Recruitment Strategies Used by Mexican Sex Traffickers

Abstract

This article, based on a qualitative methodology that includes in-depth interviews with 43 Mexican sex traffickers, analyses the strategies used by sex traffickers to recruit women from Mexico and Central America demanded by the US illegal sex industry. We conclude that trafficking is a demand-led industry. Traffickers recruit vulnerable women from Mexico and Central America who fit with US procurers’ requirements. Foreign girls smuggled into the United States should be young (in many cases underage girls), beautiful, slim and healthy. Mexican sex traffickers’ job is to entice with salaries in US dollars impoverished Latin American girls who do not want to migrate or enter prostitution. Maintaining trafficked women captive against their will is more time consuming and less profitable than wining women’s will with a salary