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Child Trafficking for Adoption Purposes: A Criminological Analysis of the Illegal Adoption Market

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The Palgrave International Handbook of Human Trafficking

Abstract

Over the past decades, numerous reports have emerged suggesting that children from poor countries are being obtained illegally and transported transnationally in order to meet the high Western demand for adoptable healthy babies. This chapter identifies the structural components of the transnational illegal adoption market by applying the basic logic of the routine activity theory that has been developed by  Cohen and Felson. It explains that in the context of extreme inequality (“criminogenic asymmetries”) between the sending and the receiving countries, supply, demand, as well as weak public and private sector social control mechanisms have contributed to the nature and size of the illegal adoption market. The chapter outlines the main difference between conventional forms of human trafficking and child trafficking for adoption purposes and explains why the latter phenomenon is particularly difficult to detect.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Elvira Loibl

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  1. Elvira Loibl
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Correspondence to Elvira Loibl .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Justice and Policy Studies, Mount Royal University, Calgary, AB, Canada

    John Winterdyk

  2. Former Professor of Feminist Legal Studies, Cardiff, UK

    Jackie Jones

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Loibl, E. (2020). Child Trafficking for Adoption Purposes: A Criminological Analysis of the Illegal Adoption Market. In: Winterdyk, J., Jones, J. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Human Trafficking. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63058-8_97

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