You have full access to this open access article. This article focuses on mobility as a crucial aspect of prostitution and human trafficking. I distinguish between horizontal geographical and vertical organizational mobility to analyze the context in which women, their families, agents, and other actors decide to move from one place to another in the framework of sex-work activities.
Data used in this article derive from the ongoing research on human trafficking and prostitution in western and eastern Europe. This research is carried out through participant observation among migrant prostitutes and through interviews and content analysis of media reports in several countries. The majority of studies on human trafficking for prostitution emphasize the transnational nature of the phenomenon e.
Women, girls, men, and boys move from east to west and from south to north to work in the sex industry or in sectors such as domestic services, construction, and agriculture. Footnote 1 In these studies, crossing borders is often explained in terms of the transnational flows of goods and people as part of the globalization process.
During my ongoing research in The Netherlands and Belgium on prostitution and human trafficking from eastern European countries, the former Soviet Union, and Africa, I have witnessed some remarkable changes in the sex industry.
At the end of the s, Russian, Ukrainian, Albanian, and Moldovan girls dominated the scene in many Dutch and Belgian cities. In โ, they were replaced by Polish women, who were in turn replaced by Romanian and Bulgarian prostitutes in โ According to a report by the Bulgarian RiskMonitor Foundation, more than 70 percent of Belgian prostitutes still come from Bulgaria.
