ABSTRACT
The construction process of the transnational field of counter-trafficking (TFCT) can be traced through international legal and institutional texts. This chapter will trace the process of the construction of the TFCT in three phases: the early period, the post-war period, and contemporary construction after the Cold War. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights primarily provides the understanding of minimum rights for all people and suggests the basis for all the instruments cited in this study. International instruments regulating slavery, work relations, and gender equality started to be introduced in later discourses as the TFCT enlarged and got crowded so that the concept of human trafficking. The first efforts of the contemporary structuring of counter-trafficking started in 1991 with the Conference on the Human Dimension of the OSCE organised by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE was one of the first institutions to produce specific cultural capital via defining, making, and disseminating estimations of human trafficking.
