ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes European, more precisely, German, discourses on trafficking, particularly their racist, sexist, and classist elements. It examines how trafficking and the violence connected to trafficking are represented in cultural narratives and argues that this form of representation itself constitutes a form of violence. Customers are considered alternatively as potential saviors of the trafficked women or perpetrators. Trafficking in women has been primarily discussed as a problem of security—a lack of control over irregular migration and organized crime; it has been posited as a violation of law and, due to its cross-border characteristics, of national sovereignty. The cultural narratives on trafficking, its victims, and its perpetrators, are suffused with endlessly repeated stereotypes. These stereotypes stem from assumptions of trafficked women as innocent, white, and naive victims who are lured into migration and prostitution by an uncontrollable number of creepy, dark, and monstrous villains.
