ABSTRACT
A very large portion of trafficking literature draws on the world-wide expansion of the commercial sex market under the impact of globalisation, the communications revolution and the general relaxation of codes governing sexual behaviour in some industrialised countries. The so-called ‘exotic industries’ have also undergone diversification in a post-modern world so that they no longer encompasses solely the prostitution going back to the first days of organised society, but also include pornography production, cybersex encouraged by digital platforms, sex tourism in a more mobile world as well as various other life-styles where sex is the core element. This involves men, children, adolescents, gays, lesbians, transgender people but, most of all, young women who participate along a spectrum of choice from agency to involuntarism. Insofar as we can make out statistically, the latter, involving the fraudulent recruitment of women who are captured and then moved into profound exploitation makes up about 50 to 70 per cent of the world-wide trafficked population. This if course depends on the exclusion of labour trafficking which also involves females but is taken by many analysts as a mainly male pre-occupation.
