Project description
A closer look at the traffickers behind human trafficking
National governments spend millions to fight human trafficking and assist trafficking victims. However, research about the traffickers is limited. The MSCA-funded TRAFFICKER project will apply the analytical concept of ‘social circuits’ to ethnographically investigate the business operations and social relationships of human traffickers. The project relies on ethnographic fieldwork concerning the origin and destination countries of the traffickers. Thus, TRAFFICKER will focus on the city of Galati in eastern Romania and prisons in Lisbon, Portugal, among those incarcerated for human trafficking. The project will explain how traffickers carry out human trafficking, how national criminal networks make their business transnational, kinship relations and the social relationship role, and their lives during and after imprisonment.
Objective
During the past two decades, millions of euros have been spent by national governments and international organisations on combatting human trafficking and on offering assistance to victims of trafficking. However, we know surprisingly little about the people who facilitate, manage and orchestrate human trafficking: the traffickers. But who are the human traffickers, if we look beyond the stereotypes? The TRAFFICKER project will answer this question and fill this knowledge-lacuna, by ethnographically investigating the business operations and social relationships of human traffickers, via the analytical concept of ‘social circuits’.
The project is based on ethnographic fieldwork in two sites, in respectively one country of origin and one destination country of the traffickers: (a) the city of Galati in Eastern Romania, and (b) in prisons in Lisbon, Portugal, among inmates that are incarcerated for human trafficking. The TRAFFICKER project builds on my extensive research and fieldwork experience within the fields of transnational crime, third-party facilitation/pimping and sex work. This background is essential to the project, since it provides access to the necessary local networks, as well as providing the needed methodological knowledge and ethical awareness.
The project illuminates:
1) How human trafficking is carried out by traffickers on the ground, and thus how national criminal networks make their illegal business transnational.
2) The ways in which the kinships relations and social relationships of human traffickers hinder or enable their transnational criminal livelihood.
3) The lives of human traffickers both during and after imprisonment and their navigation of legal and illegal work domains.
This knowledge will not only be beneficial for the academic research community on transnational, organised crime, but also for stakeholders such as NGOs, policy makers, international organisations, governments and law enforcement, as well as for the wider public.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-AG-UN - HORIZON Unit GrantCoordinator
1165 Kobenhavn
Denmark