This article concentrates on the rapid growth of trafficking in women from Eastern and Central Europe who end up working in the sex industry in Athens. Such movement of people is constituted around global networks of female labour. The social processes and mechanisms that produce and reproduce the somatic and social exploitation of female migrants caught in the web of the sex industry are analysed. These processes are responsible for a continuation and accentuation of women’s loss of power to represent (...) their interests, to seek viable economic alternatives. The living and working spaces of these women rest upon their isolation and individuation and total control of their everyday activities. Ethnicity, age and racialized exclusions all intersect with sexist relations and practices within Greek society and the ethnic communities under study. The interplay of these processes operates differently within different ethnic groups of women to produce different outcomes. (shrink)