Violence against Women, Trafficking, and Migration in the European Union

• Author: Heli Askola
• Date: 01 March 2007
• Published date: 01 March 2007
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0386.2007.00364.x

Violence against Women, Trafficking, and

Migration in the European Union

Heli Askola*

Abstract: This article examines the evolving EU policy against human trafficking, espe-

cially trafficking that targets migrant women for sexual exploitation. It maintains that

even though action against trafficking is now firmly on the EU agenda, current policies

excessively focus on repressive measures and lack attention to the broader setting in which

the exploitation of migrants takes place. This means that current EU anti-trafficking

policy remains ineffectual, and may in some cases even be counterproductive.

I Introduction

This article takes stock of the policies developed in the European Union against one of

the most blatant contemporary manifestations of gender inequality, namely trafficking

in women for sexual exploitation. It is now a decade since the first European Commis-

sion Communication on trafficking was adopted (after the first European Conference

on trafficking in 1996), and many measures then envisaged are now in place. Therefore

it is a good time to take a critical look at where, from the point of view of gender

equality, the last decade has taken measures against trafficking—and, more tentatively,

what, if anything, this anti-trafficking action might reveal about the state of gender

equality in the EU.

This article argues that while trafficking in women for sexual exploitation has expe-

rienced an almost meteoric rise onto the EU agenda, it is still not framed as a phenom-

enon of gender (as well as racial and class) inequality despite the obvious concerns over

gendered harms that it raises. European gender equality law has, of course, evolved into

an impressive body of law from its humble origins, and gender equality is now recog-

nised as a fundamental principle of Community law. Yet the lack of attention to the

gender equality implications of issues such as trafficking illustrate how gender equality

in the EU setting is still largely confined to the realm of the EC in particular in the

sphere of employment, where the primary beneficiaries are EU citizen women. Traffick-

ing, which primarily (if not exclusively) affects non-EU women, is instead regarded as

a matter or organised crime and irregular migration. This goes hand in hand with

a very limited approach to anti-trafficking action: the adopted policies focus on

* Cardiff Law School, Cardiff University, UK. I am grateful to Annick Masselot, Francis Snyder and to the

participants at the ‘State of Gender Equality in the EU’ workshop in Leeds, 21 November 2005. A full

version of the work that this article is derived from will be published as H. Askola, Legal Responses to

Trafficking in Women for Sexual Exploitation in the European Union (Hart Publishing, 2007).

European Law Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2, March 2007, pp. 204–217.

© 2007 The Author

Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK

and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA