Introduction

This chapter uses process tracing to analyze one of the pathways identified in the previous chapter. Specifically, this chapter presents the results of Cambodia, whose fsQCA solution indicates that it is the combination of high economic dominance, high globalization, high income inequality, high gender inequality, and low social expenditures important in creating a pathway for human trafficking. The chapter begins by setting the stage with a brief review of Cambodia's history. Following that, the historical processes are teased out to reveal how high economic dominance and globalization emerged due to Cambodia's restructuring and dependence on foreign aid. This has resulting in increasing inequality and corruption and a weakening of the state's role. The relationship such forces have with cross-national labor migration and resulting human trafficking are explored before concluding the chapter.

Cambodia

A brief history

Located in Southeast Asia between Thailand and Vietnam, the Kingdom of Cambodia gained independence from France in November of 1953 (Chandler, 2008). The country was later subjected to heavy aerial bombardments from 1969 to 1973 during the US– Vietnam War (Chandler, 2008; Kiernan and Owen, 2015). At the same time, a military coup in 1970 overthrew the monarchy, ending Prince Sihanouk's 15-year rule (Corfield, 2009; Dayley and Neher, 2013). By 1975, the new Communist government known as Khmer Rouge gained control and changed the official name of the country to the Democratic Kampuchea. The primary leader Pol Pot enforced strict rules and isolated the country from the outside world. Between 1975 and 1979, an estimated 1.7 million people were executed or worked to death (Corfield, 2009; Dayley and Neher, 2013).

The overthrow of the Khmer Rouge government by Vietnamese troops in 1978 began a ten-year occupation by the Vietnamese, under which the country was renamed the People's Republic of Kampuchea. The withdrawal of Vietnamese troops in 1989 coincided with the start of a peace agreement and the renaming of the country to the State of Cambodia (Chandler, 2008; Corfield, 2009; Dayley and Neher, 2013). The UN-brokered Paris peace agreements were signed in 1991, beginning a short-lived period of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) governing from 1992 to the first free election in 1993. The country eventually returned to its former name, the Kingdom of Cambodia, in 1993 with the restoration of the constitutional monarchy (Chandler, 2008; Dayley and Neher, 2013).