Criminal networks, unfortunate circumstances, or migratory projects? Researching sex trafficking from Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe constitutes a peripheral space of the European Union, in which political and symbolic belonging of the nations is constantly questioned. As the migration of Eastern Europeans challenges and redefines geographical and symbolic borders, sex trafficking emerges as a politicized issue related to the construction of the European identity and the surveillance of the borders. The research on sex trafficking is frequently employed by policy-makers in order to justify the increasing control of migration over the Eastern border. In this article, I explore the diversity of methodological approaches in recent research on migration for sex work from Eastern Europe and discuss its implications for maintaining physical and symbolic Eastern border of the European Union. I distinguish between different perspectives undertaken by researchers and demonstrate the relation between conceptualization of the problem of sex trafficking, methodological approaches, and the way Eastern Europe is described in research projects.