Marriage Trafficking ─ Women in Forced Wedlock

This book examines the traffic in women for marriage, a phenomenon that has been largely overlooked in international efforts to address to the problem of human trafficking. In contrast to current international and state-based approaches to trafficking – which tend to focus on sex trafficking and trafficking for forced labour – this book seeks to establish how marriage, as an institution, is often implicated in the occurrence of trafficking in women. 

Through the use of case studies on forced marriage, mail-order bride (MOB) marriage, and Fundamentalist Mormon polygamy, the book demonstrates that certain kinds of marriage may in fact constitute situations of trafficking in persons, and together form an under-recognised phenomenon of ‘marriage trafficking’. Additionally, the book offers a new perspective on the types of harm involved in trafficking in women by developing a framework for identifying the particular abuses characteristic to marriage trafficking. It argues that the traffic in women for marriage cannot be understood merely as a subset of sex trafficking or trafficking for forced labour but constitutes a distinctive form of trafficking in its own right.

The book aims firstly to establish why marriage has tended to not be included in dominant conceptions of trafficking in persons, particularly at the level of international and state-based policy and legislation. The second aim is to determine whether certain types of marriage may constitute cases of human trafficking, in and of themselves, thereby pointing to a broader problem of ‘marriage trafficking’. It will be of great interest to scholars and postgraduates working in the fields of human rights theory and institutions, political science, international law, transnational crime, trafficking in persons, and feminist political theory.

Dr Kaye Quek is a lecturer and researcher in political science in the School of Social and Political Sciences, at the University of Melbourne, Australia.