New research project on human trafficking in the Global South
Women’s sex work migration and human trafficking are seen as severe manifestations of global gender inequality and has received mounting international attention. Simultaneously, women constitute more than half of the worlds’ migrants and contribute significantly to the development of their poor home countries and communities.
The project entitled Women, Sex & Migration – Seeing sex work migration and human trafficking from the Global South explores these forms of migration and their relation to the EU’s increasingly restrictive migration policies seen from the perspective of the Global South.
The project analyses two flows of migration over time: Thai women’s sex work and marriage migration and Nigerian women’s irregular migration to the European sex industry. The research project stimulates theoretical rethinking within migration studies by creating a dynamic approach, which combines social transformations and migration restrictions in a gender perspective. Additionally, migrant societies’ perspective on sex work migration and human trafficking over time will be investigated.
The project is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Thailand and Nigeria. The project is funded by the Danish Research Council, resides at DIIS and is embedded in the international research project ‘Gender, Justice and Neoliberal Transformations’ at Columbia University in New York. Furthermore, a product of the project will be a research-based documentary movie about women’s migration.
Sine Plambech, PhD, is a Social Anthropologist. Her research focuses on international migration, human trafficking, undocumented migration and sex work migration. Her field work sites are Nigeria, Thailand and the EU. She is a previous research fellow at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research in New York. From 2006 the research merged with documentary film making as a way to communicate research to a broader audience. This has so far resulted in three award winning feature documentaries and one short film on the topics of international migration, sex work and human trafficking.