Sex trafficking and the mainstream of market culture

The majority of analyses of the international trade in women focusses on the rôle of organised crime groups in the supply and delivery of women across borders and into the local sex trade. This paper (a) attempts to locate the demand for traded women in a broader analysis of changes in the political economy of ‘developed’ studies and (b) more specifically situates the trade in women in relation to the new-found centrality of sex in the mainstream of popular culture.