Combating (child) human trafficking

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reconceptualise the notion of child trafficking by seeking to understand child vulnerability and agency. The research approach focuses on criminal judgements pronounced in Italian courts and assesses how institutional interpretations support perceptions of vulnerability or agency that are often promoted or defined by criminal law perspectives. The attempt is to investigate human trafficking both as a multifaceted phenomenon and as a process to link together the functioning of elements of the human trafficking system that as a prism assumes different shapes in a growing complexity.

Keywords

• Child human trafficking
• vulnerability
• children’s rights
• sexual exploitation
• crime
• institutional actors