People trafficking

Question

"This modern-day gold-rush town, home to about 25,000 people, was both a hub for organised crime and people trafficking and a gateway into a treeless, lunar landscape pocked with toxic pools created by illegal gold mining, stretching far into one of the Amazon’s most treasured reserves."(The Guardian.)

Is "people trafficking" (a complement of "for") a non-finite clause with "people" as its subject and "trafficking" as its predicator or a noun (a gerundive one) with "people in the attributive position, or, somehow, an in-between form? Can it be both?

BillJ · Accepted Answer

This modern-day gold-rush town, home to about 25,000 people, was both a hub [ for organised crime and people trafficking ] and a gateway into a treeless, lunar landscape pocked with toxic pools created by illegal gold mining, stretching far into one of the Amazon’s most treasured reserves.

I don't trust

I don't trust the Guardian's journalism - its articles are the worst of any UK daily.

For example, note the spelling error of "packed", which should have been picked up by the copy editor.

To answer your question, "people-trafficking" is not a clause (nor a head+modifier NP), but a hyhenated compound noun, a single word. Other noun + deverbal noun compounds include "shop-lifting", "fox-hunting" and "brainwashing".

If the Guardian had got it right in the first place, the analysis of "people-trafficking" would have been obvious. But thanks to their error, we have to read further into the article to get the intended meaning, which is "trafficked women", as opposed to people who are trafficking (drugs).

Having said all that, you too could have read the whole article and got the answer for yourself!

People trafficking

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