Conclusion: Politics Happens

Abstract

On 18 October 2005, the European Commission issued a communication on ‘Fighting trafficking in human beings — an integrated approach and proposals for an action plan’. After naming ‘human rights’ as the fundamental concern in tackling human trafficking, the document immediately emphasizes its dimensions of organized crime and illegal migration. ‘High profits from labour and sexual exploitation’, the Commission points out, ‘are often subject to money laundering and may enable traffickers to engage in other criminal activities and to achieve economic, social or even political power’ (European Commission, 2005a: 4). In January 2006, the UK government also issued a consultation paper on trafficking, which features a neologism, ‘organized immigration crime’, to refer to trafficking and other intersections between organized crime and illegal immigration (Home Office, 2006). The problematization of human trafficking, a phenomenon which, in the words of the Home Office, ‘causes great harm to the individuals involved and to our society as a whole’ (Home Office, 2006: 3), is paralleled by another important development. At the same time that the European Commission was preparing its action plans, Brussels was the location of another event: sex workers organized an international meeting that would lead to a Declaration of the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (The International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe, 2005).