion alongside economy, polity, and civil society, transcending the traditional disciplinary separation of these fields/domains, especially between criminology and political economy. Fifth, it applies the lens of intersectionality to the social relations of trafficking/modern slavery, in which capitalism is shaped by colonial and gender relations, and identifies the pathways that link coloniality and gender regimes to trafficking/modern slavery. Sixth, it links variations in trafficking/modern slavery to varieties of modernity, including social democratic, neoliberal, and authoritarian, rather than to a unilinear modernization.

Trafficking/modern slavery as a single field

Trafficking/modern slavery is the exploitation of the vulnerability of others that uses coercion to extract profit and other material benefits. It is best treated as a single field, though there are distinct forms and processes. These include: labour exploitation (commercial forced labour); sexual exploitation; state forced labour; forced marriage; as well as other forms. As discussed in Chapter 1, modern slavery is different from chattel slavery, in that a person is controlled but not legally owned. Lack of consent is not part of the definition; control over the person is key. Mobility is not needed, but is common.

Third-party profit-taking from multi-sided trafficking/modern slavery transactions

Is trafficking/modern slavery: a market; an illegal market, since some things are not legally sold; not a market at all, because of the presence of coercion; the interweaving of legal and illegal markets; or an illicit economy (but not a market)?

Trafficking/modern slavery is challenging to traditional understandings of markets as two-sided locations of free exchange, of supply and demand. In commercial forms of trafficking/modern slavery, the extraction of value takes place in multi-sided transactions, in which third-party profit-takers extract profit from transactions involving a coerced person. In state-based forced labour, market mechanisms are not central. In forced marriage, the exchange does not usually take place under market conditions, although it can.

The neoclassical idea of free markets and their contribution to economic growth is articulated in the work of Hayek (1948) and Friedman (2002) [1962], who understand markets as naturally fair and efficient mechanisms to organize economic activity, and hence best kept free from (state) interference. This framework has traditionally underpinned the Washington Consensus and the workings of international financial institutions (Reich 2016). The neoclassical concept of market is problematic, since there is a tendency to naturalize it as a self-correcting self-balancing entity in which supply and demand are in equilibrium because of the ‘magic’ of the ‘price mechanism’ (Hayek 1948). Even Adam Smith (1986) [1776] (see also Friedman 2002 [1962]) knew this not to be the case, because of issues of fraud and power that distort markets. It is also problematic because of the assumption that markets operate best without state ‘interference’. Markets are not self-balancing but social institutions that are regulated by states to prevent corruption, instability, and excessive exploitation and profit-taking (Keynes 1936; Fligstein 2002; Minsky 2008 [1986]; Beckert 2009; Callon 2021). The drive to expand the proportion of human activity to be treated as if it operates as a market is central to the neoliberal project (Harvey 2005; Davies and Gane 2021). The neoliberal project usually contrasts itself with authoritarianism (Hayek 1948; Friedman 2002 [1962]), but it also diverges from social democracy (Giddens 1998; Walby 2009, 2021b).

In relation to trafficking/modern slavery, the simple use of the term ‘market’ is inappropriate, since the person being sold does not have agency in any market. Nonetheless, there have been attempts to develop the concept of demand in relation to some aspects of trafficking, despite it having a more complex ecology of elements than individual sellers and buyers (Vogel and Cyrus 2017). The notion of reducing demand to prevent trafficking is included in the Palermo Protocol (UN 2000a). Vogel and Cyrus (2017) discuss the concept of demand in the context of reducing the demand that leads to trafficking. They argue for the importance of conceptual clarity: demand requires that it is possible to identify who wants to buy what. If this is not possible then the concept of market is not helpful. They start from simple models of demand in markets and progress to more complicated models of markets that include brokers or intermediaries. They conclude that ‘a market contract implies the absence of coercion through other people’ and that ‘coercive relations may be embedded in market contexts, but they are not market relations’ (Vogel and Cyrus 2017: 389). Thus, the coercion that is central to trafficking/modern slavery precludes it being conceptualized as a simple market.

In illicit economies, illegal markets can be interwoven with legal markets (Beckert and Dewey 2017; Mayntz 2017) and with forms of transactions that are not markets. Rents and fees are taken, and money is laundered. Trafficking/modern slavery is organized in various ways, as: a governance type of organized criminal groups who wield security governance in a community by fear and violence; business-like organized crime; opportunistic associations of traffickers; and individual traffickers (UNODC 2023: 48). Some forms of trafficking/modern slavery corrupt otherwise legitimate activities as it seeks to hide from authorities and justice (UNODC 2011). The attempts to suppress trafficking/modern slavery involve interventions to regulate and intervene in the ‘non-market’ criminal activities covering financial flows (Broad et al 2022), money laundering, tax havens (secrecy jurisdictions), and corruption (UNODC 2011; Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime 2021; Hulme et al 2021).

The analysis of trafficking/modern slavery requires the development of concepts of economies that go beyond conventional notions of markets. It is an illicit economy, but not a simple market. The person who is being exploited is not acting freely, but is coerced. Their work and services are being exchanged by others, rather than themselves engaging in free exchange. Profit-taking in trafficking/modern slavery is usually by third parties from transactions between others (Chapter 1, Figure 1.3). Persons prosecuted for trafficking are usually much further downstream from these peak profit-takers (Chapter 4, on data). These profits can take the form of fees, rents, and interest (Chapter 1, Figure 1.2). The illegal activities are interwoven with legal markets. The multi-sided nature of trafficking/modern slavery transactions may also be understood through the concept of platform (Gillespie 2010; Plantin et al 2018; Poell et al 2019), in which the controller of the platform on which others conduct exchanges is the entity that derives the profits. ‘Platforms as profit-takers’ becomes increasingly important with the digitalization of market operations and financial transactions.

Third-party profit-takers are the driving factor behind trafficking/modern slavery. Trafficking chains link together illegal activities with legal markets, voluntary and coerced transactions, market exchanges and non-market relations.

Trafficking chains

As introduced in Chapter 1, trafficking chains are flows of value that involve coercion. The concept of ‘trafficking chain’ builds on the earlier uses of the concept of chain in commodity chains, supply chains, labour supply chains, production chains, value chains, and care chains. It adds the dimension of coercion to identify a specific kind of chain. There are many points along the chain at which value is added and extracted; some, but not all, points involve coercion and cross the criminal threshold of the exploitation of the vulnerability of others; both objects and services are involved.

The concept of chain has developed in several ways. The early concept of commodity chain (Hopkins and Wallerstein 1977, 1994; Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994) captures the links needed to create goods and services out of parts sourced from around the world, in which value extracted at each stage flows towards the core of the world system. In this way, Wallerstein combined both the global and the local levels of analysis, showing how both were needed to fully grasp the inequalities that both generated and were generated by these processes. The value that is extracted flows upwards towards the ‘core’ and away from the ‘periphery’. The concept of core/periphery, while often referring to processes that are spatial, is primarily concerned with the social relations involved.

The concept of commodity chain developed at a macro level and the concept of global value chain at a more meso level (Bair 2005). Further developments include the concepts of production chains, and labour supply chains (Crane et al 2019; Voss et al 2019; LeBaron 2020a). For LeBaron (2021: 35): ‘A labor supply chain is comprised of the employment relationships that a worker passes through in order to arrive on a work-site. They can involve multiple layers of contracting and intermediaries, where agencies, recruiters, labor providers, or other intermediaries are involved in the supply of workers to producers.’ The development of the concepts of global value chain and global production network put the state back into the analysis (Gereffi 2014; Neilson et al 2014). The increasing mobilization of the concept of ‘global value chain’ is consolidating a move beyond the old Washington Consensus, midway between state-minimalist and state-coordinated approaches (Werner et al 2014). The concept of chain has been mobilized to address issues of gender and care. Transnational production is gendered at a macro as well as micro level (Bair 2010). The global value chain is gendered (Barrientos 2019, 2023; Barrientos et al 2019). The concept of ‘care chain’ has been developed (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2003; Yeates 2009; Gottfried 2013) to focus on the mobility of those (usually women) from the Global South (periphery) to supply care work to the Global North (core). Dunaway (2001, 2014) notes that the inputs into commodity chains could include the unpaid household labour of women, thereby including non-monetized, non-market sources of value in the chain. LeBaron notes that some labour supply chains include forced labour (LeBaron et al 2017; LeBaron 2021). Her analysis includes ‘debt bondage’ (LeBaron 2014) and the role of penal labour in social and labour discipline (LeBaron 2012).

All these concepts of ‘chain’ capture the sourcing of materials and labour from around the world needed to make a final product or service in one place, noting that this may involve the movement of value over frontiers (LeBaron 2015, 2021; Crane et al 2019). The connections are not a simple hierarchy but may involve subcontracting and informal connections. The processes of subcontracting act to prevent a simple and direct connection between the links of the chain. This process is important in diminishing responsibility and accountability for an activity even while value and profits are accrued (Barrientos 2013; Phillips 2015; LeBaron 2020a). The concept of chain recognizes that there may be many sites or links in the chain at which value is added and extracted, which may have a different set of people from the other sites, which are connected.

The concept of trafficking chain builds on this intellectual infrastructure. A trafficking chain is when the flow of value includes coercion. The flow may include crossing borders, but this is not essential.

Institutional domains, including violence/coercion

Trafficking/modern slavery chains are constituted within economy, violence and coercion, polity, and civil society. They are economic, with the extraction of value. There is coercion, since this is how control over the person is obtained. Polities reduce, support, or even carry trafficking/modern slavery out. Within civil society the meaning of trafficking/modern slavery is contested. All are structured by capitalist, colonial, and gender relations. Their forms vary by the variety of modernity (Walby 2023a). The theoretical framework draws on Walby (2009, 2021a).

Trafficking/modern slavery is driven by the hunt for profits and material advantage, so the economic dimension is central (Bales 1999). The economy includes sectors that are monetized and marketized as well as ones that are not, the household, and the state (Walby 2009). Each sector has associated forms of trafficking/modern slavery. Trafficking for purposes of labour and sexual exploitation are in the monetized/marketized sector, forced marriage in the household, and state forced labour in the state sector. There are different strategies for economic development: inclusive sustainable development (SDG); economic growth (GDP); or subordinate to the priorities of the state. The intersection of the economy and coercion/violence makes trafficking/modern slavery a distinctive object for social theory, since these two domains have often been addressed as if they were separate matters.

The use of coercion to extract profits and material benefits marks the distinctiveness of trafficking/modern slavery. Although the use of coercion as a means of control is sufficient to define trafficking in the Palermo Protocol (UN 2000a; Kelly 2003), violence is common (UNODC 2021, 2023; Chapter 4). Violence is an institutional domain that includes multiple forms of practices and social relations of violence, including interstate, intergroup, state–individual, and interpersonal (Walby 2009, 2013). There are variations in levels of violence, in policies towards violence, and in the use of violence by the state (Garland 2000; Loader and Walker 2007; Lacey 2009; Wacquant 2009; Walby 2009). Violence shapes the environment, including the political economy (McIlwaine and Moser 2003; Moser and McIlwaine 2014). These variations of violence in the environment have implications for the amount and form of trafficking/modern slavery in a society and against specific groups (Hynes 2004; UNODC 2023).

Violence and coercion are part of the causes of trafficking/modern slavery in several ways. War can cause trafficking, both directly, and indirectly through migration. War can lead to state forced labour; indeed, this is sometimes intended. The conquered people are subjected to forced labour, sometimes in camps, to the benefit of the victors; sometimes, during war, a minority population will be subjected to forced labour, sometimes intended, sometimes an indirect feature of imprisonment, sometimes in camps (Tooze 2007; Cockayne 2021; Al-Dayel et al 2022; Lewis and Blitz 2023). War, conflict, and disaster increase situations of vulnerability to trafficking/modern slavery. The concept of security can be used more broadly to encompass not only war, but also various forms of disaster resulting from climate, floods, famine, earthquakes, tsunami, and terrorism. These may cause state collapse, deterioration in the rule of law and thus the impunity of offenders, forced displacement, social fragmentation and family breakdown (UNODC 2018a, 2018b; 2022a, 2022b). They increase situations of vulnerability to several forms of trafficking and modern slavery (Peyroux 2015). War, conflict, and disaster cause migration which increases vulnerability to trafficking/modern slavery. People flee war zones in fear for their lives: they are refugees, displaced persons, and asylum seekers. Without the full range of normal social practices and organizations, they are vulnerable. They have left behind economic resources and their justice institutions/state that protect against predators, violence, and coercion. They lose civil societal capacity and organizations in the disruption. Migration generates trafficking/modern slavery for labour and sexual exploitation as a result of these increased vulnerabilities. It may increase forced marriage, with the coercion of children into marriages in times of crisis.

The polities that regulate and govern the conditions under which trafficking/modern slavery is generated operate at multiple levels: global, regional, national, and local (Cockayne 2021). This global dimension challenges the notion that states have effective sovereign control over matters of law and order. All aspects of the state apparatus are relevant. While economic inequality is often considered as governed by regulation of economic institutions and violence/coercion is usually considered as governed by criminal justice and the security apparatus, in the case of trafficking/modern slavery not only are both relevant, but so also is the provision of welfare for potential and actual victims. Criminal justice is relevant to the governance of the economy, since trafficking/modern slavery is a crime as well as part of the economy. While trafficking/modern slavery is a crime, it is significantly affected by the regulation of the economy and the state provision of welfare (see Chapter 5, on policy). The depth of democracy is key to the nature of the responses of polities and civil societies.

Walby (2009: 179) proposes a specific conceptualization of the depth of democracy in ten principles and procedures: no hereditary or unelected positions, including a monarch, and members in either chamber of parliament; no colonies (that is, no governance of territories that do not also meet these criteria); no powers of governance held by an additional non-democratic polity (for example, organized religion); universal suffrage, de facto as well as de jure; elections, especially those that are free, fair, and competitive, in a context of free speech and free association and developed civil society associations; a low cost for electioneering, either by law or by custom; an electoral system with proportional representation; an electoral system with quotas for underrepresented groups such as women; a proportionate presence in parliament of women and minorities; a range of institutions (for example, welfare services) that are governed by the democratic polity. The depth of democracy is one of the most important differences between varieties of modernities, as discussed later in this chapter. The depth of democracy also matters for regimes of inequalities, since it affects the representation of women and other disadvantaged groups in political institutions.

Civil society is the domain where there is negotiation over what counts as trafficking/modern slavery. Civil society generates multiple projects and associations, from anti-slavery projects to feminism and trade unions, at multiple scales from global to local. The meaning of exploitation and vulnerability are debated and negotiated. If someone consents to exploitation, can they be a victim of a crime, or is the harm or their situation of vulnerability more important? Is effective agency the norm and vulnerability an exceptional state, or should this characterization of agency and vulnerability be reversed (Fineman 2008)? In anti-trafficking law, any apparent consent of the victim is irrelevant; by contrast, in popular understanding, consent to an action is often understood to mean that the action cannot be a crime. Does criminality require that a person knows the consequences of their actions and not merely be a beneficiary? Are impressions of greater choice in modern society real (Giddens 1984, 1990; Beck 2002), or a myth in which false perceptions of freedom enfold people into agreeing to the legitimacy of an increasingly unequal society (Foucault 1991; Rose 1999; Bauman 2000)? Is the extension of the market into more areas of life to be interpreted as greater choice and individual freedom, including sexual freedom (Amnesty International 2016), or is this destructive of human well-being (Polanyi 2001 [1944]; Statz 2010), especially of women (Banyard 2016)? In some contexts, the social norms are very different, with expectations that women and girls will defer to male kin, including over the selection of marriage partners (Anitha and Gill 2017). Hegemony is constituted by the negotiation of common-sense understandings of the world (Gramsci 1971). The struggles over the meaning of trafficking/modern slavery are numerous and complex (Gallagher 2010; Kotiswaran 2021). Different understandings are supported by different projects and political forces, sometimes aligned in historic blocs. These understandings can change gradually but also more rapidly in times of crisis, depending on the conjunctural balance of forces.

The generation of trafficking/modern slavery takes place in the institutional domains of economy, violence, polity, and civil society. Each institutional domain is structured by capitalist, colonial, and gender relations.

Regimes of inequality

Trafficking/modern slavery concerns exploitation: the extraction of profits from those in situations of vulnerability using coercion. The profits are extracted in multi-sided transactions linked in trafficking chains though which profits flow from periphery to core. These social relations of inequality are constituted at the intersection of capitalism, coloniality, and gender regimes, where capitalism is shaped by intersecting colonial and gender regimes. This section discusses the relationship of trafficking/modern slavery to capitalism, whether it benefits the whole system or only the rogues, and how it is contested, regulated, and governed. It identifies the pathways that link coloniality (historic and contemporary) to trafficking/modern slavery. It provides a framework for making sense of the complexities of gendered trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation. The drive for profits that is core to the dynamics of capital is central to trafficking/modern slavery (Brass 2011; LeBaron 2020a); the situations of vulnerability that are exploited are shaped by coloniality (both legacies and contemporary) (Du Bois 1998 [1935]) and by gender inequality (Barry 1995; Cameron et al 2023). The inequalities driving trafficking/modern slavery are articulated in value chains structured by world systems of capital (Brass 2011; Wallerstein 2011 [1974]; LeBaron 2020a;), the ethnic and national legacies of empires (Du Bois 1998 [1935]; Boatcă 2015; Go 2016) and contemporary authoritarian regimes (Al-Dayel et al 2022; Lewis and Blitz 2023); and by gender regimes (Barry 1995; Shire and Walby 2020; Walby 2009, 2023a; Gottfried et al 2023). These global and national structures of power are contested by intersectional political projects that can be significant in shaping the outcome (Du Bois 1998 [1935]; Gallagher 2010; Brass 2016; Kotiswaran 2021). The regimes are understood to be mutually shaping (Walby 2007; Walby et al 2012).

Globalization: space and the social

The spatial and social levels of the legal instruments on trafficking/modern slavery are entwined, including the global/international/world, regional powers, (national) states, and varieties of modernity (social democratic, neoliberal, authoritarian). These processes are both spatial and social, partly due to the physical aspect of the spatial/mobility component of some (but not all) of its forms, and partly due to differences in social relations – and thus in power – that are contingently geographically and historically distributed (shaped by regimes of inequality of capitalism, coloniality, and gender). The concept of core/periphery is an example of a concept that entwines both spatial and social components.

The globalization thesis – of the increasing pertinence of the global level relative to (national) states – has focused on political economy: on the emergence of a single world economic system that is more powerful than (national) states. In world systems theory, the development of a world economic system occurred centuries ago (Wallerstein (2011) [1974]; Chase-Dunn 1997), while for others it was in more recent decades (Held et al 1999; Robinson 2004). This process reterritorializes and rescales governance (Brenner 1999). It restructures the hierarchical relations between the core and periphery, linked by commodity chains in which value flows from periphery to core (Hopkins and Wallerstein 1994). There is a restructuring of the relationship between social and spatial dimensions of core and periphery in which some of the social periphery moves to the spatial core, and some of the global poor live and work in the global north (Castells 1996). These processes are gendered (Gottfried 2023).

The globalization of the regulation of coercion, as in the case of the international legal instruments on trafficking/modern slavery, significantly extends the implications of the globalization thesis because of its concern for violence/coercion in addition to political economy. Globalization is taking place in the domain of violence/coercion/security in relation to trafficking/modern slavery, with law and powers traditionally assigned to states/polities concerning violence/coercion/security/law and order moving from the national to the global level. The development of the legal capacity of the UN over trafficking/modern slavery is a challenge to simple notions of full national state sovereignty on violence/coercion/security/law and order. The UN (and its associated agencies) is an emerging polity at the global level. All Member States participating in the UN de facto pool some of their sovereignty, even though the legal and political rhetoric still describes this as inter-national, that is, relations between states. The UN is further shaped by its environment, including regional hegemons, the global economy, and global civil society. The traditional notion has been that (national) states have sovereignty. Even when it is accepted that sovereignty in the economic sphere is compromised by global processes, it is often assumed that states still have sovereignty over violence/security/law and order. This is challenged by the development of UN/transnational governance of crime/violence/law and order in relation to trafficking/modern slavery.

There are spatialized systems of regulation and governance linking the UN, regional hegemons, and almost 200 Member States of the UN; this system is shaped by further systems, including global capital, violence, and civil society. This global system of violence/coercion is not homogenized, with significant variations in the form of modernity (social democratic, neoliberal, authoritarian). The regional powers (including the US, EU, and China) are important for these variations. They are significant in mediating and shaping the processes and outcome of the implementation of the international legal regulations of the UN.

The mechanisms through which the regional powers produce variations in the implementation of the international legal instruments on trafficking/modern slavery are several. They include: the interpretation of the legal meaning of the concepts of exploitation and vulnerability (as discussed earlier in this chapter); the processes through which international regulations are incorporated or transposed into domestic (national) legal systems; the implementation of the legal regulations in judicial systems; and, the context of different regimes of inequality of capitalism, coloniality, and gender.

The actions and structure of polities matter for the level of trafficking/modern slavery (Cho 2015), including whether there is deregulation (Peksen et al 2017), the rule of law (Cho 2015; ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022), corruption (Bales 2007b; Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime 2021) and the degree of democracy (Global Organized Crime Index 2021). Since the response of the polity varies with deregulation, the rule of law, the level of corruption, and the depth of democracy, it is likely to vary with the variety of modernity, including its social democratic, neoliberal, and authoritarian forms. The varieties of modernity align with regional powers and their spheres of influence. The different practices of the EU, US, and China impact on the governance of trafficking/modern slavery in their respective territories and regions of influence.

Varieties of modernity

Trafficking/modern slavery has not ended with modernity. This challenges simple theories of modernization. Its extent and nature vary over time and space. Multiple reasons have been identified that might explain these variations. Here, these varieties of modernity are clustered into social democratic, neoliberal, and authoritarian.

Traditional modernization theory suggested that economic development would lead to progress in all other areas of society (Lipset 1959; Ingelhart 1997) including violence (Elias 1939; Pinker 2011). Pinker (2011, 2018) argues that violence is declining as civilization advances, with a growth in enlightenment and self-control. While recognizing continuing exploitation, Harvey (2003) ambiguously uses the concept of ‘primitive’ accumulation to capture forms of exploitation that involve violence, as if this might disappear in later times. Modernization theory has been nuanced and challenged in multiple ways. A detailed reading of Pinker (2011) finds that he recognizes fluctuations and, in later work, Elias (1997) did acknowledge the reversals associated with fascism. Pinker’s thesis on a decline in war is challenged by Braumoeller’s (2019) analysis of both the relevant statistics and the underlying arguments. The best conclusion is that there are uneven fluctuations in the rate of violence over time.

Variations in the form of society can be better understood as multiple varieties of modernity (Eisenstadt 2000) resulting from different trajectories through modernity (Moore 1966; Therborn 1995), rather than a single universal pattern of development. These varieties of modernity are shaped by capital (Brenner et al 2010), post-colonial (Bhambra 2007; Boatcă 2015; Go 2016) and current colonial (Al-Dayel et al 2022; Lewis and Blitz 2023) relations, and by gender regimes (Shire and Walby 2020; Shire 2023; Walby 2023b; Gottfried et al 2023). There are extensive debates as to how varieties might be distinguished (Esping-Andersen 1990; Hall and Soskice 2001; Bruff 2014; Shire and Walby 2020; Gottfried et al 2023; Moghadam 2023). While the location of the boundary between social democratic and neoliberal forms has been a key site of debate (Giddens 1998), there is increasing interest in authoritarianism in the context of de-democratization (Verloo 2018; Lombardo et al 2021; V-Dem 2022). Within these debates, there is a cluster of work that focuses on political economy (Esping-Andersen 1990; Brenner et al 1999; Hall and Soskice 2001; Bruff 2014) and another relatively separate cluster focused on the regulation of violence (Garland 2000; Lacey 2009; Wacquant 2009; Bernstein 2010; Hörnqvist 2020; McGlynn 2022; Ballesteros Pena et al 2023).

The debates on the regulation of violence focus on whether the response of the state is carceral, poorly targeted, and disproportionate (Davis 2003; Wacquant 2009; Bernstein 2010; Davis et al 2022) or is potentially providing justice to those who suffered violence and reducing the impunity of offenders (Taylor 2018; McGlynn 2022). The former is associated with neoliberal and authoritarian forms where democracy is thin or non-existent, while the latter is associated with social democracy and greater depth of democracy. The response of the polity may vary with the depth of democracy, the rule of law, and level of corruption, which may vary with the variety of modernity, social democratic, neoliberal, and authoritarian.

Democracy comes in degrees in which some forms are deeper than others. The most basic is the holding of elections; but also significant is whether there is proportionality of representation; and, further, whether the democratic principle is extended to a narrow or wider range of institutions. The depth of democracy matters (Walby 2009).

At least three major varieties of modernity can be identified, including social democratic, neoliberal, and authoritarian, which vary by levels of inequality in the economy, the extent and nature of violence, the depth of democracy, and the extent of free association in civil society (Walby 2009, 2020, 2023a). These are ideal types so, while there are examples, they do not fit exactly. The EU is an example of the social democratic variety, the US of the neoliberal variety, and Russia and China of the authoritarian variety.

There are significant variations in the extent and nature of trafficking/modern slavery between different social groups and different regions of the world (UNODC 2021; ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022). There is a range of evidence that links variations in the level and form of trafficking/modern slavery with variations in the form of modernity. Multiple factors correlated with trafficking/modern slavery can be clustered in ways relevant to theory. While economic inequality, the extent of violence, the depth of democracy, and free association in civil society are all relevant, probably the most important is the depth of democracy, which drives many of the other factors.

There are multiple sources of evidence, although its quality is still undergoing improvement. Chapter 5 on policy and Chapter 6 on sexual exploitation address the qualitative data sources in more detail. Findings from comparative quantitative studies (Bales 2007b; Rao and Presenti 2012; Cho et al 2013; Cho 2015; Peksen et al 2017; Cameron et al 2023) are presented in the following paragraphs, while the quality of the underlying quantitative data (UNODC 2021; ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022) is discussed in Chapter 4.

Economic inequality is associated with trafficking/modern slavery, both interpersonal (Rao and Presenti 2012; Cho 2015; Williamson 2022) and interstate (Cho 2015). The actions and structure of the polity matter (Cho 2015), including deregulation (Peksen et al 2017), rule of law (Cho 2015; ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022), corruption (Bales 2007b; Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime 2021) and the depth of democracy (Walby 2009; Global Organized Crime Index 2021). Trafficking/modern slavery is associated with migration (Rao and Presenti 2012; Cho 2015; ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022) and with gender inequality (Williamson 2022; Cameron et al 2023).

When considering the varieties of modernity previously identified alongside the range of evidence, it is reasonable to suggest the following ideal types.

In the social democratic variety, there are relatively low rates of trafficking/modern slavery. This is concentrated in the less well-regulated areas of the economy and where there are exemptions to full citizenship due to migration status. There is very little state forced labour or forced marriage. The strategy for economic growth is more inclusive and sustainable, the economy is less unequal, with less poverty, livelihoods are available to all in the market economy, capital is regulated, industrial policy restricts damaging sectors, supply chains are regulated, and employment relations are regulated. There are relatively low levels of violence, interpersonal and group violence/coercion is criminalized, using targeted and proportionate state interventions, with low militarization, and low rates of violence from the state to the individual. In the polity there is the greatest depth of democracy, relatively proportionate representation in elected assemblies, significant general welfare and specialized welfare, and few exclusions to state services (including welfare) based on citizenship/migration and gender status, the rule of law is respected and there is relatively low corruption. In civil society, there is equal participation, free speech, free association, and civil liberties.

In the neoliberal variety there are moderate rates of trafficking/modern slavery, especially where there are exemptions to full citizenship due to migration status. Trafficking/modern slavery for labour exploitation is enabled by the overall less well-regulated areas of the economy. Trafficking for sexual exploitation is found in the sex trade, which can be criminalized in some instances. There is some state forced labour in prisons, which have typically increased in scale as a securitized response to crime. There is little forced marriage. The strategy for economic growth is focused narrowly on GDP and removing state regulations, resulting in more inequality, more poverty, livelihoods dependent on the market economy, less regulated capital, little industrial policy, less regulated business, and less regulated employment relations. There are high rates of violence linked to high levels of inequality; while interpersonal and group violence/coercion (including trafficking/modern slavery) are criminalized, state interventions tend to be disproportionate and poorly targeted. There are higher levels of militarization with consequences for situations of vulnerability as a consequence of war. In the polity, there is a moderate depth of democracy, with full electoral processes leading to: forms of representation that are not consistently proportionate; low levels of state provision of general welfare and moderate levels of specialized welfare, with exclusions to state-provided services (including welfare) based on citizenship/migration status; the rule of law is varied, with middle levels of corruption. In civil society, there is democracy, free speech, free association, and civil liberties; however, capacities are uneven because of the levels of inequality.

In the authoritarian variety, there is the highest rate of trafficking/modern slavery. This is found in several locations: among those who are minoritized and lack full citizenship entitlements. There is state forced labour, especially of minorities, especially in war and conflict zones. There are some forced marriages, depending on the nature of the gender regime. Restrictions on property ownership for women make them more dependent on marriage overall. The economic strategy subordinates growth to state priorities, resulting in more inequality, more poverty, fewer livelihoods in the market economy, capital regulated by state interests, industrial policy to promote state interests, business regulation to promote state interests, and employment relations regulated to promote state interests. There are high rates of violence, uneven criminalization of interpersonal violence, state interventions are disproportionate and targeted to support state interests, high militarization, high state–individual violence, some state coerced labour; and some forced marriage. In the polity, there is thin if any democracy (though there may be some elections), low levels of general and specialized welfare, exclusions to state services (including welfare) on grounds of citizenship/migration status, the rule of law is varied, and there are high levels of corruption. In civil society, there is state interference to restrict associations and free speech, and low levels of civil liberties.

The existence of trafficking/modern slavery is a challenge to notions of unilinear universal progress driven by economic development and enlightenment. Trafficking/modern slavery is part of the contemporary as well as classical world, in high-income as well as low-income countries. It is not in the dustbin of history. It requires the theorization of multiple modernities. There is variation in the core, not only a division between core and periphery.

Theorizing trafficking/modern slavery at a macro level requires contemporary forms of systems analysis. This theorizing requires adding violence/coercion to the typology of institutional domains of economy, polity, and civil society, and requires addressing the intersection of regimes of inequality of capitalism, coloniality, and gender. This theorization requires the application of systems thinking (Castellani and Hafferty 2009; Byrne and Callaghan 2023). This enables the analysis to keep the capacity for explanation while addressing multiple social systems (Walby 2007, 2009, 2021a) that intersect and mutually shape each other (Walby et al 2012). Theorizing trafficking/modern slavery requires the use of systems theory to analyse the multiple regimes of inequality and the multiple varieties of modernity.

Conclusion

Key to the specificity of trafficking/modern slavery is that it is the use of coercion to extract profits and material benefits. The profit is often taken by third parties in multi-sided transactions. The concept of ‘trafficking chain’ builds on the concepts of commodity and supply chains, to capture the specificity of coercion in the flow of value along chains from peripheries to cores, both spatially and socially understood.

The locating of trafficking/modern slavery in a theory of society requires addressing the institutional domains of economy, violence, polity, and civil society, the intersecting regimes of inequality of capitalism, coloniality, and gender, and the main varieties of modernity, of social democracy, neoliberalism, and authoritarianism.

These processes develop at the point of intersection of three regimes of inequality – capitalism, coloniality, and gender – to generate exploitative practices and situations of vulnerability. The use of coercion in extracting value has not ended with economic development and modernization. The extent and nature of trafficking/modern slavery vary across time and place with the variety of modernity, including social democratic, neoliberal, and authoritarian.

This theoretical framework is applied and further developed in the following chapters on law, data, policy, and sexual exploitation.

Introduction

This book situates law on trafficking/modern slavery in a theory of society. Trafficking/modern slavery is illegal and a crime, yet the legal field is not a simple carceral development of criminal law. Multiple bodies of law address the multiple sides of the links in trafficking chains, and the extraction of profit or other material benefit through coercion and control of a person. The laws span over two centuries of gradual and cumulative development internationally, regionally, and with transpositions, implementation measures, and further law-making by national states. The legal field as a whole includes, but goes well beyond, criminal law to cover employment, business regulations, and equal opportunity. The associated policy fields are addressed in Chapter 5 on policy.

This chapter engages with the interpretation of the concepts of exploitation, vulnerability and consent that are contained in the Palermo Protocol (UN 2000a), the most far-reaching of the UN legal instruments. This supports the development of the concept of ‘trafficking chain’, and its focus on prevention, rather than just a reactive focus on prosecuting offenders and assisting victims. The Protocol allows for different national implementation of ostensibly universal concepts, which can extend and shrink the boundaries of trafficking/modern slavery in different contexts.

The chapter discusses the global, national, and regional levels in the development and implementation of these laws for their implications for theories of globalization, the challenges to notions of state sovereignty, and the significance of differences between varieties of modernity.

The chapter also considers the implications of legal developments for trafficking/modern slavery in society, noting their effects across the institutional domains of economy, violence, polity, and civil society, and the intersecting regimes of capitalism, coloniality, and gender.

The development of trafficking/modern slavery as a single field

Trafficking/modern slavery is best treated as a single field, though there are differences between sub-types. It is a single field because of the shared core meaning around coercion and control for the purposes of exploitation, as discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. The cumulative historical development in international legal instruments to oppose slavery, forced labour, practices similar to slavery, and trafficking in human beings – in which each development builds on previous instruments – further demonstrates, it is argued, the underlying unity of the field.

There are, however, discussions about some aspects of its treatment as a unified field in relation to: the significance of the difference between chattel slavery and modern slavery (Chuang 2015a; O’Connell Davidson 2015); whether the summary term should derive from legal, social science, or advocacy contexts (Bales 1999; LeBaron 2020a; Cockayne 2021); and, the preferred hierarchical organization of the sub-types, especially for the presentation of data and the treatment of overlapping crime categories (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022; UNODC 2023).

Multiple legal areas

There is a discussion as to whether recent legal developments including for trafficking/modern slavery are carceral (Bernstein 2010). This is situated in wider debates as to whether the actions of the criminal justice system are targeted and proportionate or unfairly sanction poor Black men (Davis 2003; Wacquant 2009; Davis et al 2022), whether there is an over-use of criminal law over other forms of engagement (Lacey 2009; Ashworth and Zedner 2012; Walklate et al 2018), a turn to a culture of control (Garland 2000), and to governing through crime (Simon 2007). The development of the use of criminal justice to protect women from violent and coercive predators has been defended in the context of the previously incomplete criminalization of violence when it is against women (Taylor 2018; Terwiel 2020; McGlynn 2022), which is a consequence and cause of gender inequality. These are situated in wider debates as to the balance of different forms of regulation and governance beyond the criminal (Ayers and Braithwaite 1992; Black 2002, 2008).

The issue as to whether trafficking/modern slavery law is carceral can be addressed empirically along two dimensions: whether the legal instrument concerns solely criminal law or is more widely drawn; whether, in the context of multiple available interventions, criminal law is used disproportionately. This is addressed in relation to the most recent of the international legal instruments on trafficking/modern slavery, the Palermo Protocol (UN 2000a). It is argued that this legal instrument contained multiple areas of law in addition to criminal law; and that the sources of variation in the use of criminal sanctions as compared with other interventions are to be found in national and regional contexts, not the legal instrument itself: hence, that the Palermo Protocol is not carceral in itself.

Interpreting the law in context: what are ‘exploitation’ and ‘vulnerability’?

There is varied interpretation of the key concepts in the international legal instruments, including those of ‘exploitation’ and ‘vulnerability’. Although the law is international, it is applied in courts and judicial systems at national (UN Member State) level; and this implementation is shaped by interpretation of its terms and concepts within the national context. This extends or shrinks the extent to which an individual is found by the courts to be a trafficker or a victim of trafficking. Concepts that have been subject to discussion include those of ‘exploitation’ and ‘vulnerability’. This varied interpretation of concepts establishes the boundaries of the trafficking chain.

The UNODC assists Member States of the UN with the implementation of the Palermo Protocol. It offers practical guidance, for example in interpretation of the Convention. It is a conduit for funding to states to support their building the institutional practices needed for implementation. For example, the European Commission has funded joint actions with the UNODC to assist low- and middle-income countries to revise their regulation and welfare systems to meet the requirements of the UN 2000 Convention (Walby et al 2016a).

The ‘exploitation of the vulnerability of others’ is core to the legal definition of trafficking in human beings. However, even though definitions are included in the UN Convention and Protocol, the exact meanings of the concepts of ‘exploitation’ and ‘vulnerability’ are debated. The UNODC (2013, 2015) states that the loose definitions of the concepts in international law were intentional, in order that the same legal instrument could be considered relevant to the varied circumstances in different countries, thereby diplomatically allowing agreement by national politicians negotiating the UN Convention. This means that different ‘thresholds’ of exploitation and vulnerability could be applied in different national legal systems, depending on local circumstances. The consequence is that social context, political struggle, and negotiation are important in the interpretation of the concepts of exploitation and vulnerability.

Global, national, and regional law

The international level, especially the UN, is key for the legal instruments on trafficking/modern slavery. By 2023, 181 out of 193 UN Member States had signed the Convention on Trafficking (UN Treaty Collection 2023). National states, which participated in the creation of the legal instruments at the international level, have incorporated UN Conventions and Protocols into their domestic law. Yet, the implementation of the law is varied, with different interpretations of legal concepts, the nature of the judicial/justice system, the role of regional polities, and wider societal contexts, giving rise to different patterns of legal practice and policy in different countries and varieties of modernity (social democratic, neoliberal, and authoritarian).

The EU governs its Member States on trafficking/modern slavery through the process of transposition of Directives, including the one on Trafficking in Human Beings, into domestic law. In Member States of the EU, the EU Directive has direct legal force in their national law courts. The EU has Strategy to implement the Directive (European Commission 2012, 2021a). The EU has significant influence over countries that would like to join the EU, which must eventually adopt the acquis (the total body of EU law), some influence over countries in its neighbourhood, and influence via funding of projects to assist countries to implement the UN Protocol. The EU economic model is influential (Bradford 2021).

The US Trafficking in Persons programme (TiP) has trade sanctions against countries that the US considers are insufficiently addressing trafficking in persons. In 2000, the US adopted the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act (TVPA), using a definition of trafficking close to that of the UN (United States 2000), though with the addition of a sub-type of ‘severe’ forms. The purpose of the Act is defined in Section 102: ‘The purposes of this division are to combat trafficking in persons, a contemporary manifestation of slavery whose victims are predominantly women and children, to ensure just and effective punishment of traffickers, and to protect their victims.’ (United States 2000: 4). The US Act instituted an annual review of countries around the world to see if there were severe forms of trafficking and if they met their legal and policy standards and, if not, applied trade and aid sanctions to them (US Department of State 2022a).

China has influence via its financial investment for development, which does not go through UN and World Bank Group processes (Cockayne 2021). China is identified in the US TiP as engaging in state-led trafficking in persons. China is currently the target of a new US law, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (United States Department of Homeland Security 2022) that strives to stop trade from the Uyghur region (US Department of State 2022b).

The law on trafficking/modern slavery is a global system, with multiple scales at which the regulation and governance are constituted. The multiple co-existing legal instruments, legal and implementation systems interact with each other and change each other, generating a global legal system (Teubner 1997). The cascading transposition of the crime of trafficking in human beings from the UN legal instruments to regional powers and to Member States of the UN is a challenge to simple notions of the sovereignty of (national) states on issues of law and order. Nevertheless, there are significant variations in the implementation of the law, which tend to align with varieties of modernity. These variations are discussed further in Chapter 5 on policy and Chapter 6 on sexual exploitation.

Conclusion

The development of international legal instruments has been important in developing trafficking/modern slavery as a single field. These instruments have developed over two hundred years, incrementally and cumulatively building the range of issues that are subject to law. This legal field does not only include criminal law, though that is an important part, but multiple bodies of law, including employment, welfare, company regulation, and equal opportunities, across several institutional domains. This means that there is no necessary carceral impulse associated with the legal developments. There is support for victims and a wide repertoire of legal initiatives that are focused on prevention by engagement with a wide range of relevant institutions. There is varied interpretation and implementation of these legal instruments between countries, showing patterns aligned with varieties of modernity. The legal concepts, including exploitation and vulnerability, are open to interpretation; and, while some aspects of the laws are mandatory, others only ask countries to consider implementation. Despite the variation in implementation, this is a legal development that is global in scale, thereby challenging the simple notion that states alone determine law and policy on matters of law and order.

Introduction

How much trafficking/modern slavery is there worldwide? How is it distributed between social groups and how does it vary across time and place? The various estimates are contested from multiple directions with many calls for the improvement of data (Weitzer 2013, 2015; Guth et al 2014; David 2017; Fedina and DeForge 2017; Raphael 2017; Yea 2017; Barrick and Pfeffer 2021; Cameron et al 2023).

Data crystalizes definitions and understandings of phenomena. Indicators summarize complex data using measurement frameworks. These include the number of victims who are registered by relevant authorities, and the estimated number of victims in the population. Different organizations use measurement systems rooted in different legal remits and histories, which has generated more than one typology for trafficking/modern slavery, including one for trafficking in human beings (UNODC) and one for modern slavery (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM). The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) locate policies, targets, and indicators in the same framework, potentially aiding the integration of the field of trafficking/modern slavery. We offer a way to integrate diverse contributions in alignment with the UN SDGs.

What is the nature of trafficking/modern slavery? Data is available on the extent and nature of exploitation of victims, when they are registered with authorities and agencies, and on the organization of (alleged) traffickers in contact with the criminal justice authorities. Data is available on the policies in place to counter trafficking/modern slavery in different countries around the world. There is some information about correlations between trafficking/modern slavery and potential causes and drivers. There are estimates of the cost of trafficking/modern slavery for economy and society. The data is contested. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of existing data, and plans and possibilities for its improvement. We reflect on the measurement frameworks and epistemic systems involved in generating this data.

Indicators, data, and epistemic indicators

Indicators are key numbers. From a multitude of possible numbers, key numbers are selected from a mass of data to summarize it in an indicator in a meaningful way. Data on trafficking/modern slavery has been produced by several international organizations, including the UNODC, ILO, IOM, and Walk Free. The criteria for selecting which numbers to use includes that they are meaningful for the policy remit of the organization and are technically feasible. There is debate over the criteria, process of selection, and scientific and technical merit.

Data is collected and structured in measurement systems which are embedded in epistemic systems that generate knowledge according to a set of rules, or methodology (Walby et al 2017). This involves coordination to select, collect, curate, and present a lot of data within a system of knowledge in which the indicator, the key number, has meaning in relation to a concept, which is itself related to the intellectual and organizational framework within which it is located. Definitions of indicators matter. Indicators are based on concepts and on the technical practicalities of collecting and organizing data in a field. Some of these key concepts are defined in international legal instruments. Trafficking is so defined. Modern slavery is not, although its meaning is very close. Collecting and organizing data to exactly match the intended concept behind the indicator is challenging. The match is not exact, with debate as to how to achieve greater alignment, and what trade-offs might be made in the process.

Indicators consolidate a field of knowledge and influence around a presentation of that knowledge preferred by the organization platforming that indicator. Indicators and data contribute to the epistemological infrastructure that supports scientific development in specific fields (Star and Griesmer 1989; Star 1999). Classification matters (Bowker and Star 1999). Data is collected and structured in systems which are collections of institutions that generate knowledge (Kitchin 2021). The datafication of society increases the importance of these processes and of institutions concerned with data (Kitchin 2021). Social relations are embedded in these epistemic systems, in the measurement frameworks, indicators, datasets, and the structuring of the data (Harvey et al 2017; Nakazora 2017). Numbers exist in ecologies of social relations (Day et al 2014). These social relations include multiple relations of inequality, including gender (Walby 2023b).

Not everyone thinks that quantification aids the evidence base for theory and policy development. Merry (2016), for example, considers that reliance should not be placed on indicators to guide policy in trafficking since they are not well done. While Gallagher (2017) does not object to metrics in themselves, she criticizes any turn to metrics without sufficient quality, arguing that current data, especially from Walk Free, over-state their reliability and that the data practices are too speculative to generate robust estimates. However, the current pace of development of indicators and data in the field of trafficking/modern slavery is rapid.

Data is power in contemporary society (Porter 1996). Indicators are assets (Birch and Muniesa 2020) in systems of power and influence. Problem spaces are shaped by critical numbers (Lury 2021) which contain the social relations that they represent in summary form (Day et al 2014). Indicators are both shaped by the field in which they are generated and have the capacity to further shape this field and adjacent fields. An indicator is a distillation of a lot of data into a single number. Influence over its definition is sought after.

Rather than direct control, an indicator has influence because of its location on a platform. A platform is a multi-sided configuration of social relationships that has the capacity to elevate some things (here, indicators) into powerful forces (Gillespie 2010; Plantin et al 2018; Poell et al 2019). The concept of platform embeds multiple dimensions, drawing on spatial and architectural metaphors as well as social ones (Gillespie 2010; Lury 2021). The UN can be understood to be a kind of platform in its role as global standard setter. The UN Sustainable Development Goals are an example of a platform that elevates a set of indicators to a position of influence (Walby 2023b). The UN SDG indicators include an indicator for trafficking in human beings.

There are alternative indicators, measurement frameworks, and priorities for data in the field of trafficking/modern slavery, including from the UNODC, ILO, Walk Free, and the IOM. Each of these organizations is embedded in an epistemic system. This includes a measurement framework and the organizational context in which that indicator is located, is produced, and is meaningful. This conceptualization draws on and goes beyond the notion of ‘boundary object’ and ‘epistemological infrastructure’ (Starr and Griesemer 1989; Star 1999) by adopting the notion of complex systems to better capture the fluidity in this situation (Walby 2023b).

There is competition and cooperation between epistemic systems over the best indicator and data for use in evaluating theory and policy on trafficking/modern slavery. Each epistemic system has slightly different definitions of its key concepts and indicators that draw variously on international legal instruments, and slightly different criteria as to what is likely to constitute good policy. This is a consequence of the path-dependent development of the various organizations, their legal remit, and their positioning in relation to other organizations and systems of influence.

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Trafficking is included in the UN instruments for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as an Indicator and in the Targets. The UN has developed a set of key measurements of progress in its 17 Sustainable Development Goals and their associated policy Targets and quantitative Indicators (UN 2015). This is part of the UN’s role as a standard setter.

The SDGs are important in influencing the agenda for global governance institutions linked to the UN and have further resonance beyond. The SDGs build on the history of the earlier Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (UN 2000c). The MDGs and SDGs have been important mechanisms in the process of establishing an agenda for economic growth that builds in sustainability and inclusion by design, rather than being focused solely on growth in GDP. The UN rarely has direct power over the activities of other organizations: it orchestrates more than it directs or delegates (Abbott and Snidal 2010). It may be described as a ‘platform’ (Gillespie 2010; Plantin et al 2018; Poell et al 2019) in relation to the development of the key indicators of the SDGs (Walby 2023b).

In the UN SDGs, trafficking in human beings is named in three Targets (5.2, 8.7 and 16.2) and one Indicator (16.2.2) within three of the Goals (5, 8, 16), while modern slavery and forced labour are named adjacent to human trafficking in Target 8.7, and forced marriage is named in Target 5.3. Target 5.2, ‘Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation’, and Target 5.3, ‘Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation’, are linked to Goal 5, ‘Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’. Target 8.7, ‘Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’, is linked to Goal 8, ‘Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all’. Target 16.2, ‘End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children’, and Indicator 16.2.2, the ‘Number of victims of human trafficking per 100,000 population, by sex, age and form of exploitation’, are linked to Goal 16, ‘Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels’.

Indicator 16.2.2, the ‘Number of victims of human trafficking per 100,000 population, by sex, age and form of exploitation’, is the sole part of the SDG framework that refers to the numbers that underpin the Targets and Goals. The Targets are largely aspirations for policy outcomes concerning trafficking, using the key words of ‘eliminate’, ‘eradicate’, and ‘end’, together with references to policy actions to ‘take immediate and effective measures’, and ‘secure the prohibition’. The 17 high level Goals do not separately identify trafficking.

There is rapid development of data that could meet the requirements of Indicator 16.2.2. But there are challenges. Generating this data requires a measurement framework which includes definitions that align with international legal instruments and data collection that includes all countries and extends over time and is consistent and comparative.

Registered victims

Data is collected on victims of trafficking/modern slavery who register with authorities and agencies in most countries of the world. This is a sub-set of victims, since most do not register with authorities (as discussed towards the end of this section). Several international organizations collect and collate this data, as do national states. There is information on numbers, sex, age (adult/child), type of exploitation, citizenship and nationality, and some details about the exploitation. Data on the traffickers is reported in the next section.

The UNODC (2009, 2012, 2014a, 2016, 2018c, 2021, 2023) collects data from UN Member States and aggregates this for the world every two years. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) (2007, 2012, 2017, 2022) collects data on those to whom they provide services, and leads a coalition on data with Polaris (2021) and Liberty (CTDC 2023) in the Counter Trafficking Data Collaborative (CTDC) (CTDC 2022). The EU collates data for its Member States (European Commission 2018a, 2020).

UNODC data concerns victims of trafficking in each country who are registered by competent authorities, including the police, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), doctors, and other service providers. This is provided to central national authorities who process the data and give it to relevant entities, including the UNODC.

The UNODC (2009, 2012, 2014a, 2016, 2018c, 2021, 2023) has collected data during the period 2003–22 on over 450,000 victims and 300,000 suspected offenders around the world (UNODC 2023: 10). The detailed analysis of data on victims reported here is centred on the year 2018 and includes information from 148 countries that encompass more than 95% of the world’s population and 49,032 detected victims (UNODC 2021: 25). Data is missing on some countries. The ‘UNODC elaboration on national data’ (2021) shows that gaps where countries have provided no data are filled by extrapolation from the other countries in that world region. Most of their reporting of characteristics is presented as percentages rather than as raw numbers. The base number for these percentages of characteristics is the number of victims for whom information about that characteristic is available. So, for example, the form of exploitation was reported in 39,805 cases out of 49,032 reported. Women were 46%, girls 19%, men 20%, and boys 15% of detected victims (UNODC 2021: 31), amounting to 65% female and 35% male, as shown in Table 4.1.

The most frequent form of exploitation was sexual exploitation (50%), followed by forced labour (38%), with 12% for other forms (6% criminal activity; 1.5% begging; 1% forced marriages; 1% mixed forms, including baby selling and removal of organs) (UNODC 2021: 34). The sex and age distribution varies between forms of exploitation. Trafficking for sexual exploitation was most frequent for women (77% of victims) and girls (72%), trafficking for forced labour was most frequent for men (67% of victims) and boys (66%) (UNODC 2021: 33, see Table 4.2). Among victims of sexual exploitation, 67% were women, 25%, girls, 5% men, and 3% boys, so females made up 92% of such victims (UNODC: 2021: 36). The distribution of victims across sex, age, and form of trafficking varies between world regions (UNODC 2021: 31, 35).

Migrants make up 35% of registered victims (15% from another region, 8% within the same region, and 12% within the same sub-region), while 65% are trafficked domestically (UNODC 2021: 55). These proportions vary by global region. Migrants are 65% of victims in Western and Southern Europe, 60% in the Middle East, 55% in East Asia and the Pacific, 50% in Central and South-Eastern Europe, and 25% in North America (UNODC 2021: 10).

In the European Union (EU-27) in 2018, victims were trafficked for sexual exploitation in 60% of the cases, for labour exploitation in 15%, and 25% for other forms; 72% of registered victims were female (European Commission 2020). Within the EU-27, around half (49%) of registered victims of trafficking are EU citizens, and around half (51%) are migrants (European Commission 2020).

The IOM collects data on the registered victims who it assists (DiRienzo 2022) through the IOM Migrant Management Operational System Application (MiMOSA) Counter Trafficking Module (IOM 2012, 2017). The IOM leads the Counter Trafficking Data Collaborative (CTDC) which also includes data from Polaris and Liberty in its reports (CTDC 2023).

Victims who come to the attention of the authorities are only one sub-set of the victims of trafficking/modern slavery, since others will not have had such contact. So, these data do not provide reliable information on the extent of trafficking/modern slavery. Nonetheless, they are important since they are a measure of something real, that is, the number of victims recognized and supported by the national authorities. It is generally assumed that the distribution of registered victims across forms of trafficking/modern slavery, sex, and age (adult/child) reflects their distribution in the population.

An increase over time in the recorded numbers of victims cannot be relied upon to indicate an increase in the ‘real’ population of victims, since it may be a result of an improvement in the actions of these services that leads to a higher proportion of the ‘real’ population coming to the attention of the authorities.

There are new developments in statistical methods to address the gap between the number of victims who are registered with the authorities and the number of victims in the population. The ‘capture-recapture’ or multiple systems technique potentially offers an important contribution to the estimation of the scale of trafficking/modern slavery by providing a method of estimating the number of victims in the population using data from the victims who have contact with several different authorities (Bales et al 2015; Bales et al 2020; Chan et al 2021). However, the method depends on assumptions that not all accept (Whitehead et al 2021, 2022), especially over how to address victims who do not report to any authority. It may be best regarded as an experimental technique (ONS 2020).

The Indicators and data on registered victims have strengths and weaknesses. They use a definition based in international legal instruments, the UN 2000 Protocol. The data concern victims registered with the authorities. They are not the numbers of victims in society; they are a sub-set of the victims in the population in a country. It is probably a significant under-count of the number of victims in a country. The data is not useful comparatively either over time or between countries, since it is a measure of two things combined: the activity of the authorities in identifying victims to help; and the number of victims in a society. It is not known if an increase is due to an improved response by the authorities or due to an actual increase in numbers. It is not known if more registered victims in one country than another indicates a better response by the authorities in that country or more actual victims in that country. However, despite these limitations, the number of registered victims and their distribution are important. They are an absolute minimum number of victims, who cannot be denied. They are an indication of the need and use of resources to support victims.

Registered traffickers and trafficking cases

The UNODC collects data from states on traffickers apprehended by their criminal justice systems and on trafficking cases that have resulted in convictions in the courts. One dataset concerns people who are investigated, prosecuted, or convicted. The other is drawn from records of court cases. Data on those in contact with the criminal justice system concerning trafficking is relevant to the SDG Targets concerning policy actions to ‘take immediate and effective measures’ and ‘secure … prohibition’ to ‘eliminate’, ‘eradicate’, and ‘end’ trafficking. Data is available on people who are apprehended by the criminal justice system, as persons investigated/suspected or arrested, those prosecuted, and those convicted, and from the narratives of court cases of those convicted.

The UNODC (2009, 2012, 2014a, 2016, 2018c, 2021, 2023) collates data on persons investigated/suspected or arrested, prosecuted, and convicted from data collected by national states. In 2018, there were 9,429 persons reported as investigated/suspected or arrested; 7,368 persons were prosecuted; and 3,553 persons convicted (UNODC 2021: 25). The majority were adult males: 67% of those investigated/suspected or arrested; 64% of those prosecuted; and 62% of those convicted. The majority (74%) of those convicted were citizens of the country in which they were convicted; around one quarter were not, though often from the region (18% within the region, 8% other regions) (UNODC 2021: 39, 40). Those convicted in countries of origin (of victims) were even more likely to be from that country than among those convicted in counties of destination (of the victims).

The UNODC (2021, 2022a, 2023) collates a dataset of narratives of court cases, since 2010, which offers more detailed data for analysis, though they concern only the cases of those who are convicted. By 2022, there were 800 court case summaries in the dataset (UNODC 2023: 10).

Traffickers use a variety of means to control their victims, from explicit violence to deception. The range of forms varies between the stages of recruitment of the victim and that of their exploitation, typically involving deception during recruitment and violence during the later period of exploitation. During recruitment, the means used by traffickers are deception (45%), abuse of vulnerability (29%), mix of abuse of vulnerability and deception (20%), explicit violence (4%), and other (2%). During the period of exploitation, the means are explicit violence (59%), other forms of control (16%), threats (13%), abuse of vulnerability (10%), and other (2%). The information on recruitment is from 207 court cases and on exploitation from 213 court cases in the UNODC dataset on court cases (UNODC 2023: 52). There was use of extreme and/or sexual violence at some point for 22% of victims, use of explicit violence for 32%, use of threats and physical restrictions for 20%, and no violence or threats for 26%. This is information from an analysis of 2,382 victims in 387 court cases (UNODC 2023: 53).

Trafficking for labour exploitation is more common in some industries than others. There are different estimates from the UNODC court cases and from ILO/Walk Free/IOM population estimates. According to UNODC court data, the distribution of victims is agriculture and farming 28%, fishing industry 28%, domestic work 10%, cleaning services 8%, street selling 7%, construction work 6%, entertainment sector 3%, mining 3%, catering hospitality 3%, nursing 1%, and garment manufacture 1%. This is the share of victims found in the collection of court case narratives, 2010–20, based on 290 victims of trafficking for forced labour in 89 cases that concluded with a conviction (UNODC 2023: 37). According to estimates from the ILO, Walk Free, and IOM (2022: 32), the largest share of forced labour is in services excluding domestic work (32%), followed by manufacturing (19%), construction (16%), agriculture (12%), domestic work (8%), mining and quarrying (1%), and other (11%).

The UNODC (2023: 48–9) identifies four different forms of trafficking structure, two of which are organized and two opportunistic, and counts the proportion of traffickers in each: governance type of organized crime groups ‘who wield security governance in a community or territory by means of fear and violence and may be involved in multiple illicit markets’ (23%); business-enterprise type of organized crime groups ‘involving three or more traffickers systematically working together to traffic persons as a core component of their criminal activities’ (46%), opportunistic associations of traffickers ‘working together, where two traffickers operate together, or more than two traffickers who do not systematically work together beyond a single criminal act’ (21%), and individual traffickers ‘who typically operate on their own’ (10%). The proportions are based on 3,778 victims and 2253 traffickers reported in 686 cases that resulted in conviction, 2012–20.

In trafficking cases, there are usually several victims and several traffickers, rather than as in conventional crime cases where there is one victim and one offender for each case. The numbers vary by the type of trafficking organization: governance (11.4 victims and 9.7 traffickers per case), business (8.6 victims and 4.5 traffickers per case), opportunistic associations (3.3 victims and 2.3 traffickers per case), and individual traffickers (2.5 victims and 1.1 trafficker per case); based on 713 court cases 2012–20 (UNODC 2023: 49).

In trafficking cases, there is not a single action at one moment in time, but rather a prolonged duration of activity. The duration of trafficking varies by form of trafficking organization: governance (42 months), business (19.7 months), opportunistic associations (14.7 months), and individual traffickers (22.6 months) (UNODC 2023: 50).

Traffickers who come to the attention of the authorities are only part of the relevant population since others will not have had such contact. An increase in the numbers of recorded traffickers may mean one or both of two things: increased activity by the criminal justice system in relation to trafficking; and an increase in the ‘real’ population of traffickers. These data alone are not sufficient to adjudicate whether it is an increase in criminal justice system activity or in trafficking itself.

Population estimates of victims of modern slavery

The International Labour Organization, Walk Free, and the International Organization for Migration (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022) provide global estimates of modern slavery. Modern slavery refers ‘to situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or cannot leave because of threats, violence, deception, abuse of power or other forms of coercion’ (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022: 2, 13). This definition of modern slavery is not used in international legal instruments, but components of modern slavery are. Modern slavery ‘is comprised of two principal components – forced labour and forced marriage’. Forced labour is sub-divided into privately imposed forced labour and state-imposed forced labour. Privately imposed forced labour is sub-divided into forced labour exploitation and forced commercial sexual exploitation of adults and commercial sexual exploitation of children (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022: 13). However, ‘other main concepts of modern slavery … trafficking in persons … are not included explicitly in the global estimates’ (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022: 13–15). The core methodology is a set of surveys in over 70 countries, supplemented with information from administrative sources on victims (from the IOM and CTDC), expert judgement supported by secondary literature, and statistical modelling.

ILO/Walk Free/IOM estimates that there were 49.6 million people in modern slavery on any given day in 2021. This is divided into 27.6 million in forced labour and 22 million in forced marriages. This means that 0.35% of the global population are in forced labour and 0.28% of the global population are in forced marriages (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022: 2).

Of the 27.6 million in forced labour, 11.8 million (43%) are women and girls, while 3.3 million (12%) are children (see Table 4.3). There were 6.3 million people in situations of forced commercial sexual exploitation, which is 23% of all forced labour, among whom 80% were women and girls. All regions of the world have forced labour; the highest proportion of the population is in the Arab States (5.3 per thousand people), followed by Europe and Central Asia (3.5 per thousand), and Africa (2.9 per thousand). Most (86%) of the forced labour occurs in the private economy. Of the 3.9 million people in state-imposed forced labour, over half (55%) involve the abuse of compulsory prison labour, 27% involve conscription, and 17% for economic development beyond normal civil obligations (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022: 2–4). Of the forms of coercion, withholding of wages is the most common form (36%), followed by threat of dismissal (20%) (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022: 42). Forced labour is three times as common among migrant (13.8%) than among non-migrant (4.1%) adult workers (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022: 36). Forced commercial sexual exploitation, treated as a part of forced labour, is largely (78%) female (4,929,000 out of 6,332,000 victims).

Of the 22 million people in forced marriages, 14.9 million (68%) are women and girls. All regions of the world have forced marriages; the highest proportion of the regional population is in the Arab States (4.8 per thousand people), followed by Asia and the Pacific (3.3 per thousand). Half of those in forced marriages were coerced using emotional blackmail or verbal abuse, and 19% by physical or sexual violence or threats of violence. Once forced to marry, there is increased risk of further forms of exploitation. Most (73%) were forced to marry by parents, and 16% by other relatives (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022: 2–4).

The data on which the Global Estimates of Modern Slavery 2021 are based come from surveys, supplemented by administrative sources and by expert judgement. The estimates for non-sexual privately imposed forced labour and for forced marriage rest on this survey data. The estimates for commercial sexual exploitation apply a ratio derived from administrative data to this data on forced labour. The estimates for state-imposed forced labour rest on expert judgement.

Surveys were carried out in 68 countries on forced labour and 75 countries on forced marriage by the ILO and Walk Free in a Gallup poll, asking whether the respondent or any family member had been forced to work or marry. For the forced labour survey, 1,000 to 2,000 people were interviewed per country, amounting to 77,914 respondents, and, since they were asked about the experiences of other family members, potentially collecting data relevant to 628,598 people. For the forced marriage survey, 109,798 respondents were interviewed, collecting data relevant to 931,394 people, since they were asked about the experiences of their family networks (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022).

Statistical modelling is used to fill the gaps in data including for countries where there are no surveys. This modelling uses additional data on vulnerability of the victims, such as their civil and political protections, social, health, and economic rights, and state responses including the identification of survivors, criminal justice mechanisms, coordination, and actions by businesses. This modelling has been developing over time, increasing in sophistication and in the range of data used to create variables. This means that each of the estimates in the time series has a slightly different underlying model (Walk Free 2018; ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022).

Questions have been raised as to whether some variables are omitted. For example, Chuang (2015a) argues that there is an under-specification of labour inspectors and offers additional sources of data on these from the ILO, while others have sought better comparative data on the regulation of the sex trade.

The selection of the source of administrative data on the ratio of labour to sexual exploitation has implications for the ratio, since this differs between datasets. The IOM and (more recently used) CDTC datasets have a significantly lower ratio of sexual exploitation to labour exploitation than the UNODC (2009, 2012, 2014a, 2016, 2018c, 2021, 2022a). This has implications for the amount of trafficking for sexual exploitation/forced commercial sexual exploitation in the overall figure for trafficking/modern slavery. If the UNODC ratio were used, the amount of forced commercial sexual exploitation would be substantially higher. Since sexual exploitation is disproportionately against female victims, this would change the sex ratio in the estimates of the total trafficking/modern slavery. This means if the UNODC ratio of sexual to non-sexual private exploitation were applied, rather than that of the IOM/CDTC, then the proportion of victims of modern slavery who were female would also significantly increase. This would further mean a significant increase in the amount of modern slavery overall. This is discussed further in Walby and Francis (2023).

The procedure for estimates for state-imposed forced labour is different because of the difficulties in using surveys for this topic: ‘As the surveys focused on the non-institutionalised population, meaning that people in prisons, labour camps or military facilities, and other institutional settings are not sampled, the surveys are not suitable for estimating state-imposed forced labour’(Walk Free 2018: 167). Instead, the estimates of state-imposed forced labour: ‘were identified through a systematic review of the comments from the ILO supervisory bodies followed by a review of secondary sources’ (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022: 116).

The production of the ILO/Walk Free/IOM global estimates of modern slavery is a monumental undertaking. The dataset put together is extraordinary. It can also be improved. Areas for improvement include: better alignment of concepts and their operationalization between trafficking and modern slavery; more surveys to increase the range of countries and to create time-series data; changing the source of data for the ratio of labour and sexual exploitation; and, including more variables in the modelling of data gaps, including labour inspectors and the regulation of the sex trade. There are ongoing developments including: cooperation between the IOM and UNODC on the First International Classification Standard for Administrative Data on Trafficking in Person (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022: 97); and a partnership between ILO, Walk Free, IOM, and UNODC on a bespoke survey module on forced labour (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022: 97).

Policy development

Collecting data on policy developments matters. It is useful for analysis that compares the outcomes of different policy interventions, of what works, under what circumstances. This data is being collected in several ways.

Data on the development of policies in countries around the world is collected for ILO, Walk Free, and IOM (2022). Regional entities monitor policy developments and their implementation, including the EU (European Commission 2018a), and the Council of Europe, through the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA). Some states monitor their own developments, for example in the UK whether companies monitor their supply chains for trafficking/modern slavery as required by the 2015 UK Modern Slavery Act.

The US State Department produces an annual summary of state responses to trafficking (US Department of State 2017, 2022a). This rests on its interpretation of trafficking in the light of its counter-trafficking law, which is close to the UN 2000 Protocol, with the addition of a sub-category of more severe trafficking. On the basis of specially collected and published qualitative and quantitative data on each country around the world, the US produces a three-fold ranking of state efforts to prevent trafficking. States in the third tier are sanctioned through economic and trade policy. The assumption is that state responses make a difference to the amount of trafficking. Further, the US Labor Department generates reports on the products most likely to have been produced by child or forced labour in different countries of the world (US Department of Labor 2022).

There is data on the development of the criminalization of trafficking. The UNODC (2021: 62), using its elaboration of national data, investigated whether each country had criminalized trafficking in persons as a specific offence covering all or some forms of trafficking, using the UN definition. They found an increase in the percentage of 181 countries that had specific criminal offences for trafficking for most or all of its forms, from 54% in November 2012 to 93% in August 2020. The percentage of countries with no criminalization fell from 27% to 2% and those criminalizing only some forms fell from 19% to 5% over the same period, 2012–20. Further, the UNODC (2021: 62–4) found that the average conviction rate for a trafficking offence per 100,000 population increased globally from around 0.1 in 2003 to 0.3 in 2018. The highest conviction rate was for Europe throughout the period 2002–18. Europe began the process of the criminalization of trafficking earlier than other regions. Yet, most of the increase between 2002 and 2018 was accounted for by regions other than Europe, with the most rapid increase being in the Americas.

Correlations and causes

Some studies have investigated the correlations between trafficking/modern slavery and a range of societal phenomena to test theories about causation. They face challenges because of the weakness of the comparative data on the distribution of trafficking/modern slavery across time and place. Nevertheless, there are some important innovations and contributions.

Economic inequality is associated with trafficking/modern slavery, both interpersonal (Rao and Presenti 2012; Cho 2015) and interstate (Cho 2015). The actions and structure of the polity matter (Cho 2015), including deregulation (Peksen et al 2017), rule of law (Cho 2015; ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022), corruption (Bales 2007b; Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime 2021), and the depth of democracy (Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime 2021). The links between migration and vulnerability to trafficking/modern slavery are found in several studies (Rao and Presenti 2012; Cho 2015; ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022). Trafficking/modern slavery is associated with several dimensions of structural gender inequality (Cameron et al 2023). War is associated with higher rates of trafficking/modern slavery (UNODC 2018b; UNODC 2023: 52).

Cost of trafficking/modern slavery for society

What is the impact of trafficking/modern slavery on society? One way of measuring this is through the concept of cost, to put a monetary value on the damage it causes. There are other, perhaps more important, ways to think of the impact on society, in terms of pain and suffering, loss of human rights, illegality, and corruption of processes. The cost methodology accompanies these other frameworks and contributes to decisions on the allocation of financial resources to counter trafficking/modern slavery by public and governmental bodies.

Victims of trafficking/modern slavery suffer violence and coercion. This violence and coercion generate hurts to victims’ physical and mental health. These hurts to victims’ health generate costs to society in the use of extra public services (specialized services, law enforcement, health services, and social protection), lost economic output, lost quality of life, and coordination and prevention work. These costs are borne by the public. (This section draws on the findings of the Study on the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Trafficking in Human Beings within the EU (Walby et al 2020).)

These costs are borne by the public: the people who are inhabitants, workers, citizens, and employers, who pay taxes and insurance premiums to fund the services, who jointly suffer from the diverted and thus lost economic output, and who are willing to pay to avoid the lost quality of life experienced by fellow human beings.

Alternative assumptions within the methodology can lead to different estimates of the cost to society. This includes: whether the estimate of the number of victims concerns those who are registered or all victims in the population; whether the costs of criminal justice are included; and whether the long-term harms to mental health from sexual exploitation are included.

The costs presented in this section are average costs across the EU. They may be different in other world regions. They would be different if more or less services were provided to people in these circumstances, if the value of the economic output produced by the average citizen was higher or lower than the EU, and if the distribution of forms of trafficking/modern slavery were different.

Specialized services used by victims of trafficking include accommodation, medical and psychological assistance, legal assistance, education, training, job placement, reintegration assistance and return assistance (European Commission 2018a: 42–6). This assistance is legally mandated under the UN Palermo Protocol and the 2011 EU Directive. Children should receive additional services, including access to education. NGOs contribute to the provision of these specialized services (Walby et al 2016a: 33–56).

Law enforcement concerns both criminal and non-criminal law, sometimes called civil or administrative law. It includes police, prosecution, courts, prisons, regulators, and inspectors (Walby et al 2016b, Walby et al 2020; UNODC 2021). Police investigations in trafficking/modern slavery are complex, sometimes involving cross-border working in joint investigation teams. Civil or administrative law includes licensing premises for risky activities, and inspecting standards for labour, health and safety.

Health services are used for a range of physical and mental health conditions caused by the coercion and violence of trafficking/modern slavery. These services are used both immediately and to address long-term needs. The type of service use and the length of time it is used vary by the form of trafficking, since this is associated with different forms of hurts. For example, sexual exploitation tends to generate long-term harms to mental health.

Trafficking/modern slavery leads to lost wages, profits, and taxes from the loss of employment in the legal economy. Economic resources are diverted away from the legitimate economy by trafficking. When a person is being trafficked, the victim loses wages in unrewarded employment, the community and state loses the taxes that would otherwise have been paid, and employers lose the potential profits they might have made. Even though national accounts include some illegal activities (Eurostat 2015), they do not include profit from trafficking/modern slavery (Eurostat 2018: 18).

The years of life lost to trafficking/modern slavery include an adjustment for the quality of life lost. Victims of trafficking/modern slavery live lives that have lower quality than if they were not trafficked. Drawing on work in the field of health by the Global Burden of Disease project, the concept of quality-adjusted life year is used, and their measurements mobilized. It draws upon the earlier concept of a society’s ‘willingness to pay’ to avoid pain and suffering.

Governmental agencies coordinate services, policies, training, and awareness raising, and build the knowledge base to prevent trafficking. The work of central governmental authorities and their agencies to coordinate counter-trafficking work and to address prevention is a cost. This is work to develop policy coherence and to address prevention through interventions in organizations and institutions, rather than a concern only for individuals.

Governments routinely use costing methodologies as a contribution to their decision-making on budgets. This analysis uses the conventional methodology. This is applied to the special circumstances of trafficking/modern slavery. It uses the governmental manuals that facilitate shared, and hence comparable, practices (European Commission 2015), and draws on the methodology used for the costing of gender-based violence (Walby and Olive 2014), the cost of crime (Brand and Price 2000), and of modern slavery (Reed et al 2018). A conservative approach was taken in developing these estimates, in which costs were not included if the quality of the data was in doubt. Hence the cost is an under-estimate.

Data on the number of victims was taken from the European Commission (2018a). The scientific literature was reviewed to ascertain the extent to which victims of trafficking globally suffered physical violence, sexual violence, and threats, disaggregated by trafficking form. Surveys of populations were analysed to provide information on what harms had consequences for using health and welfare services, the extent of employment, and quality of life. The network of EU National Rapporteurs and equivalent mechanisms were asked to provide data on the use and cost of specialized services, law enforcement, and coordination. Eurostat data was obtained on the costs of health, social protection, law enforcement, and economic support. The European Commission provided documents on benchmarks for key values.

The costs are presented as the cost per victim. These are the costs over the lifetime of the victim. There are two ways of counting victims: those registered with the authorities, and survey-based estimates of prevalence in the population. This chapter uses the first approach. It is a minimal but robust estimation. If the second approach were used the costs would be much higher overall; however, for some of the victims who are not registered they would be lower since they would not be using specialized services and law enforcement.

There are different costs at different phases of trafficking: in trafficking, in services, and post-trafficking. Some costs last for many years, others are for shorter periods of time. While a victim is in trafficking, there are costs of law enforcement, lost economic output, reduced quality of life and coordination, but not specialized services or health services. While a victim is in services, all the costs occur. When a victim is post-trafficking, there are still continuing costs from health services and social protection, lost economic output, and reduced quality of life (Walby et al 2020).

The cost per victim, over their lifetime, was €312,756. This was made up of €9,614 for specialized services, €93,293 for law enforcement, €20,749 for health services and social protection, €59,537 for lost economic output, €127,504 for lost quality of life, and €2,059 for the coordination of prevention work. These figures are for 2016 (Walby et al 2020: 27).

For the EU, this is a total cost of €3,700,524,433 (Walby et al 2020: 27).

Of the three main types of cost, the use of public services was 40%, lost economic output was 19%, and lost quality of life, 41% (Walby et al 2020: 26).

The costs of trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation are higher (€353,893) than those of labour exploitation (€219,382), largely due to the greater health costs linked to the length of time of harms due to sexual violence. The costs for females (€337,999) are higher than for males (€256,184), because females are more likely to be trafficked for sexual exploitation (Walby et al 2020: 28).

The use of the number of victims registered with the authorities rather than the estimated number of victims in the population has implications for the cost per victim and for the cost for a specific country. Registered victims use more services (specialized services, law enforcement) than unregistered victims, while the same prevention costs would be spread over a larger number of people, thus less per victim; so, the cost for each unregistered victim would be lower than for each registered victim. There are many more victims in the population than there are registered victims, so the use of this number would have increased the cost per country of trafficking, while reducing the cost per victim. An unregistered victim may not use any specialized services, law enforcement, health services, or increase coordination and prevention costs. Nevertheless, they will still lose economic output and quality of life.

The UK Home Office study on the cost of modern slavery did not have information on the cost of the criminal justice system nor on the long-term costs of sexual exploitation to mental health (Reed et al 2018). The study for the EU included these costs and found higher costs for women than for men, as a consequence of the different extent of sexual exploitation among men and women (Walby et al 2022).

Trafficking/modern slavery has an impact on society as well as on the victims across multiple dimensions. Some of these impacts can be estimated using a monetary frame of reference. This facilitates governments and public bodies taking better account of trafficking/modern slavery in financial decision-making on public policy priorities.

The cost for each registered victim in the EU of €312,756 is a sign of the huge damage that trafficking/modern slavery inflicts on economy and society.

The costing methodology offers a way of reflecting on the detriment of trafficking/modern slavery to sustainable development. It invites a reversal of the typical approach to the direction of causal pathways connecting different parts of society: from changes in the economy causing changes in coercion/violence to one in which changes in the level of coercion (trafficking/modern slavery) causes changes in the economy (sustainable development). This methodology can be used to indicate the impact of different rates of trafficking/modern slavery on society as an addition to the more usual approach of the impact of various forms of society on rates of trafficking/modern slavery.

Conclusion

There has been significant development in data and indicators to support the development of theory and policy to counter trafficking/modern slavery since 2000.

Females are the majority (65%) of the victims of trafficking/modern slavery. There is sex segregation in the types of exploitation, in that the vast majority (92%) of victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation are female, while there is less difference between genders in exploitation for forced labour and for other types. Migrants are more than three times more likely than non-migrants to be in forced labour. They make up one third (35%) of victims globally, varying from 25% to 65% in different global regions.

Trafficking/modern slavery has a huge impact on society as well as on its victims. The cost for each registered victim in the EU of €312,756 indicates the tremendous damage that trafficking/modern slavery causes to society.

The key indicator is in the UN Sustainable Development Goals: SDG Indicator 16.2.2, the ‘Number of victims of human trafficking per 100,000 population, by sex, age and form of exploitation’. However, the data to populate this indicator is still under development. There are major developments by international bodies and academics to improve the knowledge base to achieve the data needed to support this indicator. There are substantial achievements by the UNODC in coordinating the counting of registered victims in UN member states and by the ILO, Walk Free, and IOM in developing survey-led estimates of the proportion of victims of modern slavery in the population. There is some data collection on policies by both UNODC and the ILO/Walk Free/IOM. There are debates as to next steps.

There have been two approaches to conceptualization, one centred on trafficking in human beings (UNODC), and one centred on forced labour and modern slavery (ILO/Walk Free/IOM), although there is substantial and recognized overlap and growing convergence. The more effective merging of these two would aid the further development of data to support the SDG measurement framework. This would entail a typology that has less internal hierarchy and more explicit translation between categories. This would concern a single field of trafficking/modern slavery with sub-categories of ‘forced labour exploitation’, ‘sexual exploitation’, ‘other exploitation (including organs, forced begging)’, ‘state-forced labour exploitation’, and ‘forced marriage’. This treats sexual exploitation as a specific field rather than a sub-field of labour exploitation and includes forced marriage as a visible category rather than part of ‘other’.

The ILO, Walk Free, and IOM (2022) estimate that there are 49,570,000 people in modern slavery. There are 49,032 registered victims around the world in 2018, according to data collated by the UNODC (2021). This suggests a ratio of registered victim to estimated victims in the population is thus 1:1000, in which only one in a thousand victims of trafficking/modern slavery are registered with the authorities.

The choice of administrative dataset to support the ratio of labour to sexual exploitation by ILO, Walk Free, and IOM (2022) has significant consequences for the amount of trafficking/modern slavery involving sexual exploitation and thus, because these victims are disproportionately female, for the relative proportion of women and men among victims. If the UNODC rather than IOM data were the basis of the ratio, then the estimate of the amount of trafficking for sexual exploitation/forced commercial sexual exploitation would significantly increase, the number of female victims of modern slavery would increase, and the overall number of victims of modern slavery would increase.

The UNODC (2021, 2023) and ILO, Walk Free, and IOM (2022) have estimates at a global level and for global regions for registered victims and for victims in the population respectively. There are remaining challenges in producing robust data for the SDG Indicator, which would mean programmes of research for the development of data. This would mean producing more empirical data to reduce the reliance of estimates on expert judgement and statistical modelling, which would include the regular repetition of surveys over time.

The available quantitative estimates have been used to investigate the correlation of trafficking/modern slavery with its potential causes. Trafficking/modern slavery correlates with economic inequalities, suggesting the varieties of modernity make a difference. War increases trafficking/modern slavery, both directly and indirectly through migration as people flee war zones, suggesting that relations of coloniality contribute to trafficking/modern slavery. Variations in gendered inequality correlate with trafficking/modern slavery, especially for sexual exploitation and forced marriage. The intersection of these regimes of inequality generates specific situations of vulnerability to trafficking/modern slavery.

The UN has been establishing itself as the key platform for indicators of trafficking/modern slavery in the SDGs. Historically, there have been multiple developments in indicators, definitions, and data among diverse epistemic systems in this field. The definitions used by the UNODC are anchored in an international legal instrument, the 2000 UN Palermo Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Combat Trafficking in Persons (UN 2000a). The term ‘modern slavery’, used by ILO/Walk Free/IOM, is not defined in an international legal instrument; however, several of its components are defined legally, including forced labour and practices similar to slavery, including forced marriage. These two major UN agencies have had different trajectories of development centred on the different international legal instruments for which they are responsible guardians, generating slightly different epistemic systems. The development of the UN as a platform for indicators and data for the SDGs offers an opportunity for narrowing the differences and generating the data for the indicator for a single field of trafficking/modern slavery.

Introduction

Policy relevant to trafficking/modern slavery sits at the confluence of multiple debates and agendas, including the strategy for economic development (led by GDP or SDGs), security (the extent to which the criminal justice system is prioritized), human rights (the extent to which these trump migration restrictions), and the nature of globalization. There have been claims that trafficking/modern slavery policy is narrow, carceral, and a distraction from larger issues, focusing on individuals, on prosecuting ‘a few bad apples’, and on ‘rescuing victims’. The argument here is that recent developments now do address the ‘whole of government’, including policy on economic development, although this depends on context including the variety of modernity. However, policy rarely sufficiently addresses the profit-taking that drives trafficking/modern slavery, nor the exclusions from welfare and democratic participation that create situations of vulnerability for women and migrants.

Multiple policy areas are engaged as relevant to anti-trafficking, including financial investment, industrial policy, business regulation, employment regulation, welfare, security, criminal justice, human rights, specialized welfare, migration, gender equality, and research. The strategic policy areas of economic development, security, and human rights are balanced in different ways in different contexts. Whether the coercive and carceral power of polities (military, criminal justice) is at the forefront or is a residual power as compared with economic regulation shapes the outcomes of interventions (Chapter 1). But the argument that the use of criminal law to reduce trafficking/modern slavery is intrinsically carceral for society is rejected; it can make a positive contribution when used in a targeted and proportionate manner. The balance between the use of security and criminal justice or regulation of the economy and welfare depends on the variety of modernity, which includes the depth of democracy.

Can trafficking/modern slavery policy detract from policies to support migrants? Policies to reduce trafficking/modern slavery can become entangled with other policies with unintended consequences. Policies aimed at another goal can have the unintended outcome of increasing trafficking/modern slavery. The entanglement with contestations over policy towards migration can twist the implications of anti-trafficking/modern slavery policy. The analysis is always intersectional. Migrants and women are disproportionately the victims of trafficking/modern slavery. The analysis requires not only consideration of policies to address the class inequalities of capitalism, but also the inequalities associated with coloniality, and gender regimes. While extreme economic exploitation is a feature, trafficking/modern slavery is more than this because it includes coercion. Restrictions on the capacity to exit abusive situations means that policies to address market-based inequalities are not enough.

Whether trafficking/modern slavery policy is global or national concerns the extent of effective state sovereignty over matters of law and order as well as political economy. There are multiple policy actors and levels of governance. Policy is global, through the activities of the UN and its agencies, and national, in that states interpret and selectively implement laws and policies. It is significantly affected by the varieties of modernity, which are shaped by the depth of democracy and by regional powers, including the US, EU, and China. All policy actors are shaped by their environment, including the depth of democracy, economy, violence, and civil society.

The ‘whole of society’ is relevant for the analysis, since these policies intervene across all the institutional domains of economy, violence, polity, and civil society. Multiple regimes of inequality shape and are shaped by these policies, including capitalism, colonialism, and gender regimes.

Policy actors

Policies on trafficking/modern slavery are developed and implemented at multiple levels of governance, including the global (the UN and its agencies), regional including continental states (US, EU, China), and other states (for example, the UK and Germany). The analysis challenges the assumption that national states have effective sovereignty over policies concerning law and order. The UN is a powerful policy platform, which shapes and is shaped by its environment of other polities, global economy, violence, and global civil society. The depth of democracy shapes these polities and their policies (Chapter 2). This is not a simple hierarchy of power, rather the environment that shapes each polity is made up of the other polities, as well as economies, violence, and civil society. The existence of a policy is not the same as its implementation.

Economic development

Some policies for economic development decrease trafficking/modern slavery; others increase it. Some consequences are unintended. Diverse policies are entangled in contradictory ways. There are different strategies for development that shape the context for more detailed policies. These include finance, industrial policy, business and supply chains, regulating labour, welfare, security, criminal justice, human rights, and specialized services. There are intersecting policies for migration and gender equality.

Security

Security policy concerns violence and coercion, and the shaping of the social relations and institutions that increase or decrease it. The security policy actors are largely polities (global, hegemon, national, local). Security policy is traditionally split between external (international, security, war) and internal (domestic, criminal justice) but is increasingly engaging with both at the same time (Buzan et al 1998; Bigo 2006; Vaughan-Williams 2015). This is the case for trafficking/modern slavery, due to the consequences of interstate and civil war for vulnerabilities to trafficking/modern slavery, processes of migration that can create vulnerabilities, and the sometimes transnational organization of this crime. One set of international policy actors (in concert with hegemons and states) is concerned with security to prevent war and to mitigate the vulnerabilities of migration. A second set of policy actors (states in concert with international actors and hegemons) is concerned with security to prevent violent and coercive crime (including across borders), with a focus on criminal justice and other bodies of law.

There are challenges. There are various ways in which policy is being improved or might be improved. There can be contradictory or unintended effects of policy. There are issues about the balance and relationship with other forms of policy intervention in economic development and in human rights and humanitarian settings. They have implications for wider theory and policy.

Human rights

‘Human rights’ is a principle of justice that informs international and national legal instruments and policies to eradicate trafficking/modern slavery. At the international level, it undergirds claims for freedom of association, for specialized services for victims, and for gender equality.

Conclusion

Criticisms of anti-trafficking policy have sometimes interpreted it as narrow, carceral, and a distraction from more strategic policy issues concerning economic exploitation and migration policy. However, this chapter shows that anti-trafficking policy goes well beyond a concern with criminal justice, and that recent developments include a full spectrum of interventions across multiple sites. However, there remain weaknesses in addressing the profit-taking that drives trafficking/modern slavery, and in removing the exclusions from welfare and democratic participation of women and migrants that create situations of vulnerability. Anti-trafficking policy is most effective when deployed across numerous legal and regulatory fields, spanning sustainable development, economic regulation, and democratic reforms, as well as criminal justice.

This chapter has shown that multiple policies reduce (or increase) trafficking/modern slavery across the whole of government and the whole of society. In each policy area, there are ongoing debates as to potential reforms, in the context of differences in strategic priorities between the multiple policy actors. There can be tension between policies on economic development, security, and human rights, and a tension between different strategies to achieve goals. A focus on the top of the trafficking chain, including profit-taking, is relevant to further developing effective policy. The resources to stop trafficking/modern slavery are often limited by prioritization of other policy goals in the context of multiple regimes of inequality (capitalism, coloniality, and gender).

There are numerous active sites of discussion of improvement of policies. These are a summary of the emerging recommendations. Strategies for policy reform have been proposed by several bodies, including the UNODC, ILO/Walk Free/IOM, the US, and the EU, and are being debated, developed, and implemented, albeit unevenly, concerning areas in the economy, security, civil society, and polity. China is developing its own approach, stating that it is building on international as well as its own policy pathways.

In the economy, issues concern the overall strategy, global financial investment, industrial policy, business policy, supply chains, employment regulation, welfare provision, migration, and discrimination.

Policy for development that encompasses the full range of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and explicitly includes ending trafficking/modern slavery, is the preferred approach, overtaking the previous focus on increasing Gross Domestic Product. This includes placing conditions on global financial investment to ensure it is in alignment with the SDGs. There are developments in this direction from the World Bank Group, though there are concerns about whether financial investment by private investors and by the Chinese state meets these standards. Increasing financial transparency – for example, eliminating tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions, and keeping public registers of property ownership and beneficiaries of trusts – would make it easier to stop corruption and money laundering at the top of the trafficking chain.

There is consideration of industrial policy. This includes the regulation of profit-taking by businesses. It also includes implementing the ban on developing a commercial trade in organs.

There is understanding of the need to increase the responsibility of companies to remove coercion from their supply chains, and debates as to how this might be implemented. This regulates their processes of profit-taking. It includes increasing transparent reporting by businesses and devising appropriate sanctions for those that do not, using appropriate bodies of law (company law, financial liability, criminal law), and extending regulations developed for the offline world to the online world, as part of the regulation of digital services.

There is ongoing discussion of the regulation of businesses in areas that generate situations of vulnerability – for example, the recruitment industry in relation to migrants, and third-party profit-taking from the sale of sex – and extending to the online world those regulations applied to the offline world, for example, criminalizing profit-taking from websites facilitating the sale of sex.

Policies to address informal and unregulated employment include reversing tendencies to deregulate employment, with its growth of precarious employment and bogus self-employment, avoidance of labour rights and social protections, and deepening processes of licensing and inspection to maintain standards for labour, health and safety.

Policies to improve the resilience of potential victims include removing exclusions from the provision of welfare, including those for women, minorities and migrants. These include reducing the use of tied visas, the implementation of the UN Global Compact on Migration, and removing discrimination against women and minorities in the economy, both in employment and in inheritance. Opening pathways for migrant victims to regularize their migration status in the destinations where they experience exploitation would both support prosecutions and improve the situations of vulnerability that make migrants available for exploitation.

In security, there are developments concerning the UN Security Council, migration, and the targeted and proportionate criminalization of trafficking/modern slavery. This involves strengthening the UN capacity to broker peace and regulate conflict zones, to prevent war, to shorten and mitigate periods of conflict, and to mitigate the vulnerabilities of migrants fleeing war. It includes the proportionate and targeted application of criminal and other forms of justice, without discrimination against women, minorities, and migrants. This includes the criminalization of the knowing or reckless use of the services of a trafficked person, and – again – the extension of regulations developed for the offline world to the online world (such as, criminalizing profit-taking from websites that facilitate the sale of sex). It also includes ensuring that victims of trafficking/modern slavery are not criminalized for the activities they did when controlled by traffickers.

In the area of human rights and civil society, there is development of policy for the provision of humanitarian assistance, specialized victim services, regularization of migration status, removing discrimination, promoting gender equality, and supporting research. This involves providing adequately funded specialized victim services to ensure victims are given services to mitigate harms and to restore lives, whatever their migration status.

More generally, policies are needed to reduce the situations of vulnerability associated with migration and to implement the Global Compact, to remove discrimination against women, minorities and migrants, to eliminate gender inequality in employment and inheritance, to promote gender equality across economy, violence, polity, and civil society, and to support research and the improved collection of data.

In the polity itself, there are issues in ensuring free associations and deepening democracy, to ensure free associations in civil society (including trade unions), to facilitate resilience and resistance, and to contribute to democratic debate.

A significant difference in strategy towards policy to reduce trafficking/modern slavery is between a focus on the regulation of the economy (including profit-taking and the provision of welfare) as a preventative approach and a focus on the use of the criminal justice system and state coercion as a mainly reactive approach. This is aligned with the wider context of the varieties of modernity. The more democratic varieties tend to make greater use of economic regulation to prevent trafficking/modern slavery rather than the more carceral forms of state response after it has taken place. These policy practices are shaped by histories of regimes of inequality.

Introduction

Trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation operates as profit-driven chains at the intersection of coercion, the economy, and multiple regimes of inequality. The sex trade is the industrial context for coerced sexual exploitation. The sex trade is based on the commodification of bodies for sexual services and the commercialization of the exchange of sex for money. Not all persons who sell sex are coerced and trafficked, nor are they all women and girls. Sexual exploitation is the largest single form of trafficking/modern slavery, according to UNODC data. This is a gendered form of trafficking/modern slavery: more than 90% of the registered victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation are women and girls; while three-quarters of trafficked women and girls are coerced in sexual exploitation (Chapter 4). The situations of vulnerability enabling trafficking for sexual exploitation are deeply rooted in how gender inequalities intersect with legacies of coloniality and migration status.

Debates about trafficking/modern slavery in sexual exploitation are entangled in debates about the sex trade These have tended to over-simplify and over-polarize into abolition (criminalize) or empowerment (decriminalize) (O’Connell Davidson 1998, 2015; Jeffreys 2008). A more nuanced approach is developed here. As shown in Chapter 3, anti-trafficking law in the UN Palermo Protocol (UN 2000a) criminalizes coercion in the sex trade (pimping, forced prostitution, the sexual exploitation of children and youth under age 18). The criminalization of violence and coercion in the sex trade is nearly universal. The Palermo Protocol, however, goes beyond the criminalization of coercion to mandate that states prevent trafficking and protect victims. States do so through a myriad of civil laws to regulate the economy and to provide welfare and specialized services (Chapter 5). The balance between criminal sanctions and regulation/welfare differs broadly along the varieties of modernity: the more social democratic countries providing the most economic regulation and welfare as compared with the more security-oriented approach of the neoliberal and authoritarian regimes. As shown in the following, the attempt to abolish the sex trade through criminal law (as, for example, in the US) deviates from the norm internationally. The questions for more social democratic modernities are whether persons selling sex are empowered through civil legal regulations of the economy, such as industrial policy, business and employment regulations, and whether victims are protected in ways that reduce situations of vulnerability.

States vary in their balance of security (criminal law) and regulation/welfare (civil law, social protection) to prevent trafficking for sexual exploitation. There are multiple sites at which states can regulate the causes of trafficking/modern slavery in relation to the sex trade. It is not as simple as criminalize or decriminalize. Some parts of the sex trade may be criminalized while others are not. As part of industrial policy, polities may attempt to reduce or eliminate the sex trade entirely, or they may instead regulate businesses and employment relations. As part of welfare, states may include all people, or leave minorities, migrants, and women unprotected. Drawing on the concept of trafficking chains, relations of sexual exploitation and other forms of trafficking/modern slavery are understood as multi-sided (Figure 1.1). States vary in whether they attempt to regulate selling, buying, or profit-taking from sex. These different approaches are the source of significant variations in outcomes.

Can trafficking/modern slavery be eliminated from the sex trade by economic regulation rather than by criminalization? The question is addressed empirically with the example of Germany, which has pursued the economic regulatory approach, justified by the anticipation that this will empower persons selling sex. This chapter analyses the development of the multiple legal and policy instruments that Germany has mobilized to attempt to remove coercion from the sex trade, while still allowing it to be a profitable business. The German practices are compared with other countries that also do not criminalize the sale of sex but regulate the trade differently (Sweden and Great Britain) and one that criminalizes all aspects of the sex trade (the US).

Studies, terms, and concepts

There are a range of terms in this field, including sex trade, sex work, selling sex, prostitution, persons in prostitution, and persons who are prostituted. A person who is trafficked should not be described as ‘selling sex’ since their sexual services are being sold. The use of one term or another is sometimes held to position the speaker/writer within a specific framework, theoretical position, or political stance. Here, the attempt is to use the most neutral and technical terms available to contribute to the debate in a scientific manner. However, if an article or law uses a particular term, it will also be used here. In practice, this means the preferred use of ‘selling sex’ and the ‘sex trade’, while following German legislative practice of referring to prostitution as an economic activity and sellers of sex as persons active in prostitution. Prostitution has been defined as ‘the exchange of sex or sexual services for money or other material benefits … as a social institution which allows certain powers of command over one person’s body to be exercised by another’ (O’Connell Davidson 1998: 9).

Within the sex trade, the location of the boundary that makes some activities legal and others illegal for purposes of sexual exploitation is contested. The definition of trafficking in law is centred on coercion, but much analysis of regulating the sex trade centres on harm or consent rather than coercion.

Barry (1979, 1995) focuses on harm. The extent of harm is widely recognized (Sanders 2004; Sanders et al 2017). Many of the attempts to regulate the sex trade have focused on reducing harm to the people selling sex. O’Connell Davidson (2015) focuses on consent. While it is common for criminal law to give a privileged position to consent, this is not the case for the UN Palermo Protocol on trafficking. Jennings et al (2020) consider that coercion and consent can coexist in trafficking/modern slavery. Others (Du Bois 1998 [1935]; Bales 1999; Brass 2016) have given more emphasis to coercion in their analyses.

The issue for trafficking is whether the legal and policy interventions reduce the coercion of those in the sex trade. There is research on global comparisons of prostitution and trafficking as to whether more prostitution means more trafficking (Danailova-Trainor and Besler 2006) and whether legalizing prostitution correlates with more trafficking (Jakobsson and Kotsadam 2013, 2016; Cho et al 2013). Jakobsson and Kotsadam find sufficient evidence to conclude ‘that the trafficking of women for commercial sexual exploitation is least prevalent in countries where prostitution is illegal, most prevalent in countries where prostitution is legalised, and in between in those countries where prostitution is legal but procuring is illegal’ (2016: 468). This has been subject to debate (Weitzer 2015). There are data challenges. The data on the extent and nature of prostitution and on its regulation are not well developed (Matolcsi et al 2021). Ideally, the analysis of the impact of regulating the sex trade on trafficking would be investigated using data on changes in the sex trade, its regulation, and the amount of trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation. These are addressed here in relation to evidence on changes in Germany.

There are multiple bodies of relevant law, not only criminal law. Some assume that the use of law usually means the use of criminal law (LeBaron 2020a; O’Connell Davidson 2015). Analyses will, for example, refer to criminalizing or decriminalizing trafficking, without referring to non-criminal law. This underestimates the range of bodies of law available, which contain multiple forms of non-criminal, civil law (Ayers and Braithwaite 1992; Kelly et al 2009; Van Daele 2015; Matthews 2018). The UN 2000 Palermo Protocol mandates use of several bodies of law and policy to counter trafficking. It is not restricted to criminal law. In this analysis, multiple bodies of law are distinguished. As a shorthand, a dichotomy is sometimes made between criminal and non-criminal civil law. The further, finer-grained, distinctions are made within the category of non-criminal, civil law, where several bodies of law are relevant. In addition, welfare is also considered to be a body of law. All the areas of policy addressed in Chapter 5, and in this chapter, have become or are rooted, ultimately, in a body of law.

Regulations operate on the global as well as national and local levels. Coercion and force in the sex trade is prohibited globally; the sex trade is criminalized and regulated in various ways (selling, buying, profit-taking) and localities may enact further restrictions based on public order and public health (banning street prostitution).

Regulations

The sex trade is often treated as a single entity for regulation – either as something to be abolished or decriminalized. The concept of trafficking chains brings all sides of transactions into focus. When applied to coerced sexual exploitation in the sex trade, the concept of trafficking chains illuminates profit-taking, a dimension that is rarely addressed in policy debates more narrowly focused on whether sellers or buyers are criminalized or not.

Figure 6.1 illustrates the three sides of transactions from which profits are extracted either legally or illegally in relation to how regulations aim to eliminate sexual exploitation: selling; buying; and in prostitution businesses, that is, the person, group or entity, organizing and taking profits from the sale of sex to clients. There is great variation however, in what is criminalized, and how legal dimensions of the sex trade are regulated. A trafficking chain is less likely to arise where transactions are purely bilateral without third-party profit-takers. In such cases, the top of the triangle in Figure 6.1 would not exist at all.

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Trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation

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Figure 6.1 includes both variations in what may be legalized in the sex trade, and the practices that are explicitly criminalized through anti-trafficking (italicized text in Figure 6.1). Anti-trafficking law for over a century has criminalized pimps on the side of profit-taking and forced prostitution (on the side of selling sex in Figure 6.1) (League of Nations 1921, 1933; UN 1949; 1956). Thus a distinction is made between forced prostitution and voluntary prostitution. In the EU on the buying side, the 2011 Anti-Trafficking Directive suggests that Member States criminalize the knowing use of persons forced to sell sex (italicized text in Figure 6.1). Figure 6.1 includes further regulatory complexities in the sex trade: whether sellers of sex are employed and covered by employment and labour protections, as implied by the term ‘sex worker’, or, as is far more usual, self-employed, and thus not generally covered by labour standards or social protections. A further complexity concerns whether the self-employed sell sex to clients directly (in a bilateral relation) or are being sold as illustrated in the triangle with prostitution businesses brokering the sale of sex. These further distinctions within the sex trade are discussed in the following for the German and other European regulatory approaches.

Anti-trafficking law, but also other laws aim at either prohibiting or regulating the sex trade, and are variously directed at sellers, buyers and/or profit-takers. These other legal instruments include both criminal and non-criminal laws, and are variously implemented by the police, criminal justice system, civil legal system, administrative authorities, state and non-governmental welfare agencies, and civil society organizations. The US, UK, Sweden, and Germany exemplify variations in the attempts to eliminate sexual exploitation from the sex trade.

Regulating the sex trade in the US, Great Britain, Sweden, and Germany

The US, Great Britain, Sweden, and Germany all criminalize coercion and violence by prohibiting pimping and forced prostitution in any form. It is also criminal to engage children (defined as under 18 years in most countries) in the sex trade. The similarities between these cases, however, end here.

The US is very different in criminalizing all components of prostitution, force/coercion, profit-taking by third parties, selling sex, and buying sex, as well as sex trafficking. There are limited exceptions to the criminalization of the selling of sex, for example, the city of Las Vegas, and one state – Maine – where, since 2023, buying, but not selling is criminalized. There is little provision of welfare towards those criminalized for selling sex. Whether in situations of vulnerability or not, sellers are subject to prosecution and, if migrants, deportation. There is, however, specialized welfare for identified victims of trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation, as mandated by the UN Palermo Protocol.

In Europe, selling sex is legal. This is the major difference to the US. Those selling sex or being sold are not criminalized. However, in most countries or municipalities, street prostitution is restricted. Several countries (Sweden, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, and Spain) criminalize buying sex, but in most of the EU this is legal.

In the case of Sweden, both the profit-taker and the purchaser are criminalized, while the seller is not. Buying sex is, however, considered a misdemeanour and treated in a manner similar to a road traffic offence. The policy goal is to suppress the sex trade because it is seen as incompatible with gender equality, which is an important political priority. The suppression of the sex trade is also intended and expected to reduce trafficking in human beings for purposes of sexual exploitation. There is substantial provision of welfare, but only for citizens, so migrants have little access (Askola 2007; Yttergen 2012; Bucken-Knapp et al 2012; Turner 2013).

In Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland) profit-taking from the organization or operation of the sale of sex is criminalized. The criminalization of profit-taking by third parties to prostitution has long existed. This legal practice was consolidated in the mid-20th century during the liberalization of the regulation of selling sex (UK Parliament 1957) and remains today (UK 2003). Individuals can sell sex and buy sex without criminal or other legal sanction in Great Britain. The purchase of sex was made illegal in Northern Ireland (part of the UK, but not Great Britain) in 2015.

In Germany (and Austria, the Netherlands, and Switzerland), like elsewhere, coercion is illegal, but all sides of the sex trade are legal: selling, buying, and profit-taking. The sale of sex is treated as an occupation. Rarely, however, do brothels or other places of prostitution assume the role of employers, and rarely are sellers of sexual services employees. Estimates in Germany are that 70–80% of persons selling sex are ‘solo self-employed’ (BMFSFJ 2007) who, under German law, are not covered by labour standards, are not wage workers, and do not benefit from social insurance for employees, to which employers are mandated to contribute. In most countries, self-employed people bear all of the economic and social risks of their economic activities themselves. Brothel owners typically rent space, at rates well above normal rental prices, to persons selling sex. Brothel owners also typically provide other services to clients for fees (alcohol, food). Thus, brothel owners and persons selling sex are in a renter-tenant, not an employment relation. The employment relation implied by the term ‘sex worker’ is the basis for the claim that legalization ‘empowers’ those selling sex. In fact, they are better classified as precarious and bogusly self-employed (Apitzsch et al 2015). The four patterns of regulation of the sex trade are summarized in Table 6.1.

The abolition approach is practised in the US. Policy variations in Europe, and the debates that inform them tend to revolve around the Swedish case, often referred to as the ‘Nordic model’ of criminalizing buyers, versus the legalization of the trade in Germany, often referred to as empowerment of those selling sex. From the perspective of trafficking chains, however, the important variation is whether policies criminalize profit-taking by third parties. Both Sweden and Great Britain do so, Germany does not.

German practices and developments

The German case offers an opportunity to explore the claim that legalization is a pathway to preventing coerced sexual exploitation, unlike in Sweden where this is done by removing demand, but also unlike in Great Britain (and Sweden) where this is done by removing profit-taking.

Germany formally legalized prostitution in 2001 with the ‘Law to Regulate the Legal Relations of Prostitutes’ referred to as the ‘Prostitution Law’ (BGB 2001). This law did little except legalize prostitution. The assumption behind the 2001 law was that persons in prostitution would gain legal rights, for example, to claim wages and seek redress in labour courts.

A major reform of this law in 2016 was tied to Germany’s transposition of the 2011 EU Anti-Trafficking Directive. On 11 October 2016, the German parliament passed the ‘Law for Improving the Fight against Human Trafficking’ (BGB 2016b) to bring Germany in line with EU law, then ten days later, the ‘Law for Protecting Persons Engaged in Prostitution’ (BGB 2016a). Why this was necessary is the subject of this section.

In Germany, the criminalization of the use of coercion against persons in prostitution, and, for a short time, also of profit-taking (defined as deriving economic advantage from prostitution), both preceded the development of the civil legal regulation of the sex trade. Selling sex was never criminalized per se in Germany, though it was defined in law as an immoral act of taking advantage of another person (BGB 2002). The first explicit mention of trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation in the criminal code was in 1973, when a code originally criminalizing the use of coercion to force a person into any form of fornication was revised into a code defining and criminalizing human trafficking, which at that time was synonymous with trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation (that is, other forms of exploitation were not considered, StGB 1973). The 1973 code defines trafficking as the use of violence, coercion, or cunning to lead a person into prostituting themselves, and explicitly defines the ‘exploitation of vulnerability’ as a criminal act (Ausnutzung der Hilflosigheit) in relation to a person being in a foreign country. This focus on foreign persons selling sex was reiterated in a 1992 reform of this code which defined ‘severe human trafficking’ as any commercial recruitment of foreign persons into prostitution that takes advantage of their vulnerability as foreigners (StGB 1992).

Two other codes outlawing coercion were reformed in 1998 to outlaw profit-taking. The §180a of the criminal code covered persons ‘commercially operating an enterprise within which persons prostitute themselves’. This included both rendering persons prostituting themselves personally or economically dependent and also ‘promoting prostitution through measures which go beyond the mere provision of an apartment, lodging or stay and the service connected to this’ (translation by Shire, StGB 1998a). The code on pimping (Zuhälterei) was similarly extended in 1998 to include any profit-taking, by defining procurement as the promotion or exploitation of a prostitute for purposes of ‘deriving an economic advantage (Vermögensvorteil), or of promoting the commercial mediation of sex by determining the place, time, extent or any other aspect of the exercise of prostitution or of preventing a person from stopping to prostitute themselves’ (StGB 1998b). In sum, the codes criminalized all forms of promoting or procuring the prostitution of others that were either coercive or undertaken for profit. Thus, up until the 2001 law, Germany – like most other countries in Europe – outlawed profit-taking in the sex trade.

The 2001 law legalizing prostitution was claimed to remove the moral stigma of selling sex, and to give sellers legal status, ‘empowering’ them to claim rights in labour courts, for example, for unpaid wages. The law includes three articles summarized in Table 6.1. The first states that: ‘Sex acts undertaken with an agreed upon payment are agreements with a legal standing. The same holds for employment relations of persons for sexual services for a determined time in exchange for payment’ (BGB 2001, translation by Shire). The second article established the right of prostitutes to make legal claims in cases when agreed-upon payments were not upheld. The third declared that persons in employment relations in prostitution had full entitlement to make and claim social insurance contributions and benefits.

What went unrecognized, as shown in Table 6.2, was how the legal change led to removal of the codes in criminal law that prohibited profit-taking. In the code covering the promotion of prostitution, the title was changed from ‘promotion of prostitution’ to ‘exploitation of prostitutes’; the section prohibiting promotion beyond facilitation was deleted (StGB 2002); within the section covering pimping (which remained a crime), the prohibition of ongoing profit-taking was deleted (StGB 2001b). These changes were made on the day the Prostitution Law was enacted (1 January 2002), effectively legalizing all forms of third-party profit-taking, while continuing to criminalize coercion in the sex trade.

The growth in the industry since legalization has been enormous, with observers often claiming that Germany has become the ‘brothel of Europe’ (Klein 2021).

German federal states had the right to ban prostitution for reasons of public order and protection of youth, and to delegate this capacity to local authorities, in a clause introduced into the 1974 German code. Typically, this was used to shut down street prostitution (Walby et al 2016b; EGStGB §297 2022). A new code was introduced into the civil law at the same time as the 2001 Prostitution Law was enacted to permit and encourage federal states to monitor prostitution, and to encourage localities to suppress crimes of pimping and trafficking (EGStGB 2022). The case of Dortmund, a municipality that made strong use of this regulatory possibility, is discussed later in this chapter. Since such regulations were voluntary, wide variations existed across the 16 German federal states. The City of Dortmund (discussed in the following) is exemplary in how it made use of commercial law to regulate and monitor the urban sex trade.

The legalization of prostitution in Germany coincided with preparations in the EU to support and adopt the 2000 UN Protocol on trafficking (UN 2000a), a process which began to draw attention to possible links between the sex trade and sexual exploitation. Germany did not seek to reduce demand, in fact, the industry grew. The UN Protocol was important for emphasizing protecting and supporting victims. In Germany, the public imagery of persons in the sex trade was of ‘empowered workers’ and not victims of sexual exploitation. Yet, most sellers of sex were not in an employment relationship, but self-employed, and thus had no recourse to labour law, labour standards, employees’ social insurance, or any of the other benefits of a dependent employment relation. By the mid-2000s in Germany, it had become clear that such solo self-employment was in fact a precarious employment relation (Apitzsch et al 2015).

In 2005, Germany ratified the Palermo Protocol, necessitating again a round of reforms in the German criminal code, this time adding rather than removing clauses. The code outlawing severe human trafficking (StGB §181 2001a) was eliminated, and a new code (StGB §232 2005a) was introduced, outlawing human trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation, defined as ‘the exploitation of a situation of force or vulnerability in relation to being in a foreign country for the purpose of taking up or continuing prostitution’. Thus, again, Germany signalled that trafficking/modern slavery was something relevant for migrants, not for German citizens. A second code was added to outlaw trafficking for purposes of labour exploitation (StGB §23 2005b; BKA 2009).

The ratification of the UN 2000 Palermo Protocol required attention to the status of victims in German law, especially those who were irregular migrants. Laws covering witness protection were extended to ‘victim-witnesses’ of human trafficking. A 2004 EU Directive required Member States to extend stays of residence to victims to enable prosecutions (Council of Europe 2005). German immigration law was changed to permit residence for persons cooperating with authorities for the duration of criminal proceedings. Yet, as elsewhere, victims without residence permits were subject to deportation at the end of court proceedings (BKA 2009, 49–59).

As noted previously, a new code was introduced in the civil law at the time of the 2001 Prostitution Law to encourage federal states to monitor prostitution, and to encourage localities to suppress crimes of coercion – pimping and trafficking (EGStGB 2022). Ultimately this was delegated to the local level of public administration, where a few regulatory interventions were introduced to prevent coercion, identify, and protect victims of trafficking/modern slavery. The City of Dortmund was among the most active municipalities to do so.

Situating German developments

Crime statistics on trafficking provide another insight into the effectiveness of the regulation of the prostitution industry for preventing trafficking. Criminal statistics showed very low levels of trafficking prosecutions in Germany under both the 2001/2002 and the 2016/2017 Prostitution Laws. These figures only include victims registered with the police, not victims identified by NGOs that are active in supporting persons in prostitution. The Coordination Organization against Human Trafficking, Germany (KOK), in a report on a consortium of 19 NGOs engaged in victim support in Germany, estimates double the number of identified victims, less than 20% of whom are known to have been identified in crime reports (KOK 2021). The crime statistics and KOK reports both locate most of the registered victims in non-licensed commercial prostitution, in private apartments and homes, and, in the case of the NGO reports (different from the crime statistics), among migrants from West Africa who, unlike EU member state citizens, often have irregular migration status and thus face exacerbated vulnerabilities (BKA 2020, 2021, 2022; KOK 2021). KOK reports 44% of the victims identified by its consortium of NGOs as being from the African continent; the crime statistics report is 5% (KOK 2021: 8; BKA 2022: 9). However, registered persons in prostitution and persons prostituting themselves in licensed brothels and bars are also among those identified by the police and NGOs as victims of trafficking. In 2020, 19% of the victims identified in crime statistics were registered prostitutes, and 22% of all victims were active in brothels and bars, the core of the legal sector (BKA 2022: 11). These statistical reports suggest that the law has not removed crime from the prostitution economy.

There was significant growth in the number of persons selling sex in Germany after the 2001 legalization, from 200,000 in 2002 to 400,000 by 2016 (BBC 2016) with some estimates of the increase as high as one million (Klein 2021). Such a large and growing prostitution industry was not evident in countries where profit-taking from prostitution was not legal. A report by the UK Home Affairs Committee (2016) estimated about 70,000 persons selling sex in Great Britain, with Swedish estimates based on advertisements at a maximum of 7,000 offers, but with much lower estimates of persons selling sex (Mujaj and Netscher 2015). The countries where profit-taking is not legal have less sex trade than Germany. For most of this same period, in Sweden the number of victims of human trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation was under 50 persons, and the number of persons procuring ranged between 70 and 120 (Walby et al 2016a: Table 5.7, 72). In Sweden, where buying sex is illegal, the number of persons apprehended for buying sex was higher overall, with large yearly swings, which by the 2010s ranged between 500–1,000 (Walby et al 2016a: Table 5.7, 72). In Great Britain, where selling and buying sex is legal, but profit-taking from the sale of sex is illegal, the numbers of presumed victims were higher than in German NGO reports (in 2011–13, between 600 and 1,100), suggesting better enforcement within a much smaller sex trade (Walby et al 2016a: Table 5.8, 73).

Does the extensive regulation of prostitution in civil and criminal law in Germany reduce trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation? Does the fully legal model have less trafficking than those that prohibit profit-taking?

Germany has a large sex industry, probably the largest in Europe, and is colloquially referred to as the ‘brothel of Europe’. In comparison, prostitution appears to be lowest in Sweden, though not eradicated. Better data is required, but based on available evidence, a preliminary assessment of the link between legalized profit-taking and trafficking/modern slavery suggests a relation. The regulations introduced in 2001 and 2016 failed to extend labour rights and general welfare protections to persons in prostitution. The share of persons in prostitution who register is low, and the most vulnerable populations of sellers – migrants without residence permits – cannot register without a risk of deportation. Registered sellers and licensed businesses are estimated well below the actual populations of persons in and places of prostitution. Within the legal sector, new business practices moving persons between brothels evade the monitoring and law enforcement practices in place.

The problems with the sex trade in Germany have led to debates about adopting the ‘Nordic model’ in Germany, now supported by persons who have exited prostitution (such as Sandra Hucke), a coalition of over 40 movements against legalized prostitution (Bündnis Nordisches Modell), the popular feminist magazine Emma, and members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (ASF 2021a, 71), including the current German Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach. The women’s caucus of the Social Democratic Party of Germany remains focused on debates about the Nordic Model rather than the key driving factor of profit-taking (ASF 2021b: 72–4).

Conclusion

Trafficking chains are driven by profits. Trafficking chains profiting from sexual exploitation mainly victimize women. A large share of victims are migrants; an unknown number of victims are irregular migrants, reluctant to report to authorities.

Each link in a trafficking chain has three sides – sellers, buyers, and profit-takers. This structure applies to the operation of prostitution – persons selling sex/being sold, persons buying sex, and businesses transacting the sex trade. Sellers of sex are rarely employees of brothels, but self-employed. Brothels are rarely their employers but provide facilities and services for fees. Law regulates the sex trade in one or more of these three dimensions. Coercion, in the form of pimping and forced prostitution, and the prostitution of children are criminalized nearly universally.

The regulation of the sex trade varies in whether and, if so, which sides of the sex trade are criminalized or legalized or regulated using non-criminal laws and policies.

The US deviates in its criminalization of all three sides of the sex trade. The consequence is that persons selling sex, whether they are in situations of vulnerability or not, are criminalized.

Regulations of the sex trade in Europe do not criminalize the sale of sex. Polities vary in the extent to which they offer welfare services to persons in situations of vulnerability who sell sex. Anti-trafficking law requires all countries to do so, when those selling sex are identified as victims of trafficking/modern slavery. Extensive public provision of welfare guarantees that women and other disadvantaged groups will have choices other than selling sex for livelihoods. Development policies – especially those directed towards including equity with sustainable forms of economic growth – potentially reduce the sex trade, including migration into this sector.

The most important regulatory variation from the perspective of anti-trafficking concerns profit-taking in prostitution. The criminalization of all third parties taking profits from the sex trade prevents its growth as an industrial sector. This is the policy pathway of most European states, but they pursue this in one of two ways.

The first, characteristic of Great Britain, is the direct criminalization of third parties and of profit-taking from the prostitution of others. The sex trade is prevented from growing as an industrial sector, but it is not removed from the economy. Selling and buying sex are tolerated when enacted between private individuals.

The second pathway to criminalizing profit-taking is characteristic of Sweden and often referred to as the Nordic model. Sweden criminalizes buying and profit-taking, and does so as part of gender equality policy. Usually however, only the criminalization of buying is associated with the Nordic model; this misunderstands the breadth of its policy interventions, including welfare and criminalizing profit-taking.

The main contrast within Europe is between states that criminalize versus those that legalize profit-taking. Germany is the largest EU Member State legalizing profit-taking. Prostitution in Germany is an industrial sector, the size of which is reported annually in statistics on enterprises and persons. Prostitution is regulated extensively through commercial law, as are persons in prostitution. Coerced sexual exploitation in prostitution is illegal under criminal law. Multiple bodies of law implemented at different levels of public administration regulate prostitution. In public discourses, prostitution law is often associated with the empowerment of ‘sex workers’. Persons selling sex in Germany, however, are mainly self-employed and thus not covered by employment law and labour standards. Access to health checks and social consultations is contingent on registering as sellers in the sex trade. Evidence suggests high rates of non-compliance, meaning even these protections are not available. Business regulations impose extensive obligations on commercial prostitution services, including those that take place in private residences. The statistics on licensed businesses suggest that a large segment of the industry does not comply. It is probably the case that most profits are taken in the unlicensed settings of the sex trade, such as in private homes, and facilitated through platforms.

This chapter has examined the different policy pathways in the prevention of trafficking/modern slavery for purposes of sexual exploitation in relation to prostitution as an industry. All the countries examined have fully criminalized coercion in the sex trade. The US diverges from Europe by criminalizing the sex trade altogether. The main variation is the criminalization of profit-taking. The question in anti-trafficking policy is not whether to criminalize, but what to criminalize and in doing so, how to balance criminal justice with other policy fields that can make trafficking/modern slavery as business models less profitable.

Introduction

Trafficking/modern slavery is a single field with multiple sub-types. Trafficking chains are structures of exploitation, legal and illegal, localized and global, that exist to generate profits from the exploitation of the vulnerabilities of others. The theory of trafficking/modern slavery developed in this book identifies the root causes of trafficking/modern slavery in systems of inequality and coercion, encompassing the whole of society and differing across varieties of modernity. Multiple regimes of inequality are relevant in how trafficking chains emerge and operate: colonialism and gender as well as capitalism. The ‘whole of society’ is implicated in trafficking/modern slavery, spanning the institutional domains of economy, violence, polity, and civil society. The ‘whole of government’ is needed to address policy adequately. The extent and operation of trafficking/modern slavery differs in varieties of modernity: social democratic, neoliberal, and authoritarian.

Laws addressing trafficking/modern slavery have been built cumulatively over two centuries, with multiple legal concepts, including but not limited to crime. While global in scope, laws are unevenly implemented in national and regional contexts.

Data on trafficking/modern slavery includes the UN SDG Indicator on trafficking, which sets productive standards for a measurement framework. The trafficking/modern slavery of women, and of trafficking/modern slavery for purposes of sexual exploitation are underestimated in the estimates by ILO/Walk Free/IOM. An improvement lies in integrating data from the UNODC.

Policy fields for ending trafficking/modern slavery build on anti-trafficking law and evidence, encompassing all institutional domains. Policy pathways span the promotion of sustainable development, deepening democratic institutions, industrial policy, business and employment relations, welfare including special services for victims, security, and criminal justice. While trafficking/modern slavery is a crime, criminal justice is not enough to prevent it and protect its victims. A strategically important policy pathway is the prevention of third-party profit-taking from multi-sided transactions, with a focus on the top of the trafficking chain.

This comprehensive approach to informing policy to end trafficking/modern slavery directs attention not only to fighting crime, itself important, but also to mitigating the inequalities that generate and exacerbate situations of vulnerability upon which profit-taking and exploitation in trafficking chains prey. The complexities of a comprehensive approach are demonstrated in the comparative analysis of the regulation of prostitution: the industry producing the most registered victims, and the largest concentrations of women, including significant shares of migrant women.

This book contributes to scientific knowledge about the root causes, structures, and policies to end trafficking/modern slavery, and the forms of modernity where this is possible. It aims to move beyond polarized debates, as on the sex trade, and single-discipline concerns with one dimension (economy or crime), with an analytical focus on root causes and comprehensive solutions to advance knowledge and inform action. Where research proceeds in siloed disciplines, the knowledge generated remains too narrow. This book develops a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to generating knowledge and informing policy.

The following conclusions are offered.

On ‘what is it?’ There is a single field of trafficking/modern slavery, with multiple sub-types. The concept of trafficking chain with multi-sided transactions is developed.

The ‘root causes’ lie in systems of inequality and lack of democracy. Multiple regimes of inequality are relevant, colonialism and gender as well as capitalism. The analysis concerns the ‘whole of society’ analysis, including institutional domains of economy, violence, polity, and civil society. Trafficking/modern slavery exists to different extents and forms in different varieties of modernity – social democratic, neoliberal, and authoritarian.

On ‘law’, a single field of trafficking/modern slavery has been built cumulatively over two centuries, with multiple legal concepts – not solely that of criminality – which, while global in scope, are uneven in their national and regional implementation.

On ‘data’, the UN SDG Indicator on trafficking is a productive setter of standards for a measurement framework. There is an underestimation of the amount of trafficking/modern slavery against women and for sexual exploitation in the estimates by ILO/Walk Free/IOM; this can be remedied by integrating data from the UNODC.

On ‘policies’, the ‘whole of government’ approach to comprehensive policy development is the way forward. A narrow carceral approach is not inevitable. A key policy is the prevention of third-party profit-taking from multi-sided transactions, with a focus on the top of the trafficking chain.

On ‘trafficking for sexual exploitation’, a comprehensive approach is the way forward. The German approach that reduced restrictions on the taking of profits from the sex trade has not reduced trafficking/modern slavery. The differences between the US and the EU should not be underestimated.

On ‘disciplines’, multiple disciplines are contributing to the analysis as well as the building of an interdisciplinary field.

What is it?

Trafficking/modern slavery is a single field. There are sub-types. The debates on priority categories for the sub-types are complex because they stem from the accumulation of multiple legal instruments following two path-dependent traditions: first, forced labour (ILO 1930) and practices similar to slavery (UN 1956), of which the ILO is ‘guardian’; and second, trafficking (UN 2000a), of which the UNODC is guardian (Chapter 3). The earlier forced labour tradition includes categories of forced labour, subdivided into state and private commercial, with commercial subdivided into labour and sexual; further additional categories are of state forced labour and forced marriage. The later trafficking tradition has categories of trafficking for purposes subdivided into labour, sexual, and other (within which is trafficking for organs, forced begging, and forced marriages, and potentially more), with little visibility for forced marriage and state forced labour, though they are not definitionally excluded (Chapter 4).

There has been some movement towards integrating these two traditions, and to giving precedence to the categories embedded in the later legislation, but legacies of the first tradition are still significant. This has implications for the collection and presentation of quantitative data (Chapter 4). This move towards integration and the further steps to advance it is embraced here. This means: treating as equivalent trafficking for labour exploitation and private commercial forced labour; treating as equivalent trafficking for sexual exploitation and private (forced) commercial sexual exploitation; using the category of state forced labour; using the category of forced marriage (rather than treating it as a sub-set of ‘other’ forms of trafficking); using the category of ‘other’ forms of trafficking to encompass that for organs, forced begging, and further miscellaneous forms. These categories are treated as parallel rather than as hierarchically nested: trafficking for labour exploitation (private commercial forced labour); trafficking for sexual exploitation (private commercial (forced) sexual exploitation); state forced labour; forced marriage; trafficking for other purposes, including organs. This merges the various fragments and traditions into a single field of trafficking/modern slavery.

The concept of third-party profit-taking from multi-sided transactions in trafficking chains is developed to cover the commercial forms of trafficking/modern slavery (but not the less frequently monetized forms of forced marriage or state forced labour).

Trafficking/modern slavery is not a market, even when monetized. The person being exploited does not have agency because of the coercion, thereby contradicting concepts of markets as voluntary exchanges. Profit is taken by third parties from these multi-sided transactions in which the victim is treated as if they were an object for sale. This is represented visually as a triangle (see Figure 1.1, Chapter 1).

The concept of ‘trafficking chains’ is developed to capture the links between multiple connected processes from recruitment to movement to procuring the sale of a service, which can make up trafficking/modern slavery. This builds on earlier concepts of commodity chains, supply chains, and care chains, which recognize that there are multiple points of profit-taking along the way (Chapters 1 and 2).

Root causes

The root causes of trafficking/modern slavery are to be found in inequality, lack of democracy, and war. They are based in social systems, not a few bad individuals. Trafficking/modern slavery is rooted in regimes of inequality, of capital, coloniality, and gender across the institutional domains of economy, violence, polity, and civil society, which result in varied patterns of modernity (social democratic, neoliberal, authoritarian). Understanding the root causes of trafficking/modern slavery requires a whole of society approach.

Trafficking/modern slavery varies over time and place: it is not inevitable. It is shaped by resilience and resistance, negotiation and struggle, projects seeking to deepen democracy and oppose war. Trafficking/modern slavery is more likely where there is more inequality, corruption, and war, and less likely where there is a greater depth of democracy (Chapter 2).

Law

Trafficking in human beings/modern slavery is a single field of law and practice, despite the multiplicity of terms. It builds on a long tradition of development of international legal instruments to combat and prevent slavery and related practices. It culminated in the 2000 UN Palermo Protocol that builds on and advances this development, extending its reach and significance. It concerns not only law to criminalize individual traffickers, but also further bodies of law to mitigate the harm to victims, and to engage in preventative actions in relation to organizations and institutions. This is a global development, challenging traditional notions of national states as sovereign on issues of law and order. The interpretation and implementation of the laws varies between global regions and countries. The most effective interventions invoke the full range of laws, not only criminal prosecutions of individuals, including regulation and governance of major institutions.

Trafficking/modern slavery is a single field of law that makes it illegal under international law to control another person for the purpose of exploitation. The legal instruments share common features, though there are differences in terminology and content, and they have been growing in reach and significance for more than 200 years. The most developed international legal definition of trafficking is in the UN 2000 Protocol on trafficking, which includes the exploitation of the vulnerability of others, and which extends the reach of the law into institutions beyond individuals.

This builds on a long history of many international legal instruments intended to stop slavery and related practices, from the 1814 Treaty of Paris onwards (see Legal Instruments). These include: 1926 Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery; 1930 Convention Concerning Forced and Compulsory Labour; 1956 Supplementary Convention on Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery; 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court; and the 2000 UN Palermo Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, Supplementing the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

These legal instruments have been transposed into the laws of national states, sometimes mediated by the actions of regional entities such as the European Union and the Council of Europe, with some variations between states. The interpretation of the legal concepts and their implementation varies between countries.

The different legal concepts in these international instruments, while in some ways surpassed as international law has developed, nonetheless, leave legacies in organizations, shaping their activities and priorities. This can be seen in the activities of the ILO and UNODC (Chapters 4 and 5). These legacies are path-dependent developments of policy and data associated with each of these institutionally rooted legal concepts. All the legal concepts continue to be relevant, since they shape how specific actors mobilize within their remits, and they are differently mobilized in key analytic texts that theorize the relationship between trafficking/modern slavery and society.

The Palermo Protocol mandates the use of a range of forms of law and policy, including criminal and non-criminal law, economic governance, and welfare development across multiple sites and relationships. The balance between these forms of intervention, in particular, between security (including criminal justice), economic regulation, and welfare has been contested, and varies by state and region. All are relevant. Best practice in the use of criminal law includes its proportionate and targeted use. The analysis of changes in the regulation of the sex trade to reduce trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation (Chapter 6) investigated the implications of different mixes of law and policy. The non-criminalization of the sale of sex while criminalizing third-party profit-taking from the sale of sex was found to be consistent with less exploitation than the models that either criminalized or decriminalized all relations involved. The focus on regulating institutions and practices rather than on individuals was important.

In the authoritarian variety of modernity, the state is not only relatively absent in preventing trafficking/modern slavery, but conducts forced labour itself, often of minorities. This is often associated with colonial regimes, in which there is war, conquest, empire and imperialism. The peoples defeated in war are vulnerable to trafficking/modern slavery both by the actions of the state, and as an indirect consequence of the situations of vulnerability generated by fleeing war.

The law has global effects, even though national and regional interpretation and implementation vary. This challenges notions that national states have effective sovereignty as well as legal sovereignty on issues of law and order. The international legal instruments are the outcome of the actions of global civil society and global capital as well as of states in negotiation with international institutions over more than two centuries.

Data

Women and migrants are disproportionately the victims of trafficking/human slavery, according to the estimates that have been recently developed. The selection of key numerical indicators shapes not only data but the wider field, because the categories and implied priorities are then encoded in the practices of institutions that seek to address them. The UN has become a powerful platform for indicators that have wide reverberations through policy and academic communities. The measurement framework for trafficking/modern slavery and the programme of research for its development are currently fluid, with competing alternatives. The devising and adoption of the UN SDG Indicator 16.2.2 – the ‘number of victims of human trafficking per 100,000 population, by sex, age and form of exploitation’ – is already shaping the field, bringing greater cooperation between UN agencies and states to deliver statistics. No dataset is yet able to deliver the information needed for the comparisons of countries over time. There is tremendous rapid ongoing development of the field of measuring trafficking/modern slavery.

According to the ILO, Walk Free, and IOM (2022), there are almost 50 million victims of modern slavery, amounting to 0.64% of the world’s population. This includes 27.6 million in forced labour and 22 million in forced marriages. Females are more likely than males to be in modern slavery. Forced labour is three times as common among migrant (1.4%) than non-migrant (0.4%) adult workers. These estimates are based on population surveys in specific countries on forced labour and forced marriage, supplemented by administrative data on the ratio of labour and sexual exploitation, expert judgement, and statistical modelling. As argued in Chapter 4, the choice of the source of the administrative data, IOM/CTDC rather than UNODC, has led to an underestimation of the extent of trafficking/modern slavery of women and of sexual exploitation; this can be remedied by substituting data from the more representative UNODC. The integration of UNODC data increases the proportion of female victims and proportion of trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation in the global estimates.

There were 49,032 detected victims of trafficking in the world in 2018, according to UNODC (2021: 25). Of these, 50% were trafficked for sexual exploitation, 38% for labour exploitation, and 12% for other exploitation. Females were 65% of these victims (46% women, 19% girls, 20% men, 15% boys). This information comes from the records of the authorities with whom the victims were registered and does not include any victims who were not registered.

There were 9,429 persons investigated, suspected, or arrested for trafficking, 7,368 persons prosecuted, and 3,553 persons convicted for trafficking in 2018, according to the UNODC (2021: 39–40). The administrative data for victims and traffickers concerns those who are registered with the authorities and is not an estimate of the number of victims or traffickers in the population, since most of these will not be in contact with the authorities.

A very small proportion of victims are registered with the authorities. There are around 50,000 victims registered with the authorities (UNODC 2021) and around 50 million victims in the population (ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022). The ratio of victims registered with the authorities to victims estimated in the population is 1:1,000. Around one in a thousand victims of trafficking are registered with the authorities for assistance.

The method of data collection and presentation shapes and is shaped by the different concepts used to describe sub-types of trafficking/modern slavery. Data is collected from surveys, administrative sources, and expert judgement informed by secondary sources. Surveys have been used for forced labour (trafficking for labour exploitation) and for forced marriage (trafficking for other exploitation), but not for forced commercial exploitation (trafficking for sexual exploitation) and state forced labour. Administrative data has been used for trafficking for labour, sexual, and other exploitation (including forced marriage), but not for state forced labour, and is acknowledged to underestimate forced marriage. Expert judgement informed by secondary sources has been used for state forced labour. Statistical techniques are used to fill gaps, ranging from simple extrapolation to complex modelling. The estimates produced by UNODC use administrative data concerning all registered victims in the world. The estimates produced by IOM use administrative data concerning the sub-set of registered victims that the IOM has assisted for purposes of migration and repatriation, so excluding those trafficked within a country and those trafficked outside a country that did not use IOM services. The estimates produced by ILO/Walk Free/IOM use all four methods. The estimates from ILO/Walk Free/IOM are more comprehensive in the range of categories of trafficking/modern slavery and aim to be a population estimate. The ILO/Walk Free/IOM estimates would be improved through use of the UNODC rather than IOM ratio of labour to sexual exploitation, since this is a more comprehensive dataset on registered victims. Using the UNODC data, the revised estimates indicate higher proportions of women, higher rates of sexual exploitation, and higher numbers of victims overall.

The estimates of trafficking/modern slavery are subject to debate and development. It needs a programme of development, to include, for example: collecting enough data through regular repeated high-quality surveys to make reliable estimates for each country over time; and, review and improvement of the methods of collecting and reporting administrative data on registered victims, which are currently used to estimate the extent of trafficking for sexual exploitation based on the ratio with labour exploitation. The publication of the existing raw data from surveys (such as those conducted by Walk Free) would aid these debates by enabling the normal scientific processes of peer review, investigation, and replication. There are legacies of earlier traditions in the categories used in data collected and presented today; over time, a move towards updated consistent categories is expected. This move would be faster if there were greater cooperation between UN entities, including the ILO, UNODC, and UN Women. The development of the UN SDGs has been important in encouraging the development of data and indicators.

Data is being collected on policies in each country. This potentially enables a comparison of the effect of policies on outcomes. There are gaps in this data collection, for example, the number of labour inspectors, and omission of key drivers, such as the depth of democracy, from key models (for example, ILO, Walk Free, and IOM 2022); this could be addressed in future work.

The impact of trafficking/modern slavery on society can be measured using a costing methodology. The cost for each registered victim of trafficking in the EU is €312,756. This is the cost for society for the lifetime of each victim. It provides some indication of the loss to society and economy caused by trafficking/modern slavery, and the implied benefit if it were reduced. This cost estimate for one region of the world could be revised for a global level.

It is important to build on these advances in data to improve the measurement framework that underpins scientific advances in trafficking/modern slavery. It should include the nuanced differentiation to support specific constituencies while focused on a robust unified framework. This requires further work translating between concepts and their operationalization in quantitative data, the coordination to reach agreement at a global level, and the resources to collect the relevant data, consistently, over time.

Policy

This book offers a comprehensive approach to policies to end trafficking/modern slavery that encompass all of society, regimes of inequalities, and varieties of modernity. The international level of law and policy formation is at the foreground of policy fields and pathways, in shaping the multiple levels of policymaking and implementation. At the most abstract level, the relevant policy fields are strategies for sustainable development, security and justice, and depth of democracy. It includes the engagement of multiple stakeholders in polity, economy, and civil society. The comprehensive approach has principles that are concerned with sustainable development, democracy, international cooperation, the rule of law and due process, human rights, migration, and is gender-responsive, and child-sensitive. It draws on a whole of society approach, with multiple stakeholders aimed at reducing inequalities and increasing the depth of democracy to prevent trafficking/modern slavery.

The international level of policy development is important and builds on international law and the work of several relevant UN entities, including: the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the International Labour Organization (ILO), UN Women, UN Security Council, UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking, UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Slavery, UN Women, the Inter-Agency Coordination Group against Trafficking in Persons (ICAT), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). There are important contributions from regional powers, including the European Union and the US, and from international non-governmental entities, including the Walk Free Foundation, Alliance 8.7, and other anti-trafficking bodies.

There are multiple policy fields where proposals have been made, including the following:

• Economic development: the strategy to generate decent livelihoods for all in a manner that is inclusive and sustainable, as indicated in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

• Financial investment: to implement the principles of the SDGs in policies for global financial investment, including by the World Bank Group and other global investors.

• Industrial policy: reducing (or not encouraging) industries that do not generate decent livelihoods; in relation to the sex trade, the use of sanctions to reduce the scale and riskiness of this industry; in relation to the recruitment industry, banning the taking of fees by recruiters from migrant workers and eliminating or more tightly restricting private fee-charging employment services who sell labour services cross borders.

• Supply chains: due diligence in monitoring supply chains supported by sanctions; implementing all labour standards and fundamental labour rights, including rights of association and representation through independent trade unions.

• Regulating labour: equal treatment in contracts and all terms of employment through the promotion of decent employment conditions for all, including reducing precarity and recognizing trade unions.

• Welfare and social protection: provision of welfare to prevent situations of vulnerability, including income support, health care, and education, without exemptions for migrants, women, and minorities.

• Security: reducing wars and conflicts that generate situations of vulnerability; reducing the consequences of war and conflict zones for situations of vulnerability, including for those fleeing such zones.

• Migration: reducing the exclusions and vulnerabilities faced by migrants (including undocumented and irregular migrants), such as tied visas, in alignment with the UN Migration Compact.

• Criminal justice: implementing the rule of law and due process to ensure that there is justice for all, including women, the minoritized, and migrants; targeted and proportionate criminal justice, focused on the upper levels of trafficking chains, including flows of illicit finance; ensuring that victims are not criminalized.

• Human rights: implementing international legal agreements on human rights, including for refugees and asylum seekers, so that they are not compromised by policies on security and migration.

• Specialized welfare: provision of all the specialized services mandated by the 2000 Palermo Protocol; speedy and comprehensive identification of victims.

• Gender equality: reducing gender gaps in the economy and political participation, ensuring laws on inheritance are gender equal.

• Democracy: deepening democracy in the polity and civil society, reducing exclusions of women and minorities including migrants from decision-making at all levels. This includes not only elections, and the proportionate presence of all in the polity, but also a free civil society, with free associations, active trade unions, and journalism.

These policies intervene across all the institutional domains of society – economy, violence, polity, and civil society. They address key aspects of the inequalities associated with migrant status and gender that generate the situations of vulnerability to trafficking/modern slavery. They are global in reach and consequence, even while there are variations at national and regional (US, EU, China) levels associated with varieties of modernity. The different combinations of policies are linked to the variety of modernity. Securitization is associated with neoliberalization. Targeting criminal justice to the top of the trafficking chain and reducing vulnerabilities through regulation and welfare are associated with social democracy. Using forced labour in support of state objectives is associated with authoritarianism.

Sexual exploitation

How and which regulations can best eradicate trafficking/modern slavery is illustrated in the detailed investigation of different policy approaches in the sex trade, and of the industrial context of sexual exploitation. Trafficking chains profiting from sexual exploitation mainly victimize women. A disproportionate share of victims are migrants. Whether and how the sex trade is regulated has implications for situations of vulnerability, the size of the sex trade, and the availability of this industry for criminal organizations to operate within and across borders.

Variations in state actions, in terms of whether the sex trade is prohibited or not, and – if not – what regulations are applied to selling, buying, and profit-taking produce different outcomes for trafficking. Coercion and force, and the procurement of children in the sex trade are criminalized under the UN Palermo Protocol, the sex trade itself is not. A large regulatory divergence is between countries that criminalize prostitution altogether (the US) and countries that legalize selling sex. The decriminalization of selling sex in Europe (including the UK, Germany and Sweden), but not in the US, has been important in facilitating access of victims of trafficking to welfare and justice services.

Yet criminalization or decriminalization is too narrow a lens through which to examine this issue. Other bodies of law, and variations in approaches to criminalize, exist among the European countries that legalize selling sex. In the UK, profit-taking is criminalized but selling and buying is not. The Nordic model criminalizes buying and profit-taking. Germany legalizes all three sides, but with a dense body of business regulations aimed at eradicating coercion from the sex trade and extending rights to those who sell sex.

The most important divergence concerns profit-taking. The UK and Sweden both criminalize profit-taking from the sex trade, while Germany does not. The emphasis in the Nordic model is on policies to promote gender inequality, such as equality in employment and the provision of state welfare, which is understood to reduce violence and coercion of women as well. Criminalizing profit-taking limits the expansion of the sex trade without the use of criminal law. Sweden goes further by criminalizing the purchase of sex. Germany regulates brothels and other places of prostitution, with the aim of eliminating criminal organizations, but a significant segment of businesses, sellers of sex, and buyers do not comply with the legal obligations. As a result, estimates suggest that most of the sex trade operates in a zone of illegality. The outcome is that the scale of prostitution is low in Sweden and, according to various estimates, enormous in Germany. Trafficking/modern slavery, as victim reports indicate, is not eliminated from the segment of prostitution businesses complying with the law in Germany. Evidence on illegal operations is scant but points to the exploitation of some of the most vulnerable groups of irregular migrants.

Criminalization plays an important role in eradicating trafficking for sexual exploitation, but not in the way practised in the US. Policy approaches that criminalize profit-taking have the potential to disrupt trafficking chains by removing profit-taking opportunities from the sex trade. Criminalizing selling sex is likely to exacerbate situations of vulnerability rather than mitigating inequalities. Legalizing selling enables welfare and special services to better prevent victimization, as well as identifying and supporting victims.

Disciplines and a new interdisciplinary field

Trafficking/modern slavery is developing as an interdisciplinary field simultaneously with developments within disciplines, including business/management studies, criminology, data science/social statistics, economics, gender studies, geography, law, political economy, political science, post-colonial studies, social work, and sociology. Trafficking/modern slavery can be a provocation to traditional disciplines, raising new substantive and theoretical issues that are in tension with orthodoxies, potentially driving forward debates and advances in discipline. There has been much progress and there are many remaining challenges under investigation. These are some examples:

• • Business/management studies. This has contributed to the analysis of trafficking chains through developments in the analysis of supply chains, production networks, and value chains. It has contributed analyses of multiple business models that go beyond simple conceptions of markets of supply and demand, to the recruitment industry, multi-sided markets, and platforms. It is challenging to move beyond voluntary compliance of companies to public authority over private authority, to address corruption, the regulation of financial investment, of businesses and of employment, and the infiltration of legal by illegal markets.

• • Criminology. This has contributed to the analysis of trafficking/modern slavery as a crime, addressing the challenges of implementing a transnational legal instrument in the criminal justice system to reduce the impunity of traffickers, including organized crime. The analysis of trafficking/modern slavery is challenging to the tradition in criminological orthodoxy that theorizes inequality as generating crime from the bottom up instead producing a focus, top-down, on the crimes of the powerful. There are challenges progressing the analysis of coercion in the economy.

• • Data science/social statistics. There has been very rapid development of data, qualitative, administrative, and survey, together with the Indicator for Trafficking in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and modelling, though the data remains contested. There are large challenges given the difficulty of obtaining reliably representative data on a phenomenon that is illegal and intrinsically hidden. Extensive work is underway to improve the quality of data, especially of comparative data over time. There needs to be regularly repeated surveys across a wider range of countries to support the ILO, Walk Free, and IOM (2022) global estimates and the application of the higher quality administrative data from the UNODC (2021) to the Walk Free surveys to improve the accuracy of the global estimates that support the Indicator in the UN SDGs.

• • Economics. Trafficking/modern slavery sits at the margins of a discipline that is centred on quantitative datasets and markets. There are contributions to shift in focus from economic growth to sustainable development, and the increasing sophistication of costing analysis. There are challenges to the discipline in the analysis of non-market mechanisms that are hard to quantify, including crime, fraud, corruption, and regulation.

• • Gender studies. There have been major contributions to the analysis of the intersection of gender, ethnic, and class relations, and in the regulation of the sex trade to reduce coercion. There are challenges in resolving these debates about the role of harm as compared with agency and in addressing matters at a macro and comparative level.

• • Law. There has been much cumulative development of international law, over a long time, using multiple bodies of law, to address trafficking/modern slavery. There are challenges being addressed as to the significance of agency/consent, intention and knowing in the criminalization of coercion.

• • Political economy. There have been contributions to the analysis of supply chains, of the relationship between the global and national levels, of the intersection of economy and polity that are relevant to trafficking/modern slavery. There is a remaining challenge to go beyond noting to theorizing issues of coercion, coloniality, and gender.

• • Political science. There have been contributions in the analysis of the significance of variations in democracy for trafficking/modern slavery, of the role of global as well as national levels of governance. There are challenges being addressed in analysing the intersection of the political with the rest of society in the shaping of trafficking/modern slavery.

• • Post-colonial. There are contributions in the analysis of the legacies of coloniality in unequal global relations, ethnicity, and migration for trafficking/modern slavery. There are remaining challenges being addressed in analysing contemporary as well as historic empires, and in going beyond a focus on culture.

• • Security studies. The understanding of the entwining of internal and external relations of security across conventional frontiers is an important contribution of security studies that is relevant to trafficking/modern slavery. The contestation between the human rights agenda and security is central to some important trafficking/modern slavery debates, especially concerning migration. Engaging with the challenge of integrating a gender perspective into security studies is ongoing.

• • Social work. The profession of social work and its academic discipline contributes analysis of specialized services being developed to progress practices of safeguarding and the mitigation of the harms to victim/survivors of trafficking/modern slavery. There are challenges in addressing the needs of survivors of trafficking/modern slavery for purposes of sexual exploitation; such support has sometimes been outsourced to non-governmental agencies.

• • Sociology. Theories of society are a key contribution of sociology that aid the situating of analyses of trafficking/modern slavery in a wider context, and an energetic building of new concepts. Key remaining challenges being addressed include the understanding of the macro comparative level, the intersection of multiple inequalities, and the varieties of modernity. Trafficking/modern slavery requires a whole of society approach to its understanding.

The analysis of trafficking/modern slavery is developing in multiple disciplines, as illustrated in this summary of contributions and debates, and as a specific interdisciplinary field in its own right, as illustrated in a set of dedicated journals. Both disciplinary and interdisciplinary developments are productive. Traditional disciplines address new substantive and conceptual issues that stretch and develop their theories. The dedicated interdisciplinary space nurtures its development. The opposition to the concept of modern slavery on the grounds that it inevitably leads to a narrow and carceral analysis has been shown to be misplaced by the breadth of research that has developed.

Conclusion

Trafficking/modern slavery is a consequence and cause of social inequality. A lack of democracy is key to its existence. It is a violation of human rights and a serious crime. It is a detriment to sustainable development and economic growth. It is gendered in its causes and consequences. It is an outcome of coloniality, both legacies and contemporary. Trafficking/modern slavery is rooted in taking profits and material benefits using coercion: the exploitation of the vulnerability of others. Coercion matters for analyses of the economy, but coercion and economy are usually segregated into separate disciplines. Treating trafficking/modern slavery as a single field is an aid to understanding; while nuances do matter, divisions distract from the development of a theory of change, of indicators and data, and of coherent policy. Trafficking/modern slavery is global; it is not confined to either rich or poor parts of the world, while struggles against trafficking/modern slavery have been global over many decades. Trafficking/modern slavery concerns systems, not a few bad individuals. Society causes trafficking. The ‘whole of government’ and ‘whole of society’ approaches are needed to end it.

The UN seeks to eliminate trafficking/modern slavery by 2030. This book aims to be a modest contribution to that goal.