The adoption of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime in 2000 led to an increasing institutionalization of the policy of combatting human trafficking in the field by numerous national and international actors. Bärbel Heide Uhl investigates the political and institutional discourses of human trafficking for the first time in a zone of tension: How to constitute the political concepts of human rights protection and security policies against human trafficking? These are often perceived as antithetical. A critical reception of human rights theories and the notion of security actually reveals a complicity with respect to both concepts, the consequences of which develop the political and administrative identity of the »traded people«.
