Trafficking in the Nordic countries : a comparative study of the Nordic countries' action plans against trafficking for sexual purposes.

This essay focuses on how trafficking in human beings for sexual exploitation is defined and dealt with in the Nordic countries. Agreements on how trafficking for sexual exploitations should be dealt with is presented in reports and Action plans from the European Union and United nations amongst others. In this essay we will compare four national Action plans made by governments by Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway between 2005- 2011 to each other. Mainly we have been looking at similarities and differences in the different Action plans. The essay is based on Discourse theory and discursive struggle and we have been looking at similarities and differences in how trafficking is dealt with through language. The result shows that there are signs of hegemony in how the phenomenon “trafficking” is dealt with in the Nordic countries. All countries that we have studied see trafficking for sexual exploitation as a huge international and national issue and it is a global issue that has to be dealt with. Even if there´s a great deal of hegemony in the Action plans we have studied we have also seen that different meanings in the interventions makes the trafficking discourse antagonistic and contested. Finally we have discussed how the laws of prostitution have come to affect the countries differences in actions in trafficking for sexual exploitations