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Child criminal exploitation (CCE) emerges from the complex interplay between potential targets, motivated perpetrators and conducive environments. Drawing on contextual safeguarding and rational choice theory. The purpose of this paper is to explain the relational dynamics that lead to CCE in terms of complex systems.

This paper reviews the existing criminological and public health perspectives on CCE and compare against current assessment protocols used to identify child victims of exploitation.

Findings demonstrate a conceptual and empirical flaw in existing practice. This flaw can be understood in terms of a failure to include both environmental conditions and the perpetrator’s motivation when trying to prevent CCE.

To correct this, this paper develops an original systemic model called circles of analysis. This model builds on contextual safeguarding to overcome this identified flaw by also including perpetrator motivation to develop a Systemic Investigation, Protection and Prosecution Strategy.

It is worth considering as to whether our model can be scaled up to look at trafficking of children and adults for modern slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour in different contexts and jurisdictions. Alongside this, is there capacity to build perpetrator behaviours into the contextual safeguarding model?

The potential for further development and alignment with the principles of contextual safeguarding is tantalising, and it is hoped that the contribution to this important special edition will open up new avenues for collaboration with both academics and practitioners who are concerned with protecting children and combatting CCE.

This strategy is uniquely designed to improve how police and social workers identify and investigate CCE and safeguard potential victims and survivors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the correlation between trafficking in children and child labour in Europe. The paper focuses on the scope of these issues and specific feature of child trafficking as the cause of the worst forms of child labour. Child labour and trafficking constitutes not only violations of children's rights, but also acts of transnational organised crime through which criminal groups acquire considerable amounts of money. The paper also identifies the shortcomings of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and European Union (EU) regulations.

Based on available statistical data, the paper seeks to identify the worst forms of child labour, in particular, the sexual exploitation of children as a consequence of child trafficking, and define the implications of child trafficking for the European Common Market.

The trafficking of children expressis verbis should be identified as a cause of the worst forms of child labour, in particular of sexual exploitation of children. Coherent activity of EU member state authorities, cooperation in the field of internal affairs and criminal matters, and development of effective supranational criminal law framework must become a priority of a society oriented towards the highest standards of protection of children's rights as a separate human rights category. The paper critically comments on the problems of relevant definitions contained in the ILO Convention No. 182.

The EU went the furthest with its activities; its supranational character proved to be much more effective in developing but also using the existing international instruments as compared to slow and passive child protection mechanisms within other international entities, ILO in particular.

In May 2012, nine men from the Rochdale area of Manchester were found guilty of sexually exploiting a number of underage girls. Reporting on the trial, the media focussed on the fact that eight of the nine men were of Pakistani origin, while the girls were all white. It also framed similar cases in Preston, Rotherham, Derby, Shropshire, Oxford, Telford and Middlesbrough as ethnically motivated, thus creating a moral panic centred on South Asian grooming gangs preying on white girls. Despite the lack of evidence that the abuse perpetrated by some Asian men is distinct from male violence against women generally, the media focus on the grooming gang cases has constructed a narrative in which South Asian men pose a unique sexual threat to white girls. This process of ‘othering’ South Asian men in terms of abusive behaviour masks the fact that in the United Kingdom, the majority of sexual and physical abuse is perpetrated by white men; it simultaneously marginalises the sexual and domestic violence experienced by black and minority ethnic women. Indeed, the sexual abuse of South Asian women and girls is invisibilised within this binary discourse, despite growing concerns and evidence that the men who groomed the young girls in the aforementioned cases had also perpetrated domestic and sexual violence in their homes against their wives/partners. Through discourse analysis of newspaper coverage of these cases for the period 2012‒2018, this paper examines the British media's portrayal of South Asian men – particularly Pakistani men – in relation to child-grooming offences and explores the conditions under which ‘South Asian men’ have been constructed as ‘folk devils’. It also highlights the comparatively limited newspaper coverage of the abuse experiences and perspectives of Asian women and girls from the same communities to emphasise that violence against women and girls remains an ongoing problem across the nation.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) adopted a new Convention concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour (No. 182) in 1999. The aim of this paper is to analyse the United Nations (UN), ILO, Council of Europe (COE) instruments related to child exploitation and discuss whether child pornography and prostitution are economic crime or work that should be regulated.

This paper compares the definitions of child pornography and prostitution and child labour in the UN, ILO, COE instruments.

Although child labour does not imply child prostitution and pornography, the Convention No. 182 Article 3 includes child prostitution and pornography in the term “child labour” and identifies child pornography and prostitution as among the worst forms of child labour. The paper concludes that, no matter what role the children have in participating in the sexual activities, they should be viewed as victims and witnesses. They should not be viewed as “sex workers” or “child labourers”. The view that sexual exploitation of children is a kind of labour might be seen to legitimise it in some countries and might cause more trauma for children.

This paper argues that the ILO should have either considered child pornography and prostitution as a kind of modern slavery in a separate paragraph in the C. 182 or introduced a separate instrument to combat against child sexual exploitation.

This paper aims to report on findings from action research undertaken in response to the Covid-19 pandemic by the Tackling Child Exploitation Support Programme (TCESP), a Department for Education funded programme that provides support to local areas in improving their strategic approach to child exploitation and extra-familial harm.

The research included a scoping review of the literature, and focus groups with programme staff, strategic leaders and professionals from different services across England. To provide a strategic lens, findings were then considered in relation to TCE’s “Joining the dots” framework, which encourages examination of the relationships between different forms of child exploitation.

The action research highlighted the emerging and tentative nature of the knowledge base relating to child exploitation and extra-familial harm in the context of Covid-19. Findings revealed that there had been innovation in the use of digital methods and direct working, integration of practical support with other forms of service delivery and in partnership working, and also considerable variation in approach across different local areas.

Strategic leaders need to use the evidence emerging from lockdown as a basis for further interrogation of emerging data alongside the views of young people, families and communities and their wider workforce. This includes new information about changing patterns of exploitation. Digital delivery and innovation need to be supported by clear strategic guidance, based on review of the evidence regarding increased digital communication and its impact. New partnerships developed between services, data sharing and innovative ways of working that have taken place during lockdown need to be monitored and evaluated for quality and impact.

The action research findings offer a snapshot of practice regarding child exploitation and extra-familial harm at a mid-point in the Covid-19 lockdown in England and Wales.

This chapter is about child labour as slavery in modern and modernizing societies in an era of rapid globalization.

For the most part, child slavery in modern societies is hidden from view and cloaked in social customs, this being convenient for economic exploitation purposes.

The aim of this chapter is to bring children's ‘modern slavery’ out of the shadows, and thereby to help clarify and shape relevant social discourse and theory, social policies and practices, slavery-related legislation and instruments at all levels, and above all children's everyday lives, relationships and experiences.

The main focus is on issues surrounding (i) the concept of ‘slavery’; (ii) the types of slavery in the world today; (iii) and ‘child labour’ as a type, or basis, of slavery.

There is an in-depth examination of the implications of the notion of ‘slavery’ within international law for child labour, and especially that performed through schooling.

According to one influential approach, ‘slavery’ is a state marked by the loss of free will where a person is forced through violence or the threat of violence to give up the ability to sell freely his or her own labour power. If so, then hundreds of millions of children in modern and modernizing societies qualify as slaves by virtue of the labour they are forced – compulsorily and statutorily required – to perform within schools, whereby they, their labour and their labour power are controlled and exploited for economic purposes.

Under globalization, such enslavement has almost reached global saturation point.

This study attempts to identify the rural‐urban migration patterns of children, young girls in particular, exposed to commercial sexual exploitation in urban and semi‐urban environments of Ethiopia. The study also concerns itself with gaining a more accurate understanding and insight into the socioeconomic forces behind the migration process, and young people's experiences in urban communities. In addition, central to the study was its aim to inform programme interventions on curbing the uncontrolled influx of children from the rural areas to urban centres and reducing their exposure to commercial sexual exploitation.

The necessary body of field data was generated through the use of a triangulation of methods that comprised a survey of children aged 13‐18 exposed to commercial sexual exploitation, in‐depth interviews of 400 children across the three zone capitals and three sub‐cities of Addis Ababa, in addition to semi‐structured interviews with key people such as local government officials and religious and community leaders. Focus group discussions and case studies were also utilised.

Migrants were most commonly uneducated girls between the ages of 16 and 20 who had been married before leaving their rural communities. Reasons for migration were escaping the oppression of the marital home, seeking independence and a better education, or leaving for fear of being forced into child wedlock. Six key “push” factors were famine and war, environmental and demographic factors, living conditions, the practice of early marriage, family discord and breakdown, and early school leaving. The main “pull” factor was the possibility of escaping poverty. In towns and cities, the realities of low wages, the difficulty of gaining paid employment and the failure of some employers to pay for work all contributed to the movement of migrating children into commercial sexual exploitation. Recommendations include the improvement of rural living conditions through greater health and education provision, the introduction of family planning services, opportunities for off‐farm activities for women and girls, the abolition of child marriage, the provision of child‐focused rehabilitation services and greater collaboration between government and NGO rehabilitation interventions and community based organisations.

Information regarding the migration patterns of children can help governmental agencies and NGOs to target key areas. Identifying the “push” and “pull” factors behind child migration is the first step in its prevention, as vulnerable children migrating alone to large towns and cities are targets for commercial sexual exploitation. Useful recommendations relating to the prevention of child migration through the improvement of rural conditions and the need for rehabilitation services for sexually exploited children are made.

The essay aims to suggest policies that can help strategically deconstruct and dereproduce the establishment of (child) sexual exploitation in Thailand and Cambodia in phases, for the purpose of upholding child and human rights and rebranding the global image of these two regional commercial sex hubs in the long term.

This essay is constructed based on the theoretical framework of the social control and general strain theories. Supported by the theories, the essay examines what are the socioeconomic determinants driving the prevalence of the (child) commercial sex industry in Thailand and Cambodia. Here the essay highlights and summarises how the (child) commercial sex industry has been constructed and reproduced. Next, the essay presents the existing policy gaps in relation to (child) sex tourism and sex exploitation. Last, and more importantly, the essay delivers perspectives on how Thai and Cambodian lawmakers and policymakers should respond to the severe societal problems of (child) sex trafficking and prostitution in relation to the prevailing sex tourism.

At the national level, Bangkok and Phnom Penh have an urgent need to rebrand their countries, despite partially allowing commercial sex activities. Moreover, to promote gender equality, Bangkok and Phnom Penh should redistribute their education and occupational opportunities, enabling more school-aged girls or work-aged women to obtain a fairer share of life chances for self-empowerment. At the regional level, Bangkok and Phnom Penh have to tighten regulations against (child) sex exploitation. At the community level, the promotion of community policing can be conducive to minimising any prostitution activities. At the family level, more positive socialisation should be exercised. When more children, including girls, are subsidised to enter school, and are positively parented, there are more educational opportunities for school-aged cohorts.

This essay contains scholarly originality and significance in the presentation of the socioeconomic construction of (child) sexual exploitation, and its relationship to sex tourism and (child) prostitution in Thai and Cambodian contexts, grounded in up-to-date, relevant sociological arguments. A major area that identifies the originality of this essay is the examination of existing, relevant policy gaps in a timely fashion, and correspondingly, the suggestion of policy development that helps deconstruct and deproduce (child) sexual exploitation at the national, regional, community and family levels.

The purpose of this paper is to report on an evaluation of a pilot of specialist foster care for children at risk, or victims, of child sexual exploitation (CSE) and/or trafficking.

The research adopted a multi-case study approach, gathering placement documentation, interviews and weekly monitoring logs throughout the duration of the 13 placements.

This evaluation found that safety for those at risk, or victims, of CSE within the in-care population has both a physical and a relational element. The most successful placements were able to deploy restrictive safety measures effectively by tipping the balance of care and control towards demonstrations of compassion and acceptance. Good relationships in these foster homes unlocked other positive outcomes, including reduced missing incidences and increased awareness of exploitation.

The small sample size within this pilot project suggests the need for further research to test the applicability of the notion of multi-dimensional safety to young people’s welfare more generally.

The findings confirm previous research that highlights the importance of stable relationships in child protection. They have implications for current tendencies to commission short-term CSE interventions that are unlikely to create the relational security that can improve community safety for young people.

This is the first published evaluation of specialist accommodation for those affected by CSE in the UK, and its findings will therefore be of most value to commissioners and providers of care to looked after young people. The concept of multi-dimensional safety will be relevant to those with responsibility for child welfare/safeguarding.

This paper aims to explore the factors leading to the phenomenon of child trafficking in Egypt, how deeply it runs through the Egyptian society and evaluate the state’s efforts to combat it.

This research paper uses a case study method applied to the phenomenon of child trafficking in the Arab Republic of Egypt, and how the State is fighting it. The general policy approach is also used to clarify the State’s plans, programs and legislation in addressing the phenomenon of child trafficking, evaluate those policies and analyze the international documents.

The research paper concluded that child trafficking in Egypt represents a serious phenomenon, which stems from social, economic and cultural reasons. Even though the Egyptian Government exerts relentless efforts to fight this crime, all attempts have proven insufficient due to the lack of coordination between the concerned parties and low funds, in addition to the feeble services offered to the victims.

This study sheds light on a very perilous phenomenon in the Egyptian society; an international one with intricate magnitudes, upon which the State must concentrate more and eradicate it.

The study contributes to drawing the attention of decision makers in Egypt to the dangers of this phenomenon, and to the points of strength and weaknesses of the government’s efforts against it.