Women trafficking networks: Structure and stages of women trafficking in five Dutch small-scale networks

• Published in: European journal of criminology Vol. 20; no. 4; pp. 1506 - 1528
• Main Authors: Diviák, Tomáš, Dijkstra, Jan Kornelis, van der Wijk, Fenna, Oosting, Indra, Wolters, Gerard
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.07.2023; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Center and periphery; Collaboration; Exploitation; Finance; Human trafficking; Law enforcement; Law enforcement agencies; Recruitment; Trafficking; Women; sex trafficking; criminal networks; exponential random graph model; women trafficking; social network analysis
• ISSN: 1477-3708; 1741-2609
• DOI: 10.1177/14773708211053135

In this study, we investigated the relation between the different stages of women trafficking (i.e. recruitment, entrance, accommodation, labor, and finance) and the structure of five criminal networks involved in women trafficking in the Netherlands (Ns ranging from 6 to 15). On the one hand, it could be argued that for efficiency and avoidance of being detected by law enforcement agencies, the network structure might align with the different stages, resulting in a cell-structured network with collaboration between actors within rather than across stages. On the other hand, criminal actors might prefer to collaborate and rely on a few others, whom they trust in order to circumvent the lack of formal opportunities to enforce collaboration and agreements, resulting in a core-periphery network with actors also collaborating across stages. Results indicate that three of the five networks were characterized by a core-periphery structure, whereas the two other networks exhibit a mixture of both a cell-structured and core-periphery network. Furthermore, using an Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM), we found that actors were likely to form ties with each other in the stages of recruitment, accommodation, and exploitation, but not in the stages of transport and finance.