Sex Trafficking and the Politics of Security
Sex trafficking has emerged as a major concern in global politics, increasingly framed as a problem of international security. Governments, international organizations, and policy-makers often describe trafficking in women and children as a transnational crime linked to organized networks, illegal migration, and border insecurity. Feminist scholars, however, argue that dominant security-based approaches to sex trafficking are deeply problematic. They tend to prioritize state control, policing, and border management, while obscuring the structural gendered inequalities that make trafficking possible in the first place.
This unit examines sex trafficking through a feminist International Relations (IR) lens, focusing on how security discourses shape responses to trafficking and how these responses affect women’s lives, agency, and rights.
Understanding Sex Trafficking in Global Politics
Sex trafficking involves the recruitment, transportation, and exploitation of individuals—primarily women and girls—for sexual labor through coercion, deception, or abuse of vulnerability. While it is often portrayed as an exceptional criminal activity, feminist scholars emphasize that trafficking is embedded in global political and economic structures.
Poverty, gender inequality, lack of employment, conflict, displacement, and restrictive migration regimes create conditions in which women become vulnerable to exploitation. Trafficking is therefore not simply a law-and-order issue, but a phenomenon closely linked to development, labor markets, and global inequalities.
By framing trafficking as a security threat, states shift attention away from these structural causes toward surveillance and control.
The Securitization of Sex Trafficking
In contemporary global politics, sex trafficking is increasingly securitized—that is, represented as an urgent threat requiring extraordinary measures. This framing links trafficking to border security, terrorism, and organized crime.
Feminist IR scholars argue that securitization has significant consequences. It legitimizes militarized policing, strict border controls, and immigration crackdowns, often in the name of “rescuing” women. However, these measures frequently harm the very people they claim to protect.
Women migrants are subjected to detention, deportation, and surveillance, while traffickers adapt to enforcement by using more dangerous routes. Security-based approaches thus intensify vulnerability rather than eliminate exploitation.
Gender, Migration, and Control
Sex trafficking discourse is deeply gendered. Women are commonly portrayed as passive victims lacking agency, while men are depicted as traffickers or protectors. Feminist scholars criticize this binary for denying women’s complex motivations and decisions, including migration for work.
Cynthia Enloe shows how women’s mobility is treated as a security problem, whereas men’s mobility is normalized. States regulate women’s movement more strictly in the name of protection, reinforcing patriarchal control over women’s bodies.
Restrictive migration regimes push women into irregular channels, increasing dependence on brokers and heightening the risk of exploitation. Thus, policies aimed at preventing trafficking often reproduce the conditions that sustain it.
Victimhood, Agency, and Feminist Debates
A major feminist debate concerns how trafficked women are represented. Abolitionist perspectives emphasize sexual exploitation and argue for criminalizing prostitution as a whole. Other feminist scholars stress women’s agency, cautioning against collapsing all sex work into trafficking.
Security frameworks often require women to perform victimhood in order to access protection. Those who do not fit the image of the “ideal victim” risk criminalization or exclusion from assistance programs.
Feminist IR argues for approaches that recognize both coercion and agency, avoiding moralistic binaries that silence women’s voices.
Sex Trafficking, Conflict, and Militarization
Sex trafficking is closely linked to conflict and militarization. War, displacement, and the presence of military forces create demand for sexual services and weaken social protections.
Feminist scholars highlight how peacekeeping missions and military bases have been associated with trafficking and sexual exploitation. These dynamics expose contradictions in security practices that claim to protect women while simultaneously creating markets for exploitation.
Trafficking in conflict zones reveals how security institutions themselves can become part of the problem.
Human Rights versus Security Approaches
Feminist IR contrasts human rights–based approaches to trafficking with security-driven models. Human rights frameworks prioritize protection, consent, labor rights, and social justice, rather than punishment and control.
Security approaches tend to focus on borders and crime, while human rights approaches address housing, healthcare, legal status, and economic alternatives. Feminist scholars argue that without addressing structural inequalities, anti-trafficking efforts will remain ineffective.
Global Governance and Power Asymmetries
International anti-trafficking regimes reflect global power inequalities. Policies promoted by powerful states often shape laws in the Global South, even when local contexts differ.
Women in the Global South are frequently portrayed as helpless victims, reinforcing neo-colonial narratives of rescue. Feminist critiques highlight how global governance reproduces hierarchies of race, class, gender, and nation.
Understanding trafficking thus requires situating it within global political economy and postcolonial power relations.
Rethinking Security: A Feminist Perspective
Feminist IR calls for a rethinking of security in relation to sex trafficking. Instead of asking how states can control borders, feminist approaches ask how women can achieve economic security, bodily autonomy, and freedom from violence.
This involves expanding legal migration channels, strengthening labor protections, addressing demand, and centering survivors’ voices in policy-making. Security, from this perspective, is about justice and dignity rather than surveillance and punishment.
Conclusion: Sex Trafficking and the Limits of Security Politics
Sex trafficking exposes the limitations of state-centric and militarized approaches to security. When trafficking is framed primarily as a security threat, responses prioritize control over care and punishment over protection.
Feminist IR demonstrates that trafficking is not an isolated crime but a product of gendered inequalities, restrictive migration regimes, and global economic structures. Addressing sex trafficking therefore requires moving beyond security politics toward rights-based, gender-just, and inclusive approaches.
By centering women’s lived experiences and agency, feminist perspectives offer a more effective and ethical framework for confronting trafficking in global politics.
References
- Enloe, Cynthia. Bananas, Beaches and Bases.
- Tickner, J. Ann. Gender in International Relations.
- Peterson, V. Spike. Gendered States.
- Kempadoo, Kamala. Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered.
- True, Jacqui. The Political Economy of Violence against Women.
