Editorial: Trafficking in Minors: Confronting complex realities, structural inequalities, and agency

Brenda Oude Breuil,Borislav Gerasimov

doi:10.14197/atr.201221161

Abstract

This Editorial introduces a Special Issue of the journal Anti-Trafficking Review of the topic of ‘Trafficking in Minors’. It argues that the urgency of the phenomena of child trafficking and related issues, such as child labour and child sexual exploitation, and the emotional responses they provoke, have often led to superficial and knee-jerk reactions that obscure the root causes of the problems and deflect attention and resources away from grounded, sustainable solutions. It presents a brief overview of the articles contained in the Special Issue and concludes that policy responses and practical interventions to address trafficking in minors need to have the best interest of the child in mind and address the underlying socio-economic and political root causes.

Highlights

On the tenth anniversary of the Anti-Trafficking Review, and with 2021 proclaimed the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour,[1] this Special Issue on ‘Trafficking in Minors’ is well-timed
United Nations General Assembly, Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 July 2019, A/RES/73/327; see ‘International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour’, retrieved 19 March 2021, https://endchildlabour2021.org
There is a respectable pile of NGO reports on the phenomenon, but they often lack academic rigour and are just as often part of the ‘politics of trafficking’

Summary

Brenda Oude Breuil and Borislav Gerasimov

By minors all over the world and the potential new risks of exploitation this may evoke (as well as the climate of moral panic among adults about youths’ internet behaviour);[6] or the recently experienced difficulties of prospective parents to pick up their newborns of surrogate mothers in foreign countries without being charged with ‘child trafficking’—as well as further dramatic developments in this field due to closed borders in pandemic times.[7] Such developments need our attention: be it to distinguish ‘real’ issues from media-induced moral panics, and ‘trafficking in minors’ from other, related but distinct phenomena, or to gain in-depth understanding of the exploitative processes at work.

This Special Issue

Conclusion