The Various ‘Safe’-House Profiles in East-European Human Smuggling and Trafficking

In examining the activities of eight networks involved in human smuggling and/or trafficking from Eastern Europe to Belgium, we focus on the function of the ‘safe’ houses they use. We compare our findings with those reported in the existing literature on safe houses, which mainly looks at Chinese human smuggling networks. The differences relate to trafficking for the purpose of female prostitution, to smuggling practices directly associated with illegal employment, and to the ‘integrated-business’ character of Balkan criminal entrepreneurship.