The present thesis analyses the working, the ambiguity and the political implications of contemporary discourses about trafficking in persons. Three examples were chosen to illustrate the most common interpretation of the issue: trafficking as a problem of organized crime, as a moral concern and as a question of migration. Based on concepts of Michel Foucault, the main focus of the investigation is the interplay between the establishment of regimes of truth by the discourses and their productivity. Depending on the definition of the issue there are different ways that claim to resolve the question. The work challenges the common understanding of strategies against trafficking developed in the name of protection of the victim and furthermore elaborates that these discourses are used to install mechanisms of control in Foucault´s sense. Thus, the investigation aims at deconstructing these discourses in order to highlight the problems of current anti-trafficking policies and therefore enables a more differentiated understanding of the complex topic of human trafficking.