Recently I contacted a number of practitioners, consultants, evaluators, social workers and other non-academics in the field in a search for reports on how people who’ve participated in rescue projects liked the services they were offered. I mean, people who through one means or another were rescued or removed from an illegal or terrible situation, whether by police or other campaigners, and ended up in a shelter or other sort of programme: legal victims.  Meena Poudel is one person I contacted because of her work with formerly trafficked migrants: Post Trafficking Livelihoods in Nepal. Meena also published the following review of my book in Feminist Theory, 10, 1, 133–140 (2009).

Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry. London: Zed Books, 2007.

This is an engaging and deeply researched study of women migrating into Europe, which explores a domain that has been enormously influenced by global forces, both economically and culturally. Through her combined ethnographic observations, anthropological theory, feminist epistemology, historical insights and migration discourses, Agustín precisely organizes various contradictions and myths surrounding labour migration, market, services and the agency of travelling women within a rapidly globalized economy. Travelling women, in the context of Agustín’s analysis, range from women leaving home to explore the world to those who do so to sell sex.

The issue of sexuality has become increasingly politicized in recent years within the labour migration and sexual trafficking discourses partly due to the efforts of an ‘influential moral crusade’ (Weitzer, 2007) led by some of the ‘social agents‘ who, in Agustín’s words, ‘consciously attempt to better other people’s lives’ (p. 5). From her extensive travel across Europe and some parts of Asia, Agustín draws boundaries between myths and realities around the sexualities of travelling women.

Using testimonies of travelling women selling sexual and non-sexual services in the European market, Agustín illustrates how invisible jobs, the ‘services’ (p. 53), are available for highly visible migrant women who sell sex in the countries they arrive in. She asserts that the visibility of migrant women selling ‘services’ does not necessarily achieve the goal they had when leaving home, partly because these ‘services’ are excluded from the definition of the (formal) economic sector. This assertion parallels that of many feminist scholars and activists who advocate for the rights of migrant women working in various sectors, including ‘sex work’.

Although this book focuses on the European context, by establishing a tension between service providers and service receivers Agustin opens a global intellectual debate on both the meaning and role of the ‘social agents’ helping women in need. This tension is outlined in Chapter 3, ‘A World of Services’, where she examines Western European demand for sexual and non-sexual services from migrant women and argues that selling sex is not exploitative for some women in certain circumstances. Her robust analysis of the political economy of migrant women selling their sexual and non-sexual services sharply contrasts with the views of some feminists, who oppose all forms of prostitution as morally degraded and understand all migrant women selling sex as ‘victims’ to be rescued. For example, by situating experiences of migrant
women selling sexual services, in her analysis, Agustín sees no significance in debating whether ‘prostitution’ is a job or not, if the concept is replaced with ‘commercial sex’ (pp. 64–5). In this chapter, while examining immigration policies of Western European countries, Agustín also raises fundamental questions about the masculine interests of policies and takes contemporary feminist debates in sexual trafficking, prostitution and labour migration further.

By connecting colonial and postcolonial economics, Agustín carefully exposes the dual nature of European processes of ‘civilization’ in Chapter 4. She argues that migrant women selling sex, are (most) needed to boost European economies, and yet these are the women who are seen as threatening to European societies as ‘prostitutes’ and the ‘bearer of syphilis’ (p. 108). Furthering her argument on the necessities of migration for women and the circumstances created to sell sex, Agustín critically questions the dominant view of labour migration. The key facet of her argument is that the dominant view of labour migration not only undermines the agency of migrant women selling (or made to sell) sex, but also ignores their importance to the formal economy. In this context, Agustín’s work poses an important research question: what are the consequences of such exclusion that migrant women face, while they contribute to postcolonial economies?

In Chapter 5, Agustín opens up a methodological question. She argues that most of the ‘social agents’ are able to rationalize their actions without realizing the possible consequences for the migrant women they help. Agustín’s analysis suggests that, in addition to being viewed as a moral problem, prostitution has increasingly been seen as a classed issue in Western Europe. Agustín sensitively describes the complexities around the ways social reform and welfare, in the name of ‘help’, are formulated, enforced and regulated in contemporary Europe. Across the chapters, the term ‘help’ ranges from providing information on the nature of the job before women commence their journeys, to removing women from their work by police forces in rescue measures to ‘rehabilitate’ women. A desire to ‘help’, Agustín argues, often re/constructs and re/enforces the stigma attached to women who sell and/or are forced to sell sex.

Summarizing her arguments in Chapter 7, Agustín suggests that concerned authorities should listen to the migrant women they intend to ‘help’. In its powerful argument and thoughtful analysis, this book is essential reading for all those who intend to engage in researching migration, sexualities and sex
trafficking.

Meena Poudel, Newcastle University