and the Construction of Vulnerability - Child Trafficking

also for illegal adoption, stealing, drug dealing, credit card fraud, benefit fraud, and
organ trading. 98
Much of the literature on child trafficking addresses questions about where, when
and why children are vulnerable to trafficking, as well as documenting the experience
of trafficked children. 99 However, the factors identified in this literature as leaving
children vulnerable to “trafficking” are almost identical to the factors that have
more generally been identified as triggering children’s independent migration. This
should alert us to the very real definitional and political problems presented by
efforts to distinguish between “trafficked children” and independent child migrants.
As noted above, these problems are exacerbated by the fact that children very often
have to rely on intermediaries of one sort or another and/or enter into some form
of indebtedness, in order to realise their migratory projects.
The UN Trafficking Protocol provides little help in this regard, for whilst it states
that trafficking occurs when children are moved (by any means, and with or without
their consent) for purposes of exploitation, it fails to define the term “exploitation”.
Without a neutral and standard measure of “exploitation”, it is often difficult
to draw the line between “child trafficking” and child labour migration per se. Just
how exploitative does an employment relation have to be before we can say that a
child was moved “for purposes of exploitation”? And since expectations regarding
the amount of unpaid labour that children will provide within households vary
cross-nationally and within nations, as do social norms regarding the powers that
adults can properly exercise over children, it is also unclear how, without a definition
of “exploitation”, “trafficking” is to be distinguished from the legal movement
of children into households, for instance, through adoption and fostering. 100
Because the boundary between child “trafficking” and other forms of child migration
has not been clearly drawn by any of the key actors involved in anti-trafficking
work, legal and other measures designed to combat child “trafficking” very often
impact on all forms of migration by children. So, for example, a study that involved
interviews with 1,000 migrant children in Mali found that only four had been
forcibly moved. While some were experiencing exploitation, or had been exploited
by the intermediaries who arranged their travel, the majority had actively chosen to
migrate, and were positive about their migration. However, anti-trafficking measures
in the area were premised on the assumption that all child travellers were VoTs.
In the name of protecting children from trafficking, barriers to all forms of child
migration were set in place, thereby making it harder for children to access the
potentially positive effects of migration. 101
Critics also point out that the current policy emphasis on stronger anti-trafficking
legislation and law enforcement, tighter border controls, awareness raising cam-
98. e.g. NHRC, UNIFEM, ISS Project, 2003; GTZ, 2004; ILO, 2002b; ENACT, 2004; Pearson,
2004
99. e.g. ILO, 2000; Pestraf, 2002; ECPAT, 2006; IOM, 2002; Oxfam, 2003; Bump and Duncan,
2003; Phinney, 2002; ESCAP, 2000; Dimenstein, 1994; Centre for the Prevention of Trafficking
in Women, 2003; ILO and IPEC, 2004
100. Anderson and O’Connell Davidson, 2003
101. Busza, Caste, Diarra, 2004; see also Bastia’s, 2005, study of Bolivian teenagers migrating to work
in Argentina
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