Journeys begin with an idea of movement. The idea of a journey to escape indebtedness, ensure family is taken care of and/or imagine a better way of living is a courageous and honourable endeavour. Journeys often begin with such rational decision-making but can be based on limited or unreliable information about costs, lengths of journeys, legal requirements or situations en-route and at destinations. Once journeys begin, they can become progressively more precarious with structures of border control, migration management plus other harms inherent in global systems designed to deter mobility. The original motivations for movement can also be demolished by others who seek to gain for their own benefit and exploit individual circumstances, changing people’s lives. That journeys involve such painful and potentially violent processes leads us on to think about resilience, coping and the extraordinary capacity of people to survive.

We know stigma can be both a driver and outcome of human trafficking. As our own research tells us, individual circumstances too often involve stigmatising norms around divorce, pregnancy out of marriage, domestic violence, the perception of shameful employment or being seen to be in debt which can drive people to make decisions to survive and maybe envision the ability to grow and thrive, even against all odds. Paying attention to the cyclical nature of such journeys is important, as an additional element – return, sometimes referred to as reintegration, repatriation or, less euphemistically as deportation – challenges those advocating a rights-based or user-centred approach to human trafficking.

Journeys are life-changing and transformative experiences. However, in human trafficking studies, they are also under-researched. This book details the beginning, middle, and the end of human trafficking from a range of perspectives. A key strength is that it is written in collaboration with practitioners. Additionally, two survivors – or experts by experience – of trafficking have contributed to the introduction of this book with an acknowledgement that survivors may not wish to dwell in spaces of victimhood for too long and slowly move away from such negative experiences in their lives over time.