Construction of the Human Trafficking Problem in Mexico: Bias of the Concept and Unmet Law and Policy Goals

As in many other countries, human trafficking is a sub-product of neoliberalism and globalization, where more flexible labour legislation and the decline of the welfare state, set a wide sector of society into vulnerable conditions. In the case of Mexico, it represents as a source, transit, and destination country for human trafficking, where most of the victims fall into sexual exploitation and some of them are exploited in forced labour in agriculture, domestic service, food processing factories, construction, the informal economy and begging among other “dirty jobs”. The Mexican government signed in 2005 of the UN international human trafficking treaty, and the first national anti-trafficking law was formulated in 2007 to fulfil the international commitment, aditionaly in 2010 the first national antitrafficking program was released. In 2012 the federal government presented a new anti-trafficking law, later reformed in 2014 with its respective anti-trafficking policy. Thus, trafficking has been defined and redefined by Mexican legislation, leading to a misrepresentation of the concept in different spheres such as in mass media, political legislation and policy implementation as well as in academia.

In most of the cases, human trafficking has been interpreted as a synonymous of sexual exploitation and prostitution, creating complexity on law enforcement process, where the necessities for victims’ assistance, the prevention of the phenomena and, the prosecution of the crime are not met.

Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse the consequences of the trafficking misrepresentations, as well as the unaccomplished duties and goals regarding the antitrafficking law and policy, showing the government lack of responsibility to provide justice access and proper care for the victims.