" Human trafficking involves the recruitment, movement or harbouring of people for the purpose of exploitation - such as sexual exploitation, forced labour, slavery or organ removal. Victims can be children or adults, boys, girls, men or women, and are trafficked by the use of improper means such as the threat or use of force, fraudulent schemes, deception, or abuse of power. It can occur within a country or across borders. Human trafficking is therefore characterized by an act (recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of people), specific means (threats or use of force, deception, fraud, abuse of power, or abusing someone's vulnerable condition) for the purpose of exploitation (for example sexual exploitation, forced labour, slavery or organ removal)."
UNODOC https://www.unodc.org/e4j/en/secondary/human-trafficking-and-migrant-smuggling.html [accessed May 2024]
Searches in SOLO, our online catalogue, will reveal that both the Bodleian Law Library and the Bodleian Social Science Library have works that will support research in this topic.
Subject searches to use in SOLO to find include:
Human trafficking (International law)
Human trafficking -- Prevention -- International cooperation
Transnational crime
The International Law of Human Trafficking by 
Routledge Handbook of Human Trafficking by 
A Transnational Human Rights Approach to Human Trafficking by 
Sex Slavery and the Trafficked Woman Dispelling the Myths and Misconceptions about Trafficking and Its Victims by "all work or service which is exacted from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily." ILO Forced Labour Convention 1930 no 29
Anti-Slavery International defines "modern slavery as when an individual is exploited by others, for personal or commercial gain. Whether tricked, coerced, or forced, they lose their freedom. This includes but is not limited to human trafficking, forced labour and debt bondage."
https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/modern-slavery/ accessed January 2025
Subject searches to use in SOLO
Forced Labor
Forced Labor (International law)
Slavery 20th century
Slavery 21st century
Modern Slavery in Global Context by 
State Responsibility for 'Modern Slavery' in Human Rights Law by Sex Slavery and the Trafficked Woman Dispelling the Myths and Misconceptions about Trafficking and Its Victims by 
A Commentary on the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings by Sex Slavery and the Trafficked Woman Dispelling the Myths and Misconceptions about Trafficking and Its Victims by 
21st Century Slavery The Various Forms of Human Enslavement in Today's World by 
Precarious Lives : forced labour, exploitation and asylum by