ABSTRACT
Commonly referred to as the 'new' migration, the involvement of women in this 'East-West' migration has increasingly become a subject of alarm in countries of western Europe, namely with respect to the 'trafficking' of eastern European women for the purpose of prostitution. In their investigations of trafficking of eastern European women for prostitution, some feminist scholars who have approached the topic from the perspective of migration and globalization associate trafficking with illegal migration and perpetrate the narrative of victimhood. In this chapter, the authors have mapped threads of the current official Italian discourse on trafficking of women from eastern Europe for work in prostitution. From the perspective of the actors partaking in this debate the press, religious and feminist organizations trafficking in women for prostitution is regarded as a form of coerced migration. The narratives of victimization and criminality are a form of contemporary fiction that discloses the dissymmetry of power relations in the new Europe.
