3071-The political economy of new slavery

Victoria Firmo-Fontan 93
trafficking, its persistence, prevalence and consistency, the commerce of
women can be labelled as an unfortunate result of peace, as one of those
phenomena that no one can avoid, and one that is much preferable to
an armed conflict as such. However, the issue does not lie in a zero-sum
interpretation of war and peace, but rather in the experience suffered by
the individual subjected to trafficking, for victimization does not only
lie in the hands of the criminals themselves, but also with the existing
legal framework punishing the corrupt ‘sex worker’ for her ‘indecent’
occupation. In order to overcome some of the conceptual confusion, let
us first look at exactly what trafficking entails in the Balkans and in
Afghanistan. 3
Origins
First, the person, not exclusively though primarily female, is subjected
to what Galtung (1975) identifies as ‘structural violence’ in her own
country of origin. For women who find themselves displaced to the
former Yugoslavia, these are mostly Ukraine, Romania and Moldova,
and most women trafficked within Afghanistan or to Pakistan, are from
Afghanistan. In these countries of origin economic stress and the feminization
of poverty might entice women to seek alternative employment
in another state. Developed by Pearce (1978), the concept of the
feminization of poverty focuses on the sex differences in poverty rates,
while analyzing the processes by which women’s risks of poverty might
be increased. Of an estimated 1,300 million persons worldwide estimated
to be poor, 70 per cent are women (Marcoux, 1997). In the developing
world, although not exclusively, the processes facilitating the feminization
of poverty can be attributed to traditional and religious dynamics,
surrounding inheritance laws for instance, or to a lack of governmental
support for single, widowed or divorced women. For example, many
women interviewed claimed to have had to emigrate as a result of a
lack of access to secondary education due to their sex, limiting their
employment prospects, the latter also decreased by a gender segregation
in employment. The patriarchal system, more severe in some countries
than others, might also influence some women to leave an abusive
marriage, or an alienating condition as a single mother. Some may then
decide to answer an advertisement to become a waitress or a nanny in
Western Europe, or a matrimonial advertisement. Others will contact an
agency that allegedly specializes in finding ‘work’ abroad, the sexual
nature of which may be known by the employment seekers, who may
take their future positions as sex workers as a calculated risk. Indeed,