Abject spaces and mimicry: rethinking the embodied effects of spatial containment in trafficking for sexual exploitation

Abstract

The spaces of trafficking for sexual exploitation have profound effects on the embodiment of women who are forced to live within them. This article argues that the spaces of human trafficking can be understood as abject spaces, and as such, they trouble multiple boundaries including those between hidden and exposed, domestic and commercial, and public and private. This article provides a theoretically speculative engagement with notions of abject space and mimicry to add a further dimension to the debate on the nature of the spaces of trafficking. These abject spaces, and the sexual exploitation that takes place within them undermines women’s notions of bodily integrity, yet I argue there is agency to be found in the loss of embodied identity. The basis for this engagement is an analysis of a series of documents written by women who were trafficked from post-Soviet countries to Israel. It will conceptualise the ways women survive in such a space by challenging bounded notions of the body.