This article outlines the development and codification of perspectives on the issue of trafficking in women, and how these perspectives have fed into different policies today. It provides examples of responses by international organisations and political groupings to trafficking as an issue of organised crime, illegal migration, and prostitution. By outlining the various approaches of three prominent feminist groups working on the issue, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, The Global Amance Against tratticking in Women, and the Women's Rights Advocacy Program- the article considers questions about whether it is possible to separate out trafficking and prostitution, trafficking, and migration. It examines what poststructuralist feminist development studies and anthropological tools of analysis can contribute to our understanding of these unanswered questions. Using young women in Russia as an illustrative example, it argues, first, that the trafficking notion hinges on the problematic assumptions of 'choice' and suggests alternative ways of understanding women's agency in the trafficking process. Second, it considers the anthropological arguments that question the difference of sex-work from other forms of work and points to the cultural specificity in the significance attached to the women's body as property and as a site for cultural contestation. To conclude, the article suggests that development policy makers and practitioners need to engage with human rights activists in order to view trafficking holistically as a cycle that begins before women leave the country of origin, encompasses their experiences in the host country, and continues after their return.

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