ABSTRACT

Human trafficking, a subject that was heavily mediatized at the turn of the 2000s and 2010s, once again had public repercussions at the national level during the political campaign for the presidency of the Republic in 2022, in the speech by Damares Alves, a co-religionist of then candidate for re-election Jair Bolsonaro. In this article, we analyse the seductive power of the topic and show the disastrous effect of moralizing understandings about the displacement of women to enter the sex market. Our perspective is based on anthropological studies such as those by Jo Doezema, Adriana Piscitelli and Marcia Sprandel. We analyzed police inquiries and criminal cases dating from 1995 to 2012 - the period in which human trafficking for sexual exploitation became an issue in Brazil - motivated by the following provocation: if we are all against sexual exploitation, what do we have in common with Damares Alves?

Keyword:
Trafficking in persons; Trafficking in women; Human trafficking; Sexual exploitation; Gender; Feminism