Just trust me and you’ll make a fortune – relationships between offenders and victims of human trafficking

ABSTRACT

Despite the increasing amount of research on human trafficking, certain aspects of the phenomenon have remained less studied. For many years, research had focused on trafficking for sexual exploitation and men-exploiting-women cases. Recently, the body of literature has become more diverse, and different forms of trafficking have been recognised. However, the trafficking research has largely ignored the notion of intersectionality, although intersectionality has been applied in several studies, for example, on domestic violence. This article deals with the relationships between offenders and trafficked persons. The study asks what is the nature of the relationships between them. Furthermore, the intersectional approach is applied to analyse what factors make trafficked persons prone to exploitation and, on the other hand, keep them in the exploitative situation. The study also focuses on the power relations between the parties involved. The data consists of trafficking in human beings court judgments from the Finnish courts. The intersectional analysis focuses particularly on the close reading of two cases. The analysis shows that many intersecting factors are linked to the victimisation of trafficked persons. Furthermore, the exploitative relationships between offenders and trafficked persons display many features of unequal distribution of power.

KEYWORDS:

• Human trafficking
• exploitation
• victim
• offender
• relationship
• intersectionality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Trafficking in human beings was criminalised in Finland in 2004. The first judgment was given in 2006 (Helsinki District court). In 2006−2011, the cases dealt with in courts were mainly related to trafficking for sexual exploitation/prostitution. The first judgment for trafficking for labour exploitation was reached in 2012. By the end of 2014, there were no THB cases in court proceedings in Finland dealing with organ removal, forced marriages or forced criminality. In general, the number of judgments in cases of trafficking in human beings in Finland is quite low, but the number of cases has recently slowly increased.

2. The majority of the court judgments are public.

3. Often the intersectional analysis is about structural inequalities. I am interested in the power relations between individuals. I look at those relations mainly at the individual level, while being aware of the structural factors behind those individual level relations.

4. For research ethical reasons, I have, however, removed certain details of the cases when reporting the findings to protect the anonymity of the persons involved. I do not reveal, for example, the names of people or places, or the countries of origin of persons involved.

5. Recently, the number of trafficked persons who have been exploited abroad, instead of in Finland, has increased in Finland. Many of these migrant victims have been exploited in South European countries before coming to Finland.

6. The names of the trafficked persons used in the article are pseudonyms.

7. The description and analysis of the case is based on the court files of the Judgment 12/5775, Judgment 13/2010 and Judgment 616.

8. The description and analysis of the case is based on the court files of the Judgment 12/2880.