Trafficking in Women: The Danish Construction of Baltic Prostitution

Abstract

Based on a systematic reading of Danish newspaper articles and political documents on trafficking in women for prostitution, the article investigates how this debate constructs the gendered subject, and how this construction is inscribed in a particular symbolic geography that facilitates a certain understanding of the Baltic. The article shows that the Danish discourse on trafficking is based on two major concerns: a concern for preserving the human rights of the trafficked women and a concern for the threats of organized crime. These concerns work as inclusionary and exclusionary forces in the identity construction of the Baltic and raise the wider question of how trafficking can be dealt with politically, without obstructing the Danish foreign policy aim of building a stronger identity between the Baltic States and Denmark.