Eastern Prostitution from Russia
A phenomenon that has been raised increasingly in studies of organized crime is that of traf®cking. Traf®cking gener-ally means the organized trade of either weapons and drugs, and women and children who are exploited for prostitu-tion, pornography or as unpaid labour across the national borders. Th...
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| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.596.1525 http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Eastern_Prostitution_from_Russia_to_Sweden_and_Finland.pdf |
| Summary: | A phenomenon that has been raised increasingly in studies of organized crime is that of traf®cking. Traf®cking gener-ally means the organized trade of either weapons and drugs, and women and children who are exploited for prostitu-tion, pornography or as unpaid labour across the national borders. The pheno-menon also includes smuggling of refu-gees who, because of illegal immigration, have no rights and can be used as unpaid labour or for any other illegal exploita-tion by whomever buys the contract on the illegal immigrants. Traf®cking is mainly an enterprise that is driven as a business but unlike legal trade, traf®ck-ing provides merchandise or services that are illegal or not socially acceptable. (Williams 1999). This article presents ethnographic data 1 from prostitution traf®cking to the Finnish and Swedish Tornio Valley (the border area between the north-west of Finland and the north-east of Sweden). The area is, unlike the middle-European continent, peripheral. It is characterized by its sparse population, abandoned farms, substantial unemploy-ment and lack of women. This makes the area particular in comparison with the continent: the clientele are sparse, the income of the clients is low (due to the unemployment) and social control is high (as the communities are small it is Traf®cking is a relatively new phenomenon in the research agenda on organized crime. In this article the spread of the phenomenon in Scandinavia is described and discussed. Special attention has been given to Russian-organized prostitution in the Tornio Valley (the border-area between northern Finland and northern Sweden). The data for the article consist of observa-tions at special `deposit-sites ’ in Finland and interviews with the authorities concerned (police, cus-toms, social services, Center for |
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