Researching into Human Trafficking: Issues and Problems

This chapter focuses on the current state of worldwide research on human trafficking and its evaluation. It reviews research on such trafficking and endeavour to answer the following questions: 1) do all researchers speak a common language when they investigate trafficking in human beings for sexual exploitation? Are all researchers investigating the same phenomenon? Can they base their research on existing legal definitions or should they develop new ones? Does the definitional debate/distinction between 'smuggling' and 'trafficking' in current human trade discourse and policy discussions somehow influence the way in which research is conducted?; 2) why is it so difficult to conduct research on human trafficking? What are the main research challenges; 3) do researchers on human trafficking know their jobs, or do they tend to forget the elementary rules of social research methodology while conducting their studies? Can we conceive a better research as far as methods are concerned?; 4) given that research which seeks to measure the magnitude of human trafficking has always been problematic in terms of its scientific nature, and can be taken as a case study, what is its current state? To what extent is this debate scientific, and to what extent is it biased by the need of national and international governmental organisations to feed figures to the press or to justify a 'war on trafficking'?; 5) is what we know enough? Are the directions taken by current research the relevant ones, or can we imagine subjects or sectors that could be investigated to yield more significant help to policy-makers?