Psychology of Traffickers

Insights from Romanian Prisons
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-032-93168-5
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 168 Seiten, Format (B × H): 138 mm x 216 mm

Psychology of Traffickers: Insights from Romanian Prisons offers a rare and methodologically rigorous examination of the moral and psychological worlds of individuals convicted of human trafficking. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with twenty incarcerated traffickers in Romania, the book analyzes how exploitation is rationalized, normalized, and sustained over time within conditions of inequality, migration, and institutional constraint.

Rather than portraying traffickers as aberrant or pathological, Dr. Bogdan situates their actions within everyday social and moral frameworks: intimate relationships, informal economies, gendered expectations, and bureaucratic systems that enable harm through routine practices and moral distancing. Through traffickers’ own narratives, the book reveals how responsibility is displaced, coercion reframed, and exploitation rendered psychologically livable.

Integrating offender accounts with criminological and forensic psychological theory, the book develops empirically grounded typologies of trafficking involvement and moral coping. In doing so, it challenges simplified victim–perpetrator binaries and advances a structural, narrative-based understanding of trafficking as a social process rather than an exceptional crime.

Designed for forensic psychologists, criminologists, and scholars of violence and inequality, Psychology of Traffickers provides a critical framework for analyzing accountability, risk, and intervention by foregrounding the moral reasoning through which exploitation persists.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bogdan, Ludmila

Fachgebiete

• Rechtswissenschaften Strafrecht Kriminologie, Strafverfolgung
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kriminalsoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologische Disziplinen Kriminalpsychologie, Forensische Psychologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1: Romania’s Human Trafficking Reality, Between Borders and Lives. Chapter 2: Listening to the Unheard: Reframing Traffickers in the Literature and the Field. Chapter 3: Listening to the Unheard: Traffickers, Narrative, and the Moral Architecture of Exploitation. Chapter 4: The Language of Exploitation: Gender, Power, and the Moral Grammar of Trafficking. Chapter 5: Social Inequality as Structure: Trafficking, Risk, and Penal Selectivity. Chapter 6: Typologies of Human Traffickers: Moral Coping and Motivational Pathways. Chapter 7: Intimacy as Control: Grooming, False Friendship, and the Lover-Boy Frame. Chapter 8: Denial, Dehumanization, and Moral Distance. Chapter 9: Opportunism, Protection, and the Ordinary Architecture of Exploitation. Chapter 10: When the State Becomes the Trafficker: Power, Corruption, and Impunity. Chapter 11: Inherited Harm: Family, Loyalty, and the Savior Illusion. Chapter 12: When Exploitation Looks Like Business. Chapter 13: Self-Made Innocents. Victimhood, Justification, and Moral Boundaries. Chapter 14: Fragile Masculinities: Shame, Worth, and the Gendered Logic of Harm. Chapter 15: When Women Are Never Quite Victims. Stigma, Gendered Poverty, and the Social Production of Exploitation. Chapter 16: From Typologies to Transformation. Rethinking Policy and Intervention in Human Trafficking. Conclusion: Trafficking in the Grey Zone. Meaning, Gender, and Structural Failure. Appendix.

Über Autor(innen)

Ludmila Bogdan, Ph.D., is an expert in labor migration, human trafficking, and children’s rights, with more than a decade of experience shaping evidence-based policies that protect vulnerable populations and strengthen governance systems. Her work spans the full spectrum of migration research, from interviewing traffickers in Romanian and Moldovan prisons and mapping hidden exploitation networks, to advising governments, UN agencies, and regional bodies on trafficking prevention and migration reform.
She has held research appointments at Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Copenhagen, and is currently a Visiting Scholar in Criminology at the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg, where she continues to advance interdisciplinary research on exploitation and criminal networks. Her studies have informed international human rights frameworks, UN strategies, and national policy reforms across Europe and South Asia.
Fluent in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, Dr. Bogdan translates complex data into clear insights with real-world impact. Her publications include peer-reviewed articles, UN policy reports, and major comparative studies on migration, vulnerability, and governance. She collaborates widely with governments, NGOs, and academic institutions to design sustainable, research-driven responses to exploitation and mobility.