ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that by utilising the concept of the sacred we can better understand societal and embodied responses to trafficking for sexual exploitation. The sacred, as a non-religious spatial category, when applied to the data in this study, can cast fresh light on debates around sexual violence, stigma, shame and social exclusion. In particular, the chapter will examine applications for a work visa written by women who have been trafficked from post-Soviet countries into Israel. It highlights a series of responses to these women from governments, society, the media, friends and family and – primarily – themselves; and it offers an alternative conceptual framework. The chapter will do this by interrogating the figure of the trafficked woman and her role in political and territorial stability; by examining women’s embodied experiences of sexual violence; and finally, by exploring societies’ responses to women who have been trafficked and forced to sell sex. Linking to this analysis will be a focus on body boundaries as sites of constant tension and inconsistent values, where the sacred categories of gender and impermeability are experienced as part of a sense of self.
