ABSTRACT
Since its adoption in 2000, the Palermo Protocol has become the central document used for purposes of defi ning and dealing with “human traffi cking.” 2 Essential to this legal defi nition of “human traffi cking” are the elements of deception and manipulation, coercion and abuse of authority, as well as debt bondage and forced labor. It is hence theoretically the deceitful nature of the recruitment process and the exploitative conditions of work, rather than the type of work that in principle should qualify a migration trajectory as “human traffi cking” (Kempadoo and Doezema 1998 ). The discourse and politics of traffi cking is driven by various agendas, such as morality, criminality, public order, human rights, labor and migration (Wijers and Lap-Chew 1999 : 189-211). Depending on “whose problems” shape and produce any given analysis or approach, antitraffi cking programs can lead to quite disparate outcomes. A public-order driven approach to human traffi cking can turn counter-traffi cking activities into tools for cutting down on both prostitution and migration. At the heart of this edited volume is a human rights approach. What this article sets out to do is to foreground the perspective of migrant women who have been classifi ed by a nongovernmental organization (NGO) and the French government as traffi cking victims. Yet, what comes out of these interview narratives of migration into the
sex industry in Paris is at odds with assumptions inherent in the paradigm of traffi cking.
