Trafficking - an introduction (continued):

With regard to 'pull factors', there is the demand for specific types of labor in certain industry sectors, and a general demand for cheap labor, which is increasingly provided by migrants with an insecure or no work or residency status in the receiving country. These factors are not new and migration flows have existed for centuries.

However, globalization and the increasing gap between rich and poor countries, the fact that is has become much easier for people to migrate whilst immigration policies have become much stricter, as well as the growth of new media technologies that reach millions of people, are all key factors that explain the increasing amount of trafficking cases.

Persons originating from Central and Eastern Europe are still largely trafficked to the West European countries, in particular the European Union countries, however, increasingly to the Middle East and Asia as well. Recent years, however, do show remarkable changes and new trends in trafficking practices. People seem to be trafficked at a younger age, internal trafficking occurs more often and trafficking routes cover greater distances. As for trafficking flows within Europe, countries in both, Western and Eastern parts of Europe, can currently be regarded as countries of origin, transit and destination for trafficked persons, due to considerable changes in trafficking routes. As a result, several Central and Eastern European countries have become countries of transfer and destination at the same time. This applies in particular to women from the former Soviet Union republics of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan), the Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan) and Asia, but from neighboring countries as well. Moldavian women may therefore be trafficked to Russia whilst Russian women are trafficked to Poland.

 

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