Human Trafficking: The Complexities of Exploitation is a collaborative endeavour by practitioners and academics working in the field of ‘human trafficking’; a term that does little to convey the myriad acts that underpin the forced movement, exploitation and enslavement of men, women and children across the world. Specifically, the book sets out to locate this trade in human lives within a wider context of exploitative practices and to focus attention on the issues facing victims and survivors.

Trafficking in human beings is a worldwide phenomenon with increasing recognition that an urgent and effective response is required. However, despite legislative developments and the introduction of national and international interventions, responses to victims and perpetrators have been limited in effect. Aspirations to prioritise a human rights model within a wider discourse of ‘vulnerable people’ on the move are frequently overtaken by law enforcement and border control priorities.

As we finalised this edited book in spring 2015, international news reports provided images and commentary on the numerous people believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean on route from Libya. The deaths of unquantifiable numbers of men, women and children were clearly a significant concern to the United Nations, European Union (EU) and individual nation states, yet the identified causes and proposed solutions were contested and disputed. Save the Children estimated that around 400 people, many of them unaccompanied children, died on 13 April 2015 after their boat capsized 24 hours after leaving the Libyan coastline heading for Italy (EU Observer, 15 April 2015). Around 800 migrants were estimated to have drowned over the following days (EU Observer, 20 April 2015). The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) (2014) estimate that up to 3,072 people died in the Mediterranean in 2014, a significant increase from the estimated 700 deaths in 2013. The death toll for 2015 marks an upward trajectory, with over 1,500 deaths estimated in its first four months. Amidst almost universal calls for action, the conflation of terminology used to describe these events has become apparent and disturbing. Political attention to the need to rescue passengers on these unseaworthy craft, initially referred to as ‘migrants’, was soon accompanied by calls for action against ‘smugglers’ (some of whom, it was claimed, had locked hundreds of people inside the hold of boats with no way of escape).