Trafficking in human beings: a literature review

In Europe, fighting illegal immigration is often confused with fighting trafficking in human beings. European states defend and promote their own interests and constantly forget to consider the rights of victims of trafficking. Indeed, it often happens that those victims are treated as illegal immigrants and returned to their countries of origins, sometimes allowed to remain temporarily but only when the victims themselves are able to help the investigation or useful to disrupt the criminal activities in question; again the state interests take the priority. This can be confirmed if we look at the EU Council directive “on the residence permits issued to third-country nationals who are victims of trafficking”6 where an extended stay can be guaranteed only for those victims who wish to cooperate with the competent authorities (Konrad, 2008).
Trafficking in human beings in Europe occurs mainly in two ways; from east to west and from south to north. Central Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) and Southeastern Europe (comprising the countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, FYR Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia) are the two sub regions particularly affected by this problem. These are countries of origins, transit and destination where also intra-regional traffic takes place. The sex markets in Western and Eastern Europe are the results of six different channels of trade: 1) from Russia to Poland and Czech Republic; 2) from Ukraine to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Czech Republic; 3) from Turkey to Cyprus and then into Europe through Bulgaria and Romania; 5) from Somalia to Greece or Italy or from Libya to Greece and Italy; 6) from West Africa to Spain. Trafficking in Northern Europe (1.7 percent of the studies) appears to be largely intra-regional, where the Baltic countries (such as Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) are the starting point (Aronowitz, 2009). Sweden has the most effective system against trafficking in human beings but nevertheless the problem of trafficking prevails, especially because of the organized criminal group of Russian origins called Kemetova (Picarelli, 2009). Concerning Southeastern Europe (3.14 percent of the studies) the situation is almost the same, this region is both a point of arrival and a point of departure; the majority of victims are women from Russia, Moldova and Ukraine. It is noticeable that this region was a major center for human trafficking in Europe in the past, but now appears to be declining. According to a study conducted in the region this decline is not representative of what it is really going on there; indeed, many case are less “visible”. Traffickers have changed their modus operandi and brought women away from the public domain and instead make them work in apartments, via Internet or telephone. An interesting study is the one of the HT Team, Nebraska-Lincoln University (2009), they assumed that victims of trafficking are more likely to discuss the problem with people who are close to them, with a survey with random selected families, another survey of households and a third survey of key informants neighborhood, they tried to estimate the true extent of the problem of human trafficking in Ukraine. The result was much higher than what the other international agencies say.
The situation in Central and Western Europe (22.8 percent of the studies) is similar. Czech Republic appears to be a transit point for trafficked women and men from Belarus Moldova, Ukraine and China; Austria is a country of both transit and destination mainly for commercial sexual or labor exploitation to the detriment of women from Southeast Europe, from Dominican Republic and Nigeria. In Belgium the situation is equally severe with the sexual exploitation of women from Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Nigeria and China; while men are rather trafficked into the country for labor exploitation in bars, restaurants or construction sites as in France, Portugal, Spain and Germany (Aronowitz, 2009). Interesting is that Italy represent just the 1.34 percent of the studies done on human trafficking in Europe when most of the literature agrees that this country is particularly affected by the problem (e.g. Munro et al., 2008). Proponents of this criminal trade are Nigerian criminal organizations, but also Albanians, Romanians, Ukrainians and Moldavians gangs, which mainly involves women from West Africa (Unicri, 2004). Labor trafficking is another plague, which started during the 1970 with the growth of illegal immigration from China that over time offered increasingly cheap labor for textile firms, particularly in the outskirt of Florence. Other forms present in the country are forced slavery in the agricultural sector (mostly in the Calabria region), forced begging and enslavement of children (Picarelli, 2009). As mentioned, the United Kingdom is the most “studied” country in Europe (6.7 percent); 15 out of 223 resources indeed, this is given by the fact that most of the publications are in English. Primarily it is a destination country that receives trafficked women - but also children- from East Europe, the Balkans, China, Thailand and Malaysia.