I receive many queries about getting Sex at the Margins (Zed Books) as an ebook, so am happy to announce that it is now available through various outlets. Not for the dedicated hardware readers yet (kindle, nook, kobo) but available!

The best deal in the US is at Books A Million:  ebook $10.32

In the UK the best deal is at Waterstones: ebook £14.39

In Australia the best price is at Read Without Paper: ebook AUD 22.76

Oddly enough in the UK Tesco say they have the paperback for £12.59 but you have to pay delivery unless you are ordering over £15 at a time.

Thanks to all for encouragement and continuing to keep this book on the market. The original reader of the manuscript for Zed Books predicted it would become a cult classic and I guess that’s about right!

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

I will be giving an hour-long lecture in Stockholm on 26 January 2012, covering general ideas about migration and who ‘migrants’ are thought to be, both documented and undocumented, as well as ideas about health and prevention, including for migrant sex workers. The sponsors are Smittskyddsinstitutet (Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control), a government agency to monitor the epidemiological situation for communicable diseases in humans and promote protection against them.

It is interesting and progressive that this agency should have me speak at their event: Nuancing of the notion of migrants is taking place. Note that State Feminism is not in charge here.

I have only just heard that pre-registration for this event closes tomorrow, so I supply details quickly now. I would love for some supporters to come to this Stockholm event, and, if you do, please come and introduce yourselves.

Konferens: Migration och prevention

Smittskyddsinstitutet (SMI) och Europeiska flyktingfonden (ERF) i samverkan välkomnar dig som arbetar med frågor inom området hälsa, prevention och migration till en heldagskonferens om migration och prevention. Konferensen vill utifrån ett hälsoperspektiv belysa hälsa och prevention i samband med migrationsprocessen och mottagandet av asylsökande och andra som av skilda skäl söker sig till Sverige.

Forskare från Malmö högskola redovisar nya kunskapssammanställningar på området migration, sexuell hälsa och prevention. Dessutom presenterar SMI med samarbetspartner ett nytt projekt som syftar till förbättrad struktur och samordning kring hälsoundersökningar av asylsökande.

26 januari 2012

Norra Latin, Stockholm
kl. 09.00 – 16.30 (registrering och kaffe från kl. 08.30)

Moderator: Willy Silberstein

Konferensen vänder sig till hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal, tjänstemän, politiker, forskare och ideella organisationer inom området hälsa, prevention och migration.

Konferensen är gratis. SMI bjuder på lunch och kaffe. Antalet platser är begränsat till 200.

OBS! Förlängds anmälningstid: Sista anmälningsdag 10 januari 2012.

Program
09.00 – 09.15 Robert Jonzon, Smi, hälsar välkommen Moderator Willy Silberstein presenterar konferensprogram.
09.15 – 09.45 Inledning av GD J. Carlson, Smi, och tf GD C. Werner, Migrationsverket.
09.45 – 10.15 Migration och sexuell hälsa – Presentation av en kunskapsöversikt från Malmö högskola, Monica Ideström, enhetschef vid Smi.
10.15 – 10.30 Bensträckare.
10.30 – 11.00 Migration och prevention – Presentation av en kunskapsöversikt, Fil.mag. Christina Halling, Malmö högskola.
11.00 – 11.45 Frågor och diskussion under moderators ledning.
11.45 – 13.00 Lunch.
13.00 – 14.00 Migration – Sex at the Margins (föredrag på engelska) – The Naked Anthropologist, Dr Laura Agustín.
14.00 – 14.30 Förbättrad struktur och samordning kring hälsoundersökningar av asylsökande – Presentation av EU-projekt, projektledare Robert Jonzon, Smi.
14.30 – 15.00 Kaffe.
15.00 – 15.20 Förutsättningarna att ge andra än asylsökande m.fl. erbjudande om hälsoundersökning – Presentation av Socialdepartementets utredning, utredningssekreterare Anna Billing.
15.20 – 15.50 Presentation av EU-projektets partners och medarbetare, Robert Jonzon m.fl. Utöver Smittskyddsinstitutet deltar följande partners i projektet: Migrationsverket, Socialstyrelsen, Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting, Stockholm läns landsting, Norrbottens läns landsting, Landstinget i Östergötland och Region Skåne samt Uppsala och Umeå universitet.
15.50 – 16.30 Avslutande diskussion under ledning av moderator

Here is the Migration & Prevention programme as a pdf.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

In a notable cultural contrast, anti-prostitutionists feel it important to constantly manifest their strenuous indignation through yelling and hyperbole, whereas those searching for more nuanced sex-work policy generally employ a calm, reasonable tone, overtly not getting excited. That is a sort of capsule description of the difference between a moralistic stance and a scientific one – not that the science involved here is the hard kind that can produce the indisputable evidence everyone longs for.

Commissario Brunetti, protagonist of Donna Leon’s popular crime series set in Venice, exudes the jaded tone of the pragmatists in this passage from A Question of Belief. Leon, like other contemporary novelists of Europe, now includes the everyday realities of undocumented migration routinely as background and often enough as part of the main plot. The presence of exploitative networks is simply not something to get wound up about anymore, even though acceptance involves stereotyping migrant groups. The fact is, though, that undocumented migrants operate through networking, and first networks are with people whose ways they are already familiar with (their families, neighbours, friends).

In this excerpt, the air temperature in Venice is overwhelming the commissario’s will to work:

Brunetti wondered at the possibility of making some sort of deal with the criminals in the city. Could they be induced to leave people alone until the end of this heat spell? That presupposed some sort of central organisation, but Brunetti knew that crime had become too diversified and too international for any reliable agreement to be possible. Once, when crime had been an exclusively local affair, the criminals well known and part of the social fabric, it might have worked, and the criminals, as burdened by the unrelenting heat as the police, might even have been willing to cooperate. ‘At least until the first of September,’ he said out loud.

. . .how to convince the Romanians to stop picking pockets, the Gypsies to stop sending their children to break into homes? And that was only in Venice. On the mainland, the requests would have been far more serious, asking the Moldavians to stop selling thirteen-year-olds and the Albanians to stop selling drugs. He considered for a moment the possibility of persuading Italian men to stop wanting young prostitutes or cheap drugs. (pp 15-16)

For more world-weary novelistic depictions of sex work see posts on novels by Lawrence Block, Ian Rankin and John Rechy.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Although there are two protocols on migration attached to the UN Convention on Transnational Organised Crime, trafficking is increasingly the word used to describe any undocumented migration. The reporter of this story from South America has no idea whether the migrants involved were being badly exploited or not (which would make them trafficked), since the only information available is that forged documents were detected – which may simply mean that the migrants paid to be transported to Suriname (which would make them smuggled).

Many don’t understand smuggling processes or the devious routes sometimes used. In another story involving Schiphol Airport, women defined as from Eastern Europe were arriving in Amsterdam possibly to sell sex. In a comments-discussion afterwards I pointed out that being legally attached to a country does not mean one is travelling from that place, whether one is a tourist or undocumented migrant, so the women in question could have been arriving from anywhere. They also might have been acting fully on their own, buying tickets online, or smugglers or traffickers could be involved – there was no evidence to illuminate this in that story, either. Since most smugglers are individuals belonging to small networks (as opposed to large mafia-type organisations), routes depend on contacts and opportunities known to smugglers at the moment and thus change all the time.

The route used in the story below began somewhere in China, passed through Tanzania and was supposed to navigate Amsterdam in order to arrive in Suriname. I suppose the Chinese leader had jobs lined up in Suriname and provided documents acceptable to Tanzanian border officials (if they checked transit passengers at all). Attempting to go through a hyper-aware European airport like Schiphol seems dim: Forged documents are more likely to be recognised in such a city, and transit passengers may also be scrutinised. The smuggler did a bad job, whether he was planning to exploit migrants or was a nice person or not.

Smuggled Chinese detained in Holland en route to Suriname

Stabroek News (Guyana) 30 November 2011

Paramaribo – The judicial authorities in Suriname have not been officially informed yet by the Netherlands about the detention of a group of Chinese who wanted to travel to Suriname with forged documents. This is said by coalition Parliamentarian Ricardo Panka, chairman of the committee for Foreign Affairs in Parliament. Last week, officials at Schiphol airport detained six Chinese in connection with human trafficking. They had arrived from Tanzania and were on their way to Suriname. One of them, a man from Hong Kong, was the leader of the other five. They were caught when their documents turned out to be forgeries. Dutch media reported this event last Friday. Panka says that the Surinamese government has not given an official reaction yet, because an official report from the Netherlands has not received yet. . .

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

PLEASE NOTE CHANGED VENUE BUT SAME TIME

Maggie’s Sex Workers Action Project is hosting my talk in their home town, Toronto. Last night’s Sex Work Café at Stella in Montréal was a great success; thanks to everyone who helped that happen. Before the Toronto event I will be in Ottawa.

Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry

Thursday 24 November 2011
7:30pm
The Raging Spoon
761 Queen Street West
Toronto, Canada

Map

Endorsed by No One Is Illegal–Toronto

Books available for purchase, courtesy of the Toronto Women’s Bookstore

Maggie’s Toronto Sex Workers Action Project is proud to host Laura Agustín, an internationally renowned sex worker rights advocate and an expert on undocumented migration and informal labour markets. She will be giving a talk based on her book, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry.

We’re delighted to announce that No One Is Illegal-Toronto is endorsing this event and that the Toronto Women’s Bookstore will be selling copies of Sex At The Margins.

Jorgenson Hall

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Grassroots activists have raised money for me to go to Vancouver, British Columbia. If you come to this talk, you get to pass through this beautiful space downtown, on the West Coast of Canada.

Here is the announcement from the organisers:

FIRST is proud to host Laura Agustín, an internationally renowned sex worker rights advocate and an expert on undocumented migration and informal labour markets. She will be giving a talk based on her book, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry.

Sunday 27 November 2011
7:00pm – 9:30pm (1900 – 2130)
Vancouver Public Library Central Branch
350 West Georgia Street
Alma VanDusen & Peter Kaye Room (lower level)
Vancouver, British Columbia

Map

Admission by donation – no one turned away
Wheelchair accessible room and washrooms

Other sponsors
The Women’s and Gender Studies Program, UBC
The Naked Truth
PACE
BC Coalition of Experiential Communities
Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women – Canada

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

My signature talk Sex at the Margins comes to Ottawa, which possibly will not look so white when I arrive in a few weeks. It is many years since I’ve been in any part of Canada and I have never visited Ottawa before. There are events in Montreal before this one. Please come meet me if you can, to talk about sex work, Rescue Work and the troubled relationship between them.

21 November 2011
1900-2100

University of Ottawa Law Library
Fauteux Hall Room 351
57 Louis Pasteur Private
Ottawa, Ontario K1N6N5   Map here

Free and open to the public. The talk will be in English, but you may ask questions in French if you like. Vegetarian snacks and beverages provided.

Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry

The Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa and Students for Sex Worker Rights are proud to host Laura Agustín, an internationally renowned sex worker rights advocate and an expert on undocumented migration and informal labour markets. She will be giving a talk based on her book, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry.

Sex at the Margins questions several popular beliefs about migrants who sell sex: that they are all passive victims, that the job of selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín argues that the label ‘trafficked’ does not accurately describe most migrants and that a Rescue Industry  disempowers them. Based on extensive research amongst migrants who sell sex as well as social helpers, Sex at the Margins demonstrates how migration policy marginalises informal-sector workers and how anti-prostitution campaigns turn sex workers into casualties of globalisation.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

I gave a talk the other day that mentioned sex trafficking, sex work, surrogate motherhood, child sexuality, sex tourism and international marriage broking. Held at the Institute for Development Studies in Brighton, (UK, where the University of Sussex is), it was a lunchtime seminar, which are often small affairs, but 50 people crowded together for this one. My title was Five Steps Backward: How women become second-class citizens of globalisation, so people came who were interested in gender policy, sexualities, globalisation, migration, development and queerness.

As soon as I finished talking, a hand shot up from a woman who said it was irresponsible of me to talk that way. I had made the argument that Gender Equality policy, promoted by State Feminists (professionally employed to set policy affecting women), now tends to recreate women as always already unempowered victims rather than protagonists of their own lives who opt for one or another of the limited alternatives available – in the context of inflexible patriarchy and a globalisation that promotes precarious workers and their migrations – regardless of their sex or gender identity.

It is hardly news that a state-oriented feminist disagreed with me. Someone I ran into at the National Film Theatre bar in London said You have that effect on people. But the suggestion that I should shut up is comment-worthy. The belief in Free Speech is claimed as a fundamental characteristic of western democracies and sometimes seems like a fetish in anglo countries. At protests in the US, whether they are students on campuses or Occupy Wall Street, First Amendment rights are continually cited, and the UK is similarly insistent about free speech. Yet the objector to my talk the other day seemed to be saying that dissent is dangerous – like Mira Sorvino, who suggested I not be allowed to speak on the BBC world debate on human trafficking held  in Luxor. As though I might undermine the war on trafficking, as wartime posters warned against careless talk lest enemies benefit.

Highlights from the exchange with an apparently senior academic who did not introduce herself begin with her comment to me that

As an academic, you should – which I interrupted to say

I am not an academic.

All right, she said, as a researcher, as a person invited to talk in this space, you should not talk this way because Where do you draw the line? What about clitoridectomy? she demanded.

I stated at the beginning of my talk that I am not constructing another big all-inclusive meta-narrative that will Explain Everything once and for all.

But where do you draw the line? she insisted.

I am not in the line-drawing business. Also I have not researched clitoridectomy myself so I would not presume to pronounce about it.

This cultural relativism, she sputtered.

Cultural relativism is an anthropological tool. It means trying to understand the logic and meaning in situations from the standpoint of people inside them. It is not about defining universal Goods and Bads. Some people want to write laws that will apply to everyone all over the world in all situations. I am not doing that.

You don’t take power relations into account, she said, clearly meaning a view of power reduced to Male-Female in the abstract. I wrote recently about this in The Bad Vibrations of Fundamentalist Feminism, where I referred to World Gender War.

I take power relations into account, all right, but not the simplified one you are referring to.

From a human-rights perspective –

I don’t personally use a human-rights argument, though many others do. In debates on trafficking, everyone claims to be fighting for human rights even when their arguments are diametrically opposed.

You talk about personal choice –

I did not use that term. I said that even people with few and poor alternatives can and do prefer one of them to the others.

In the neoliberal discourse, the idea of choice is very problematic –

I didn’t talk about choice, don’t put words in my mouth.

You cannot have true choice without equality.

Hm, so what are women supposed to do until absolute full and true equality is achieved?

Many are not able to articulate for themselves [what they want or need], she said.

I deeply disagree with you about that. I have complete confidence that everyone in this room can judge for themselves whether my ideas are rubbish or not.

I finally cut her off so that others in the audience could ask questions, and funnily enough one young woman returned to this point, asking the objector:

Are you saying that I am not capable of listening and figuring out for myself how I feel about what Laura is saying?

And there, alas, she backed down rather than defending her belief that people like herself Know Better than other people what the right way is to live and think about men, women, sex, money, power and many other things. She may not have meant to imply that about that woman, just about a lot of other women too poor and pathetic to make it to a room like that in Sussex. If I had invited her to come and perform this stuff I couldn’t have had a better didactic tool.

PS: She said she would be writing to me but has not, and I still don’t know her name.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Poster from American Merchant Marine at War

Originally published in Good Vibrations Magazine.

A new photo gallery called The Street is here. Sex work and buying sex are not alone in being under siege by moral regulators: More and more activities are subjected to rules if you want to do them in parks, in the street, at fairs, on staircases, in plazas, outside buildings, on buses and trains, along highways. Regulations seek to obliterate messiness and unpredictability in public spaces; civility is a middle-class concept in which walking directly from your house to wherever you are going to earn or spend money is the desired behaviour. Simply expressing oneself outdoors is problematic: hanging out, goofing around. Everything pictured in this gallery has been prohibited somewhere in recent memory and the collection is hardly complete. For blog posts relevant to street concerns see the urban space tag.

The Street photo gallery is one of three here: Sex Industry and Sex worker activism are the others. They are frequently updated, so if you have browsed before and want to see anything new, go to the last page of each gallery.

If you have any information to add about any of the pictures or want to contribute others or get credit, please get in touch with me. You can comment on pictures individually.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Recently I wrote about how the term debt bondage is often used to imply there is something peculiarly primitive and unjust about migrants’ agreeing to pay off smugglers by doing jobs not of their choosing for which they receive little pay until debts are paid off. The example was Vietnamese nail salons. But in a non-migrant example, students often comment on the horrendous loans they are forced to take in order to get degrees; a report from late last year said about the US: Seniors who graduated last year carried an average of $24,000 in student loan debt. . . an approximately 6 percent rise in debt over the previous year. Many in the mainstream lament this debt without talking about it as demonic or enslaving.

Other discussions of debt bondage are typically illustrated with sadder pictures than this one of children at work as another way to demonise debt as an institution, as though a debt-free existence were the normal enlightened way to live. As though the parents that put their children into these jobs in order to make money were monsters – and so on.

So it is refreshing to read anthropologist David Graeber problematising conventional ideas about debt in an interview at The New Left Project, particularly the way some debts are seen as enslaving while others are not.

In America, for instance, pretty much everybody is in debt. The great social evil in antiquity, the thing that Sharia law and medieval canon law were trying to ensure never happened again, was the scenario in which a family gets so deep in debt that they are forced to sell themselves, or sell their children, into slavery. What do you have here today? You have a population all of whom are in debt, and who are essentially renting themselves to employers to do jobs that they almost certainly wouldn’t want to do otherwise, to be able to pay those debts. If Aristotle were magically transported to the U.S. he would conclude that most of the American population is enslaved, because for him the distinction between selling yourself and renting yourself is at best a legalism. This, again, is why I say that our definitions of freedom are bizarre – we’ve managed to take a situation which most people in the ancient world would have recognised as a form of slavery and turned it into the definition of freedom (your ability to contract debts, your ability to sell your labour on the market, and so on). In the process we have created the very thing that all that old legislation and all of those old political practices were designed to avoid.

Also created: a phantom, the Return of the Slave, conveniently found in far-away non-western nations and amongst indistinguishable masses of women and children. The point isn’t that debt is all good or all bad but that it exists everywhere, and its bondage is often seen as lamentable, yes, but as acceptable – something people are meant to struggle to pay off as part of normal life. Which is what most migrants think about the debts they incur to travel and work abroad.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist