ABSTRACT
In this article, I argue that racial and ethnic women are likely exposed to trafficking due to (1) structural poverty and marginalisation and (2) sexual violence is a common fact in domestic and social realms of socially excluded women and men. Racism affects women differently than men. The coinage of ‘ethnosexuality’ by Joane Nagel is indeed useful, as sex and sexuality are not detached from the social and cultural implications of race, racism and nationalism. My own scholarly interest in nationalism (state building and nation formation) has led me to turn towards racism and ethnicity and by looking at the empirical ground of such concepts these are constructed symbolically and objectively with sexuality. In the light of the evidence gathered, the following themes are interrelated: racist and sexist stereotypes of women are used in the sex industry; traditional patriarchal culture plays a role in reproducing female passivity and submission; racialised and ethnicised groups are prone to experience violence in all its forms, sexual exploitation being one of them.
