By analysing the complex issues surrounding internal and cross-border human trafficking in Asia, and asserting critical perspectives and methodologies, this book extends the range of sites for discussion and sectors in which human trafficking takes place. The book re-centres human trafficking as an area of legitimate academic inquiry in a region that is often considered as an epicentre for human trafficking: East and Southeast Asia. It thus offers an in-depth analysis and up-to-date knowledge on research methodologies and engagements, patterns and forms of human trafficking, constructively critiquing anti-trafficking campaigns and discourses, and offering examples of good practice within the region that help us move beyond the impasse that currently hampers human trafficking as a field of inquiry in the social sciences. Providing constructive avenues for human trafficking research to proceed methodologically, theoretically and ethically, this book is of interest to students and scholars of Politics, International Relations and Southeast Asian Studies.

This book examines all forms of human trafficking globally, revealing the operations of the trafficking business and the nature of the traffickers themselves. Using a historical and comparative perspective, it demonstrates that there is more than one business model of human trafficking and that there are enormous variations in human trafficking in different regions of the world. Drawing on a wide body of academic research - actual prosecuted cases, diverse reports and field work and interviews conducted by the author over the last sixteen years in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe and the former socialist countries - Louise Shelley concludes that human trafficking will grow in the twenty-first century as a result of economic and demographic inequalities in the world, the rise of conflicts and possibly global climate change. Coordinated efforts of government, civil society, the business community, multilateral organizations and the media are needed to stem its growth.

Trafficking of women and girls for purposes of sexual exploitation across the globe is widely acknowledged as a leading criminal activity. Women of poor countries are particularly vulnerable to sex trafficking. This book identifies the patterns, causes and consequences of female sex trafficking in Nepal, Cambodia and the Philippines. Using empirical evidence this book illustrates the commonalities and the differences among the different countries and recommends that serious attention should be paid to location-specific dimensions of sex trafficking in designing anti-sex trafficking strategies.

This book both considers labour migration in its totality, showing how the divide between illegal and legal migration is often blurred, and also examines how governmental and international measures to counter illegal migration are translated into action on the ground, and what impact on all kinds of migration they have in practice.

This book brings an important new perspective to the study of sex trafficking by considering the different types of social contracts which existed in the past that had sexual labour or activity as an inherent component. It outlines the nature of these social institutions – marriage, temporary marriage, debt bondage, and slavery – which were recognized in local law, carried no stigma, and endured for long periods. It discusses how labour pledged in return for a loan of cash or as a result of a punishment dictated by the state often included sexual labour, and how this could take the form of servicing the master of the house, his guests, or foreign travellers, who paid the debt-holder for the privilege, and how even wives of different ranks, temporary or permanent, and children, were pledged as sureties for loans. The book, which covers the modern states of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, argues that cultural norms are not static, that sexual contracts are more complicated than simply ‘marriage’ or ‘prostitution’, and that as trafficking for sexual purposes increases, those engaging in humanitarian intervention should improve their knowledge of the historical underpinnings of cultural understandings of familial and contractual obligations.

Arguing that trafficking in girls and women is a product of the social construction of gender and other dimensions of power and status within a particular culture and at a particular historical moment, this book fills a niche in South Asian Studies and Women’s Studies. Focusing on the case of Nepal it provides a local, situated analysis of sex trafficking and a model to counter the universalizing rhetoric of the mass media.

This book examines the operations of trafficking and other kinds of 'modern-day' slavery, from a gender perspective. It explores the relationships between gender, poverty, conflict and globalization that are driving today's slave trade. The authors provide an overview of what trafficking and slavery are, their magnitude, and their complexity.

A South Asian sub-regional consultative workshop on Combating Trafficking in Children for Labour ExploitationÓ was held in Oct., 1998. It was attended by participants from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan & Sri Lanka. The objectives were to: present the national studies on trafficking in children for labor exploitation in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan & Sri Lanka; share experiences among countries on what has been done at the policy & operational level to combat trafficking in children; & identify relevant activities at the national, bi-lateral & sub-regional levels, as well as action programs that could be integrated in the U.N. framework for action.

Trafficking in persons is a serious crime that affects the human rights, dignity and integrity of all its victims including women, men, and children in the Association of Southeast Asia Nation (ASEAN) region. ASEAN has made efforts to fight human trafficking through inter alia the establishment of regional counter-human trafficking laws and human rights bodies to establish best norms and practices for its member countries. Nevertheless, the International Labour Organization (ILO) recently declared that there are more than 11.7 million forced labor victims in the Asia-Pacific region encompassing the biggest concentration of forced labour victims in the world. This volume reviews the achievements and the deficiencies of ASEAN’s counter-human strategies at the national and regional level. It offers suggestions for the reform of ASEAN's anti-trafficking laws and for the creation of a regional anti-trafficking human rights body specialized in preventing human trafficking, promoting equal protection of all trafficking victims, and prosecuting human traffickers.