Sex trafficking

A new study will try to put together research from 'the world's most silent and abused women.'

The study will investigate the role of society and culture as a complicit to the process of sex trafficking.

The study by Mega Arumugam, a doctoral student at the University of Leicester, will be launched today at a public Festival of Postgraduate Research.

"Using a combination of in-depth interviews, the study will investigate the prevalence of 'bride trade' and its link to forced marriage in the UK."

According to researcher Mega Arumugam: "By-products such as forced marriage and bride-trade culminate out of certain practices embedded in family and kinship relations within some of Britain's ethnic communities. These practices not only condone exploitation and sexualized violence against women, but can actually encourage sexual trafficking of young girls and women".  

Mega added that the study aims to move beyond the focus on trafficking for the commercial sex trade to include other contexts in which women are exploited as items for exchange or are denied individual autonomy or authority.

Her study will highlight the striking parallel between traditional violence stemming out of culturally-condoned exploitation of women and that of sex trafficking, the modern day slavery. 

"Marriage can be an attractive tool for sex traffickers. The legality of marriage often offers a false sense of security that there is no victimisation, coercion or exploitation involved, hence providing a veil for the perpetrators, and could possibly lead to a means of trafficking women across the UK," according to the study's author.

"When the process of trafficking begin at a more domestic level - with perpetrators ranging from spouses and partners to parents and other family members, the familial relationship between trafficking agents and victims often leads to barriers in disclosure.  This provides the perpetrators with a coercive tool to use and abuse these women at every step of the trafficking game".

"The study will help inform policy makers and communities at large of a criminal network that could link crime to the murky side of social and cultural practices and hence defy the myth that crimes such as sex-trafficking are predominantly organised 'Mafia business'".

"It will also provide a whole new perception to gender specific violence at its most corrosive forms without undermining the foundations of a community's sense of self-identity and its cultural tradition."
 
Speaking about what inspired her research, Mega Arumugam said: "I have always had the opportunity of experiencing the many privileges that life has to offer and now it is my turn, through my research, to provide that hope of emancipation to the women out there who are being abused because of their gendered position within their society.  The research will hopefully give 'voice' to many of these silent groups of women."

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