Tag Archives: Africa

World Cups, the sex industry and panics about trafficking: health, not morals, can be basis for policy

In 2006, panic was spread by someone’s totally unfounded claim that 40 000 women would be trafficked to Germany, where prostitution is legal, to service men attending the World Cup (a couple of state-sponsored investigations proved afterwards that the fear of mass trafficking never happened). In May of that year I was a guest on Woman’s Hour, a BBC4 radio programme that I was told would address cultural issues associated with sex and sporting events, not trafficking, but which turned into the moderator’s performance of indignation about ideas such as Some people prefer selling sex to picking strawberries, one of my lines during this broadcast conversation. If you’d like to hear this 15-minute programme, which I nearly walked out of during live recording, it’s called World Cup Prostitutespress Listen Again on the BBC site (Real Player may be required). For an exposition of how the 40 000 may have come about and was misused, see Exposed: the myth of the World Cup ‘sex slaves’.

Meanwhile, the claim of 40 000 trafficked women has surfaced again, thanks to journalists that don’t do their homework and fact-checkers who don’t exist. It was a fantasy number the first time and has no meaning now; that we’re seeing it again demonstrates how the mass media egregiously maintain fear and loathing towards the sex industry. But since this time the 40 000 are meant to be on their way to South Africa for another World Cup, the following argument from South African experts for a public-health approach to sex and sporting events is important. Note: I’ve highlighted items in the early parts of the article only.

Sex work and the 2010 FIFA World Cup: time for public health imperatives to prevail

Marlise L Richter, Matthew F Chersich, Fiona Scorgie, Stanley Luchters, Marleen Temmerman and Richard Steen, February 2010, Globalization and Health 

Background
Sex work is receiving increased attention in southern Africa. In the context of South Africa’s intense preparation for hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup, anxiety over HIV transmission in the context of sex work has sparked debate on the most appropriate legal response to this industry.

Discussion
Drawing on existing literature, the authors highlight the increased vulnerability of sex workers in the context of the HIV pandemic in southern Africa. They argue that laws that criminalise sex work not only compound sex workers’ individual risk for HIV, but also compromise broader public health goals. International sporting events are thought to increase demand for paid sex and, particularly in countries with hyper-endemic HIV such as South Africa, likely to foster increased HIV transmission through unprotected sex.

Summary
The 2010 FIFA World Cup presents a strategic opportunity for South Africa to respond to the challenges that the sex industry poses in a strategic and rights-based manner. Public health goals and growing evidence on HIV prevention suggest that sex work is best approached in a context where it is decriminalised and where sex workers are empowered. In short, the authors argue for a moratorium on the enforcement of laws that persecute and victimise sex workers during the World Cup period.

Background
Although a subject not usually broached by mainstream media or politicians, sex work has recently received increased attention in southern Africa. A Swaziland senator sparked public debate by suggesting sex work be legalised [1]. In Malawi, human rights non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are taking up a case against the police after they arrested 14 sex workers, forcibly tested them for HIV and reported their HIV results in the media [2]. The women were fined 1000 Malawian Kwatcha for trading in sex while having a sexually transmitted infection (STI). In the build-up to the FIFA 2010 World Cup in South Africa, alongside concerns about crime and the coaching of the South African football team, there has been consternation over an anticipated increase in demand for paid sex during the tournament [3,4]. Some have called for the temporary legalisation of sex work, while others have advocated a forceful crackdown on sex workers, involving mandatory HIV testing and sex worker registration with a regulatory authority [3-7].

Sex work is currently a criminal offence in most southern African countries [8] – as indeed it is in most of the world. Few health professionals have openly questioned whether criminalisation of sex work is a sound public health notion. These questions are particularly pertinent in southern Africa, a region with hyper-endemic HIV [9]. Rather than directly challenging legal frameworks, some health workers have sought to provide HIV prevention services for sex workers. This indirect approach has been encouraged by international funding agencies such as the US Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which make funding conditional on a pledge by recipient organisations that they will not advocate for the legalisation of sex work [10-12]. Given the legal and funding impediments to the work of NGOs and the lack of government support for these initiatives, health care programmes have only managed scattered and broadly ineffective attempts at preventing HIV in sex workers in southern Africa, their clients and by extension, the general population [13,14].

Discussion
The laws of demand and supply

Sex work will not go away. A narrow market perspective suggests that demand for paid sex will be met by supply [15]. This may be especially true of settings with marked economic and gender inequities, as research by the International Labour Organisation indicates: “poverty has never prevented men from frequenting prostitutes, whose fees are geared to the purchasing power of their customers” [16]. Sociologists, economists and psychologists have argued for recognition of a number of factors that render the demand-supply approach to sex work more complex. These factors include: the social construction of sexuality; (female) bodies being available for (male) consumption; the existence of viable alternative employment opportunities for sex workers; the social stigma that attaches to sex work; and the role of global consumerism [17]. Continue reading

Fish for money, not for sex: opportunistic sex work

My question about this warning against the temptations of sex was: Are the women portrayed considered sex workers, in the context of the poster? The reply was: I think they are keeping their options open. In other words, the fisherman is being warned not to waste his money on women – paying to wine, dine and possibly have sex with them. Selling sex is often opportunistic, a snap decision unrelated to any professional identity as sex worker or prostitute (whether celebrated or deplored). As a story from Angola had it the other day, people may prey on others’ desires to have fun if there is money to be made from it. But the ‘preying’ may also be what those with money want – that those who know how to provide fun come and present themselves! Traditional language of the market (workers, clients, soliciting) masks the realm of ambiguity and opportunism inherent in many sex exchanges. Note too a recent post about the meanings of prostitution in Egypt.

The poster was produced by Young Men as Equal Partners (YMEP), with support from SIDA (Swedish development agency), Family Health Options Kenya and RFSU (Swedish sex education).

Sex worker union raises prices in Ghana

Again a different sort of tone from an African country. Here, the raising of prices by sex workers is reported as a conventional and rational action. Not much comment is needed from me; the news speaks for itself. Note: 1 GH=.52 Euros

Prostitutes Increase Rates Per Sexual Round

18 February 2010, Accra Times

Commercial sex workers at Ashaiman, in the Greater Accra Region, have increased their rates from GH3.00 per sexual round to GH4.00, the Accra Times newspaper has been reliably informed. The increment, according to the sex workers, took effect from January ending this year.

A leading member of the Ashaiman “tuutuuline” branch of the commercial workers union, disclosed this during an interview with the Accra Times over the weekend. According to her, their decision to increase the rate from GH3.00 to GH4.000 was as a result of the recent increase of goods and services.

The member (name withheld) explained that the high cost of living that has hit the country in recent times was so alarming that in order to safeguard their profession; they needed to increase their rates. She explained that prices of pomades and clothes which they usually use to brighten their body, as well as food prices, have all gone up drastically, a situation which does not augur well for their trade for they do not profit from their trade at the end of the day.

We pay for the structures we use, pay for electricity, attend to hospitals regularly for medical checks, buy buckets of water and take care of our families, all these call for money, hence if we sit aloof without doing anything to remedy the situation, our trade will collapse”, the member bemoaned, adding however that consideration would be given to those of their customers who would want to go for more than two rounds of sexual bouts.

She also bemoaned about the area where they practice their trade saying the area was not environmentally sound for them as it poses danger to their health, but since they have no other place to relocate to, they have to manage their life that way, and think of raising funds from their trade to go to the hospital any time they fall sick.

‘Sex-hungry’ babes lure and trick client-victims: a change from the usual

SyphilisProstitutes are not seen as victims everywhere in the world. The news may come as a surprise, given the predominance of that view in most news stories, especially in the west. Not that long ago, however, other stereotypes were commoner: predatory females who bring good men down. Both images here warn against woman-as-venereal-disease, traditionally a synonym for prostitute. 

The story below from contemporary Angola reveals a similar view, and it isn’t the only one I’ve seen recently. Notice language that seems to come from another era: sex-hungry young ladies, babes, on the prowl, robbers, clever prostitutes, sex hawkers. The article seems to be blaming the local authority for distributing condoms, as though doing that caused commercial sex. And note that these predators are migrants: well, they would be, wouldn’t they?

Sex Hawkers On The Prowl
as LOC Distributes 5m Condoms To Participants

14 January 2010, PM News

The ongoing Angola 2010 African Cup of Nations is unique in a way, as those who usually seek for pay-per-round sex in foreign countries will have no problems here. Despite the effort of the Local Organizing Committee, LOC, to chase off prostitutes, otherwise known as commercial sex workers, from the cities hosting the matches of the tournament, thousands of sex-hungry young ladies still find ways to do their ‘businesses.’

Majority of the ladies woo their ‘lovers’ in grand style, with class and in their own posh cars. Although, the campaign against HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are everywhere as the Nations Cup gathers momentum, the sex workers are on the prowl here. Three of such babes had a brief encounter with our man, who is covering the competition in Angola.

The conversation goes: “Hey, you need help?” asked a dark and very pretty damsel, whose curves could easily tempt an unsuspecting visitor. Because this writer was in a hurry to catch up with an interview date, he walked to the car to see if these good Samaritans could help him. But the story changed when one of them, Sophiela, asked him if he would like a friend in Benguela. That offer sounded palatable, based on the high cost of living and transportation problems in Angola.

Then out of curiosity, our man asked the ladies what he would do to compensate them for their presumed kind gesture. It was at this point that they told him in French language that they would charge $200 per ‘service,’ and that the sum of $100 extra would be paid if the ‘deal’ goes into the night. Obviously, the ladies migrated to Angola from one of the French speaking countries because majority of Angolans speak Portuguese, while just a few could communicate in passable English. Anyway, that ‘offer’ goes beyond driving the writer around the town. The ladies are clever prostitutes, who are moving around to spread sexually transmitted diseases.

Findings here revealed that the sex workers also serve as agents of robbers, who trick unsuspecting victims with their exposed bodies. Reports, however, revealed that the LOC, in conjunction with the Health Commission in Angola, have distributed about 5 million free Lubricated Latex Condoms to all hotels and strategic locations in the country, especially in the cities where matches are played.

Egypt: ‘Prostitutes’ are not whores, and vice-versa

Rudolph.A.Furtado
Nile Cruise: Photo Rudolph.A.Furtado

Do you know whether or not you are a prostitute? asks a sign in Shanghai I wrote about last year. Like that piece, the one below mulls over the slippery meanings ascribed to women’s behaviour in regard to sex, whether any money is involved or not. This time the setting is urban, middle-class Egypt. Excerpts highlight the anthropologist’s attempts to pin down what her companions mean when they call a woman a prostitute, in part revolving around her studies of Gulf tourists visiting Egypt. What’s being discussed is sometimes known as whore stigma, according to which certain behaviours signify dirty status for women who are certainly not sex professionals.

What is a Prostitute? 

L.L. Wynn,  24 June 2008, American Sexuality

It was 2000 and I was at a dinner party in Cairo. I was sitting with Malak, a belly dancer, and we were eyeing up a young woman who had large oval eyes thickly lined with black kohl and a wide mouth painted salmon.. . . Malak looked her up and down skeptically, and then she said to me in a low voice, “She’s a prostitute. Look, obviously that vulgar man thinks so too, because he wouldn’t dare put his hands all over her like that unless he was sure she was a prostitute.”

. . . It took me a long time to understand what Egyptians meant when they said “prostitute” . . .  But it wasn’t until I could finally shed my own cultural preconceptions about prostitution fundamentally being tied up with money and sex that I finally understood what my Egyptian friends meant. . .

. . . they imagined that Saudis came to Egypt to drink, visit prostitutes, and do everything else that was forbidden back in Saudi Arabia. . . . If I said that I was going to such-and-such a nightclub to observe, and that nightclub was known to be a hangout for Gulf Arabs in the summer, my friends would all try to dissuade me: “Don’t go there, men will harass you. They’ll think you’re a prostitute.” . . .

. . . when suddenly he said to me, “Look, Lisa, a case study.” With the fork he pointed in the direction of two women with short hair who were sitting at a table in the corner. “You really think they’re prostitutes?” Case study had become our code word for a prostitute because of my academic interest in the subject. Lina looked over and agreed with Ayman. “Definitely case studies.”

“I just don’t see it,” . . . Ayman just shrugged, but Lina made an attempt. “It’s a lot of things—they way they look, the way they dress, their makeup, their attitude, the expressions on their face, their body language . . .”

. . .  you don’t look like a prostitute. First of all, you’re always with the same people, in a mixed group of men and women. The worst they might think is that you’re the girlfriend of one of the guys in the group, but we don’t sit close together or touch, so they probably wouldn’t even think that. Second of all, your makeup isn’t like those women. They’re wearing thick black kohl all around their eyes, top and bottom. Third of all, your clothes are more decent—you cover up more than they do.” “Okay, maybe tonight I’m covered up, but sometimes I show more skin.”

. . .” Okay, look, I found one thing that I can point out about those women. You see that one that’s wearing the short sleeveless dress? Look, you can see her bra underneath the arm-holes. And the hem keeps turning up and showing her slip. Put the two things together and you can see that they aren’t used to dressing up and looking comfortable in elegant clothes.”

. . .  “You see that woman with the long wavy black hair sitting at the end of the bar?” The one wearing the skirt with the long slit up to her thigh?” “Right. This woman is well known for being very wealthy and loose. Her father died and she inherited a lot of money and she has her own apartment and she has sexual relationships with men just for pleasure. She’s a prostitute.. . . it’s obvious by the fact that she has her own apartment. A respectable woman does not live alone. . . ”

. . . Eventually I realized that the reason I was struggling to understand the concept of a prostitute had everything to do with my own preconceptions about sex and money. I thought of prostitutes as women who had sex for money. But as I reflected on my friends’ relationships and the role that money played in them, I remembered that all of my Egyptian female friends took money from the men they were dating or married to. It didn’t matter whether they were rich or poor, or even whether the men could afford it. No matter what, their boyfriends, fiancés, or husbands paid for evenings out, for doctor visits, and often for luxury items such as jewelry and designer sunglasses. When they married, men paid women a large bride price, a sum of money up to $10,000 that was hers to spend as she liked. Married men usually gave their wives stipends, even if the wives had their own jobs.

In short, it was not the injection of money into a sexual relationship that defined it as prostitution. . . . Nor was “prostitution” even necessarily about sex, since a woman could be labeled a prostitute when there was no proof that she was sexually active at all. For example, sometimes Zeid and Lina would have disputes over whether a particular friend of Lina’s was a “prostitute” or not. Zeid, for example, claimed that one of Lina’s childhood friends was a prostitute because she drove around alone after midnight. . .

Note: language issues are covered in the article, such as the use of the English word prostitute to distinguish certain meanings from those carried by Arabic words.

‘Economic’ an insult only when applied to migrants: Israel builds fences to keep them out

Melilla-Morocco fence

Fences and walls are still seen as a reasonable barrier to keep unwanted migrants out. Along the Mexico-US border, between Morocco and Spain’s colony of Melilla and now on two of Israel’s borders: a physical barrier to stop migrants identified as ‘economic’ from getting past. It seems strange that this adjective, referring to migrants’ desire to make money, should become a negative term, when all of life is suffused with the message that we must make lots of money and buy lots of stuff in order to be successful. Some people in Europe cite the fear that national characters will be lost and authentic cultures spoilt if too many outsiders get in. Those ideas are overt in the reasoning of Israel defending the building of fences to keep migrants out.


Israel orders new fence to keep out African migrants

12 january 2010

Ben Lynfield, The Independent

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the construction of two massive fences along his country’s southern border with Egypt in a bid to keep out African asylum seekers he claims are threatening the country’s Jewish character. The barrier will also thwart terrorists from infiltrating the porous border, according to Mr. Netanyahu. “We are talking about a strategic decision to guarantee the Jewish and democratic character of the state of Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said. The prime minister insisted that the step will not stop refugees in dire need from reaching Israel, saying that the country would “remain open” to those with a genuine claim.

But critics dispute this. “This nationalist and racist rhetoric is divorced from reality,” said Dov Khenin, a left-wing member of the Knesset. He added that it was “intended to frighten the Israelis that ‘the Africans are coming’. Sudanese and Eritreans make up many of the about 20,000 asylum seekers to reach Israel via Egypt since 2005.

The project is expected to cost $270m, and will cover two parts of the border, near the city of Eilat and on the edge of the Gaza strip. Although the army began planning the fence in 2005, Mr. Netanyahu’s backing for it now is part of a wider crackdown against the influx, which refugee-rights activists say has dropped somewhat recently because of Israel’s policy of immediate returns of refugees to Egypt and shootings of refugees along the border by Egyptian troops.

The government insists the asylum seekers are economic migrants seeking a higher standard of living, but the refugees themselves often have harrowing tales of persecution in their home countries and Egypt. Egyptian police killed at least 28 Sudanese refugees during a protest in 2005, the year people began trickling to Israel. Egypt has also come under criticism for forcibly repatriating refugees to Eritrea and Sudan, where human-rights groups say they face imprisonment and even torture.

To justify its often harsh approach, the Israeli government has been repeatedly playing on the core fears of public opinion. Tzahi Hanegbi, the chairman of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defence committee, told Israel Radio yesterday that there is no alternative to building the fence. “The infiltration of the migrants is threatening the very existence of Israel and its character,” he said. The country defines itself as both a Jewish and democratic state, something its leaders believe depends on maintaining the country’s present clear Jewish majority.

But critics of the government believe that it is contriving the threat. They note that the government itself issues visas each year to 120,000 non-Jewish migrant workers who arrive at Israel’s borders legally and that hundreds of thousands among the wave of immigrants from the former Soviet Union to reach the country during the 1990s were not Jewish. Continue reading

MSM, some sex workers, want services without being counted and outed, Kenya

‘How do you convince me to come out and say I am a homosexual yet the same government that is asking me to do this criminalizes what I am engaged in? I would rather they offered the services without going into the business of knowing who we are and trying to count us.’

Stigma for homosexuals is strong in Kenya, as this earlier story showed. The issue in these excerpts is the government’s belief that before it can provide HIV-prevention services to these men they have to be identified, surveyed and counted. But, as often happens, those to be researched don’t want to have to identify themselves to authorities when homosexuality is against the law in Kenya. Seems obvious, no?

Kenya: New survey to inform HIV programming for MSM

Photo IRIN

Irin Plus News
10 November 2009

Nairobi: A planned national survey of men who have sex with men (MSM) will be the first step in the government’s plan to incorporate this high-risk group into the country’s HIV programme, a senior government official has said. “We have continued to ignore this group of people yet they are responsible for a big chunk of new HIV infections; we have resolved as a government that we cannot sit back and wait for things to get out of hand,” said Nicholas Muraguri, head of the National AIDS and Sexually transmitted infections Control Programme (NASCOP). . . .

HIV programming for MSM is extremely limited despite the country’s national strategic plan for HIV/AIDS classing them as a “most at-risk population”. “We cannot do this [provide HIV programmes for MSM] without knowing roughly how many they are and what special needs they require; I hope the survey that we will embark on will help us answer some of these questions,” Muraguri said.

He noted that the survey – due to start in December and last six months – will attempt to discover information such as the specific sexual health risks and needs of MSM, MSM “hot spots” around the country, and the number of MSM-friendly health facilities available. It will use respondent-driven sampling, recruiting openly gay men to reach out to other MSM who may not be out of the closet, and using existing MSM-friendly facilities to help conduct the research. . . .

Joshua* is a male commercial sex worker in Nairobi who recently received training from NASCOP on reaching out to his peers with HIV/AIDS messages. “Today I talked to 75 male commercial sex workers – 40 of them are HIV-positive but they do not know what to do,” he told IRIN/PlusNews. “Many are homeless after being kicked out of their homes due to stigma.” Joshua hopes the survey will enable the government and NGOs to provide more services to MSM.

Currently at a clinic in Nairobi, we are given one bottle of [water-based] lubricant to last three months but you know as a commercial sex worker, you finish it in a week,” he added. “So it means for the remaining time, you engage in sex without the lubricant, putting yourself at great risk.”

He noted that there was also a lack of sufficient knowledge about the risks associated with HIV and anal sex in the general population. “Many women [clients] approach us for anal sex wrongly believing that it lowers their chances of getting infected,” he said. “Everybody should be educated on the dangers of this kind of sex because it seems people have the wrong perception.”

However, not all MSM are as enthusiastic about the prospect of being counted and questioned by a government that has thus far shown little support for the rights of MSM. “People in this country are still very homophobic and we are stigmatized a lot; who will want to come out to agree that he is a homosexual? Let them address issues of stigma first,” said Donald*, who has not come out of the closet. “How do you convince me to come out and say I am a homosexual yet the same government that is asking me to do this criminalizes what I am engaged in?”

“I would rather they offered the services without going into the business of knowing who we are and trying to count us,” he added. Continue reading

Exiting in the opposite direction: from maids to sex workers in Ethiopia

Pious commentary on prostitution often revolves around the concept of Exit Strategies: getting out of the sex industry. Everyone agrees that anyone who doesn’t want to sell sex shouldn’t feel forced to and should be helped to get out. Quite right. And what about people who’d like exit strategies to get out of other unpleasing jobs? Many assume that prostitution is particularly difficult to get out of, especially ensnaring and fraught with obstacles, even when there are no exploiters stopping people from changing occupations (pimps or traffickers). Obviously when people are too poor, not only in terms of money but also in terms of social capital – contacts, information, resources, ideas – it is misleading to talk about ‘choice’, as though a lot of easy alternatives were lying about. I usually talk about preference, instead: the fact that those with limited options nevertheless can prefer one to another.

In this story from Ethiopia, maids in a rotten situation sometimes prefer sex work, possibly another rotten situation but in a different way they might tolerate better. Those so worried about prostitutes being locked in to brothels often don’t notice that the job of live-in maid usually involves being available to employer-families around the clock, having tiny unprivate spaces for themselves with no use of telephone or internet, being loaned out to employers’ friends and getting a single day off a week, or maybe one day and another afternoon. There are better situations and worse ones, so it is possible that switching to sex work, even if people don’t like it, can bring advantages like more flexible time in which to figure out what to do next. As the person from DKT-Ethiopia says, the beginning, when people know least, is when they are most vulnerable.

ETHIOPIA: Maids, condoms and kerosene

africanpress, 3 October 2009

Addis Ababa – The life of a domestic worker in Ethiopia is rarely an easy one. Often escaping a deeply impoverished existence in the rural areas, these women find themselves in employment hundreds of miles away from their hometowns as maids – or serategnas in the national language, Amharic.

A lack of education, minimal opportunity for normal interaction with society and anecdotal evidence of sexual activity and abuse have led health workers to classify domestic workers as a high-risk group for the contraction of HIV.

  • “Many are coming from rural areas and they do not have awareness; many are sexually active with guards and are also frequently raped by their masters or their master’s children”
  • “They go to night school and they might have affairs with their classmates,”
  • ”The anecdotal evidence is that many domestic workers become sex workers”

Another potential pitfall for domestic workers is commercial sex work, which they frequently enter into if they run into problems with their employers. While sometimes preferable, the terms of employment are nevertheless incredibly harsh, with a working day of 18 hours, a paltry monthly salary of between US$9 and $15, and one day off per month.

“The anecdotal evidence is that many domestic workers become sex workers… this is one of the exit paths for them,” said Ken Divelbess, project coordinator of DKT-Ethiopia. “There is very limited evidence about domestic workers in general; it could be 5 percent who become sex workers, it could be 90 percent.

“It is critical [to reach them] as we believe that the first month as a sex worker is the most dangerous, as that is when people can take advantage.”

What Vice Squads do to stop street prostitution, Cape Town

What an old-fashioned term Vice Squad sounds. I imagined, foolishly, that any contemporary police force would look for a blander, more politically correct term: Orderly Cities, or Safe Streets. But no, right there in Cape Town, South Africa, they are setting up a Vice Squad to get rid of prostitution, on the grounds that it attracts other crimes like money laundering. The vices that Vice Squads address involve drugs, alcohol, commercial sex including pornography and gambling. Even the word vice sounds dated to me.

Many people new to sex-industry debates don’t know what anti-prostitution laws actually mean for sex workers: what police do to stop their activities. I posted a video showing street round-ups in Spain not long ago. Here are tactics summarised by a Cape Town police official, relating only to street prostitution. These plans go directly against a court order obtained by SWEAT (Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce) preventing police and the city’s officers from detaining prostitutes without proceeding to prosecution. That’s another story; here I’ve included only excerpts from an article by Murray Williams in the Cape Argus, 28 September 2009. Note: 500 Rand = 44.6 euros.

        ‘The City of Cape Town has launched a vice squad to crack down on prostitutes working the streets of the city’s suburbs – and their clients can also expect harsher treatment. As part of the city’s new strategy, it also plans to arrest the sex workers’ clients, instead of just giving them spot fines as is the current practice. . . These officers would be specially trained to carry out surveillance on prostitutes, to arrest them and ensure their successful prosecution.

  • 18 prostitutes were arrested along the main road through Bellville, Goodwood and Parow on Friday night.
  • This week the squad plans to focus on the city’s other notorious red light areas. . .
    Smith said the police . . . would specifically aim to prosecute.
  • “we are going to document these cases very carefully,” Smith explained. “In the past, [prostitutes] have lied about the details. So during the 12 hours that we are allowed to detain them, we will be checking up on their addresses, to ensure that we can compel them to pay their fines.” The fines were R500 for a first offence, R1000 for a second offence and R1500 for a third offence.
  • the city would be photographing the prostitutes on their arrest, to enable officers to charge them accordingly for repeat offences.
  • . . . the city would also be increasing the fines. . . [to] R1000 for a first offence, R2500 for a second offence and a “non-admission-of-guilt” charge for a third offence, meaning they would not have the option of paying a fine but would have to appear in court..

. . . “We want to find out why these cases are being thrown out, and what evidentiary chain is necessary. We will then train these staffers to get the evidence, so can successfully get convictions” . . .  Prosecution of prostitutes is governed by both the national Sexual Offences Act and the city’s bylaws preventing “nuisances in the streets and public places”.’

Ghana Sex Workers Hold Elections

This story is an odd mix that I’m posting because we rarely see anything like it from West Africa. The demand for sex workers’ rights is encouraging, but what about those chairpersons? If anyone has corroborating information, please share it.

Sex workers hold elections

Spectator,  8 August 2009

Accra: Spectator investigations have revealed that a well organised sex trade is currently in place in some parts of the capital, an indication that sex workers are gunning to legitimise the flesh trade to demand their rights.

Indeed, the infamous ladies of the night have been observed to be organising their vocation in a more closely knit fashion and some of the emerging groups have held elections to select executive officers to run and co-ordinate affairs of members.

Talking to The Spectator, one of the sex workers (with a fixed address), on condition of anonymity, said the elected officers of the group she belongs to include a chairperson, a secretary and a treasurer, supported by a disciplinary committee. “The executives have been constituted as a result of challenges we face in this business,” she said. According to her, if she was seen talking to the press she would be slapped with a fine of GH¢50 and two bottles of schnapps for divulging information to an outsider.

In an answer as to the type of customers they serviced, she said most of the customers belong to the lower income group who are faced with accommodation problems.”People who sleep in groups or in the open and therefore cannot host women, find solace in our rooms,” she said.

She, however, admitted that apart from such groups, other people like married men who are fed up with their wives visit their abode and never regret it. Some of the customers, she said, preferred to bond with the women they liked most and visited them as friends, but such customers are bad business and cannot be entertained.” According to her, when such a customer wanted a different woman for a change and matters were not handled carefully “it often erupted into full-scale-verbal exchanges and even degenerated into blows”.

The sex worker said sometimes the low patronage of their services was an indication that a customer has become fed up with his regular woman. Under such circumstances the magajia‘s (chairperson’s) duty is to liaise with other clients facing the same form of disinterest for a swap of partners. “This strategy makes us look fresh to the new man and business picks up again,” she said, adding that “the trade is such that when a fresh young lady also appears on the scene and all the attention of customers is on her, she is given a directive by the magajia to close ‘business’ early so that other people will get their fair share of the cake. “Failure to comply with the directive means an automatic transfer from the base to another place so that other people’s businesses will not suffer,” she added, implying that there are some forms of stringent business edicts that cannot be defied.

Another revelation was that all the sex workers who happen to have either husbands or serious boyfriends must make them stay away during business hours and admit them only after mid-night to warm the bed of their partners. “There is no room for maternity leave as our rooms are hot cakes for other potential sex workers,” said the woman. “Both pregnant and lactating mothers are made to find elsewhere because when children are brought into the picture it brings about many difficulties.” According to her, “Children beyond a certain age are encouraged to excuse their mothers by hanging around with neighbours when a session is in progress or taking a stroll until business is over”. She said if they are young and fast asleep in the room, they are not bothered and business could still go on with out any fuss.

When asked whether she knew her HIV status, the lady answered in the negative, contending that “having stayed in the business for long, I am too much afraid to go for voluntary counseling and testing (VCT)”. She said in the past, they charged special rates for ‘raw’ sex, but ever since the menace of HIV/AIDS dawned on them, no matter the money or the status of the person, “we fit you with a condom before any sex act takes place.”

Some of the flash points for the commercial sex workers who parade the streets in Accra are the Cantonment area especially near the Akufo-Addo Circle, Danquah Circle and surrounding areas and the Kwame Nkrumah Circle and its immediate environs. The sex workers hide in the dark and show themselves when they see men coming, with some boldly calling up saying, “Do you want to know the colour of my underwear?”

When a sex worker hooks a customer who doesn’t want to follow her home, she takes him to a cheap hotel where the customer pays a fee of between GH¢5 and GH¢10 for short time of about 30 minutes, so says this lady of the night. For those men who cannot afford that ‘luxury’ they are bundled into nearby kiosks, urinals or makeshift brothels operated by small drinking spots for quick service.

King Trinity Akpalie, executive director of Great Vision Africa, a non-governmental organisation based in Accra which is committed to promoting abstinence and faithfulness against the spread of HIV in Ghana has this to say: “Such people are living in a fool’s paradise with their reliance on condoms as a preventive measure against the HIV/AIDS virus”.

According to him, the American Foundation for AIDS Research had stated that 20 per cent of American condom users were infected with HIV due to misuse and manufacturers’ deficiency. Mr Akpalie said research indicated that the level of education of users influenced their ability to use condom correctly. “This puts the developing world; especially the low come groups, who are, predominantly illiterates and patronise the services of sex workers, at a higher risk of contracting the HIV virus while using condom,” he said.

Ghana’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) released in 2006, which monitored the situation of children, women and men in the assessment of condom use in Ghana came out with the finding that the likelihood of engaging in higher risk sex and using a condom increased with the people’s level of education. The survey said 25 per cent of women and 33 per cent of men aged between 15-49 with primary education used a condom during their last high-risk sex encounters in the year before the MICS, while 48 per cent of women and 60 per cent of men with secondary and higher levels of education used a condom.

Taxi-drivers protest police discrimination against migrant sex workers, Mallorca: Taxistas denuncian discriminación policial contra prostitutas migrantes

Taxi drivers in Palma de Mallorca have complained about excessive police controls intended to dissuade migrant prostitutes from entering Magaluf, a tourist area. More specifically, they accused police of targeting taxis carrying women from sub-Saharan West Africa (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, etc). This is obvious discrimination based on an idea that sex workers from this part of the world are more aggressive about getting business, because they work in groups, plant themselves in front of cars to talk to drivers and so on. The unnamed group here are the clients they are travelling to get to, so I’ve put a picture of guys here.

La idea de que ‘las nigerianas’ son las más agresivas es, claro, discriminación flagrante. Viene de su estilo de trabajar: en grupos, plantándose frente a los carros para hablar con los choferes. El grupo invisible que no está nombrado en este reportaje son los clientes, así que pongo una imágen de chicos aquí.

Taxistas de Palma, molestos por los controles sobre las prostitutas, diariodemallorca.es

I. M. Calvià: Taxistas de Palma han expresado su malestar por la excesiva rigurosidad de los controles policiales que ha habido en los últimos días a la entrada de Magaluf, unos controles que, según el relato de varios profesionales, iban encaminados a disuadirlos de transportar prostitutas a la zona turística de este núcleo calvianer.

La explicación ofrecida a este diario por algunos conductores fue corroborada posteriormente por el presidente de la Asociación de Autónomos del Taxi de Mallorca, Gabriel Moragues, quien detalló que esta semana han mantenido una reunión con representantes municipales para pedir explicaciones acerca de estos hechos.

En esta reunión, los taxistas reprocharon que la minuciosidad de los registros se centrase únicamente en aquellos vehículos que transportaban mujeres subsaharianas. Según destacó Moragues, los representantes municipales les pidieron disculpas y les garantizaron que no se volvería a producir una situación así.
Los conductores consultados por este diario relataron que en los controles policiales objeto de polémica se paraba a los taxis que llevaban mujeres subsaharianas, se las obligaba a bajar y eran registradas por policías equipados con guantes y mascarillas, ante el temor a un posible contagio por gripe A. A continuación, de acuerdo a esta versión, los agentes procedían a inspeccionar con esmero la documentación del taxi.

Tax on sex work where prostitution is illegal? Uganda

Here’s yet another illogical idea: tax sex workers even though their work is illegal. And some sex workers say they would be happy to pay the tax if it stopped arrests. I believe this is better described as extorsion: you pay us and we’ll let you conduct business – unless they somehow legalise sex work as well.

Tax for sex workers proposed 

2 July 2009, Walakira Nyanzi, Ultimate Media


Commercial sex services in Kampala and the nearby districts are likely to cost more following an introduction of an annual operating fee by the local authorities. The authorities have ordered commercial sex workers in divisions to pay 100,000 shillings before they are allowed to operate.

The Resident District Commissioner (RDC) of Kawempe, Edward Sekabanja says the move is aimed at reducing prostitution in Kampala and other towns. He says Kampala, Mukono, Wakiso and Mpigi RDC’s in their recent general meeting proposed for the new tax and urged local authorities to implement it.

Sekabanja also urges government to come out with the law that will legalize tax for sex workers. Sex work or prostitution is still a crime in Uganda. Sekabanja says there are more than 5,000 sex workers permanently stationed in Kampala alone. The RDC says town councils will be able to collect millions of shillings if the sex work tax is fully introduced in all town councils.

According to research this reporter conducted from the main sports of Kampala where prostitutes operates most, sex workers earn an average of 15,000 shillings daily. This writer talked to most of the sex workers in Kampala but the majority of them said the tax is illegal but they are ready to pay it to avoid arrests.

West Africa’s children: are they trafficked? What are child rights?

Young girl in Benin’s largest market in Cotonou. Whether she is an economic migrant or victim of trafficking is central to a study of children’s migration in West Africa. Photo Phuong Tran/IRIN

Research into how ‘child trafficking’ works is revealing the flaws inherent in this notion. Recently I published a post on some of the cultural contradictions that impede research with migrant children in the US. The following article confirms problems in West Africa. I’ve highlighted significant new ideas from people questioning issues in the region.

WEST AFRICA: But is it really trafficking? 

Lomé, Togo, 6 January 2009 (IRIN) – For years children’s rights groups have been fighting child trafficking in West Africa. Now, some of those groups are questioning how children have benefited from anti-trafficking interventions as they launch a project to understand children’s perilous migration throughout West Africa.

The nearly one-million dollar initiative led by UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), International Organization for Migration (IOM), and NGOs Plan International, Save the Children Sweden, and Terre des Hommes will conduct national and regional workshops and focus groups to produce a 2010 report on the reasons behind children’s regional migration. Terre des Hommes’ Olivier Feneyrol told IRIN assigning blame for children’s exploitation on rogue traffickers is misdirected.

Mobility

Largely absent from the planning documents of the project, “Mobility of children and youth in West Africa,” is the word trafficking. Rather, partners undertaking the study in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea and Togo speak of regional mobility.

Children have been moving around the region for centuries and working just as long. That is the cultural reality here,” said Feneyrol, regional adviser for the West Africa office of non-profit organisation Terre des Hommes. “Some of that movement and work is dangerous. For years, we have approached this problem as a fight against trafficking, but this has not really benefited children. We have to move beyond focusing exclusively on trafficking to a more global strategy where we take into account children’s reality.”

Child rights groups and law enforcement agencies are fighting something they have not truly understood, Feneyrol told IRIN. “Do we really know the varied forms of migration? Who are the intermediaries? How are these voyages financed? What are the conditions that children leave behind? “Why are they taking risks and what are they searching? How can we fight a phenomenon we do not truly understand?” Continue reading

Decriminalising sex work only half the battle: South Africa

I’m trying to paint a picture of the sex industry that shows its complexity and how commercial sex is embedded in ordinary daily life. The following report acknowledges decriminalisation would just be the first step in a social and legal process. See website of SWEAT – Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce, and book Selling Sex in Cape Town.

South Africa: Decriminalizing sex work only half the battle

Johannesburg, 29 May 2009 (IRIN)

Proposals to decriminalize sex work in South Africa have been moved back to the front burner after the newly installed premier of the country’s richest province, Gauteng, remarked that the issue should be addressed “objectively and with an open mind”. A review of the current legislation is underway.

The Sexual Offences Act of 1957 prohibits all sex work, and any activity associated with it – keeping or participating in the management of a brothel, procuring someone to become a sex worker, soliciting or selling sex, and living off the earnings of a sex worker – is a criminal offence. The Act was amended 50 years later to make buying sexual services a criminal offence.

Enforcement of the sweeping law is extremely difficult; the police generally use municipal by-laws that target street-based sex workers under the guise of being a “public nuisance”, leading to claims of police harassment, while the authorities ignore thousands of classified adverts for sexual services in daily newspapers and elsewhere.

The South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC) sets out four scenarios in a report released in May 2009: maintaining the status quo, partial criminalization, non-criminalization, or the “regulation of adult prostitution and prostitution-related acts.” Public submissions and comments on the proposed changes can be made until 30 June 2009.

The country is divided on the issue. “Worldwide, you will find it [sex work]… We must begin to appreciate that commercial sex work is an industry, here in Gauteng,” said the province’s female premier, Nomvula Mokonyane.

“The best is to recognize commercial sex work, make sure it has different support systems … have a designated area, register people, let them be subjected to periodic health tests, and also let them be subjected to what me and you are subjected to — tax.”

‘Lowering morals’

Although Mokonyane did not explicitly call for sex work to be legalized, her view was at odds with South Africa’s chief prosecutor, Mokotedi Mpshe, who told local media that decriminalizing sex work would be bad for the country’s morals.

Proponents of decriminalization said changing the law would not destigmatize the sex industry, but would improve the health and safety of sex workers.

Lauren Jankelowitz, of the Reproductive Health and HIV Research Unit (RHRU) at the University of the Witwatersrand, which runs sex worker-friendly clinics and outreach programmes, said most sex workers were reluctant to access health services or report incidents of rape and assault to the police, fearing both stigma and arrest.

At a forum in Johannesburg on 28 May, Sex Workers and the World of Work, sponsored by the South African Business Coalition on HIV and AIDS (SABCOHA), Jankelowitz said a change in the law would be a step in the right direction, but given the prevailing conservative views of government, this was unlikely.

Regardless of the law, South Africans had to change their prejudiced views of sex workers, and the police, health workers and the public should be sensitized, she said.

Eric Harper, director of the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Task Force (SWEAT), told IRIN it would take more than sensitization training to change the treatment of sex workers.

“The emphasis has to be less on opinion change and more on actual practices to make sure people are treated in a humane and dignified way, and are given access to the services they deserve,” he said. “If I’m a health worker, I have to know that I have to act in a professional way, regardless of what I think about what people are doing.” Continue reading

Childhood, trafficking research, agency and cultural contradictions

The following comments reveal some of the contradictions experienced while trying to work within the framework of ‘trafficked children’. The study was funded by the US National Institute of Justice ‘to examine the experiences of children, mostly girls, trafficked to the United States for sexual and labor exploitation and analyze their prospects for reintegration.’ I make many of the same comments in my book Sex at the Margins and am glad to see that numerous other researchers are now writing about cultural differences that mean that campaigns to save young people from doing paid work often oppress and make them unhappy. These are just a few excerpts from the article, so if you’ve got questions go to the original. I’ve highlighted some points in bold, and made sure to leave in concepts not often mentioned in debates (child fostering and child circulation).

Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 81/4, pp. 903–923, (2008)

On Challenges, Dilemmas, and Opportunities in Studying Trafficked Children

Elzbieta M. Goździak, Institute for the Study on International Migration, Georgetown University

In the United States the system of care for trafficked children has been developed within a framework based on middle-class Western ideals about childhood as a time of dependency and innocence during which children are socialized by adults and become competent social actors. Economic and social responsibilities are generally mediated by adults so that the children can grow up free from pressures of responsibilities such as work and child care. Children who are not raised in this way are considered “victims” who have had their childhood stolen from them. This framework views universal concern for children as transcending political and social divides; assumes a universally applicable model of childhood development; presupposes a consensus on what policies should be in place to realize the best interest of the child; assumes that child victims have universal needs (such as a need for rehabilitation); and promotes a therapeutic model of service provision. . .

. . . we understood that “disagreements over [child trafficking]’s magnitude are underpinned by different understandings of the term ‘child’ and ‘trafficking’” and that “this is a conceptual and political problem that cannot be resolved by more data alone” (Manzo 2005: 394).

. . . many of the children did not consider themselves trafficked victims, but thought of their experiences as migration in search of better opportunities that turned into exploitation. Many also did not think of their traffickers as perpetrators of crime and villains; after all in some instances the traffickers were parents or close relatives.

. . . Almost all of the children were highly motivated to migrate to the US in the hope of earning money. Many of them had compelling reasons to send money home and had to repay smuggling fees. Typically, the children’s desire to earn money did not change once they were rescued. [State programs] reflect US laws requiring children to attend school, defining the age of employment and number of hours a minor child is allowed to work. . .  These restrictions may run counter to many children’s goals and lead to a struggle as they adjust to their new lives. These issues have longterm consequences for the children’s commitment to education and affect their desire to remain in care. The children’s reluctance to see themselves as victims stood in sharp contrast to the perceptions of service providers who referred to the children as victims, often because the law conceptualizes them as victims.

. . . Middle-class Eurocentric ideals often assume that, apart from exceptional cases, children live in nuclear families, experience childhood together with their siblings and have access to resources provided by both biological parents. Research contradicts this assumption and documents a wide range of living arrangements experienced by children in resource-poor countries (Lloyd and Desai 1992).

. . .  child fostering or child circulation is a long-standing cultural practice in many regions. . .  including West Africa, . . . Latin America . . .  and the Pacific. According to Demographic and Health Surveys, covering 10 African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal), the percentage of foster children ranges between 10 and 20 percent in the six to nine age bracket, and between 13 and 25 percent in the 10 to 14 age group. In the overwhelming majority of cases, both parents are alive but do not live with their children (Pilon 2003). . .

. . .  In West Africa, fostering is an important technique rooted in kinship structures and traditions. Children are not sent out only in the event of crisis; sending of children is practiced by both stable and unstable families, married and single mothers (Isiugo-Abaniche 1985, 1991).

. . . According to the British Agencies for Adoptions and Fostering, 10,000 children, mostly from West Africa, were living with families other than their own in the United Kingdom in 2001 (Economist 2003). . .

. . . In Latin America, “child circulation” is a principal way in which Peruvian rural-to-urban migrants move children between houses as part of a common survival and betterment strategy in the context of social and economic inequality (Leinaweaver 2007). Poverty and vulnerability shape Peruvian practices of kinship formation through child circulation. For the receiving family, child circulation represents strategic labor recruitment; for the sending household, it spells relief from the economic burdens of child rearing and constitutes a source of highly desirable remittances. A considerable proportion of children in Mexico and Colombia were found to spend some time during childhood without a father. When births outside a union are included, one-fifth of Mexican children and one-third of Colombian children were affected. An additional five percent of Mexican children and nine percent of Colombian children do not live with their mothers (Richter 1988).

. . . For the societies involved, child circulation is a characteristic of family systems, fitting in with patterns of family solidarity and the system of rights and obligations. Fostering is a component of family structure and dynamics (Pilon 2003). Indeed, the majority of the children in our study lived with other family members or friends prior to being trafficked and most were sent to live with family members or friends in the United States and ended up being trafficked.

Learning English to Become a Sex Worker: Benin

In this story, young people in Benin explain why sex work and migration are appealing and can be a sensible choice. No other comment is really necessary, except perhaps to note that this kind of projected trip/fantasy – although the traveller doesn’t know whether she will ultimately go to the UK or nearby Nigeria – is among those that get called ‘trafficking’ too often. 

Globalization: Learning English for sex in Nigeria – Afrik.com

 Benin, 6 May 2009

Many young people in French-speaking Benin are learning English to adapt to globalization, but some young women have another goal: to enter the thriving sex industry in neighbouring Nigeria, where the market is considered more lucrative.

Jenifer, 20, has been taking a course at a language school in Cotonou, the business capital of Benin. “Well, yes, I’m not learning English just for the sake of learning the language, I have other goals to achieve,” she said.

Although it is hard to assess the extent of this clandestine trend, Jean-Paul, who is in the same business English class as Jenifer, is aware of his classmate’s objective. “Basically, it’s English for sex,” he said.

Kadi, 19, who has been learning English for the last four months at a large training centre in Cotonou, admitted that she would soon be ready to overcome the last barrier to entering the Nigerian sex trade: language.

“It is the sad truth and it is unfortunate. Sometimes our young girls find themselves in this position without wanting to,” said Solange Legonou, President of the Benin network of NGOs for female leadership (ROLF).

“Some of them, for example, go to learn English … in Nigeria, for further study – not all of them go with the intention of becoming [sex workers], but their circumstances push them into it,” said Legonou, who emphasized the need to “concentrate on awareness-raising of young girls”, particularly to the risk of HIV.

Globalization

Many girls from Benin and other countries in West Africa succumb to the temptation of sex work in Nigeria. “I was told that it was just like the West there,” said Aïcha, who studies law by day and is a sex worker by night. “Fellow Beninians in Nigeria, particularly in Abuja [the capital], do very well out of their clients, who come with dollars and euros.”

Amy, a young sex worker near one of the big hotels in the city, came from Ivory Coast in 2007. She said she made enough money to rent an apartment for US$400 a month in a suburb of Abuja.

“The world has changed, we need to get moving and we need to meet others. What is true for business is also true for other areas. Why should we think that sex is not affected by this? We need to find ways to adapt ourselves,” she said.

“Most of these people are just adapting to the new world and we cannot criticize them for that,” commented Amidou Boubacar, a hotel employee in Lagos, the large port city in the south of Nigeria.

HIV risk

Nigeria has 2.6 million people living with HIV – the third highest HIV caseload in the world after India and South Africa – and a prevalence rate of 3.1 percent, compared to 2 percent in Benin, but this does not discourage young people.

“I am well aware that the possibility of catching AIDS is high [but] you don’t need to go to Nigeria to be at risk,” said Kadi. “I always take precautions.”

Marcelline, another student in Cotonou, said she planned to go to Abuja, “the city of rich men”, where some girls had clients who paid around $130 or more for a night.

Some young Beninian students hone their skills in Cotonou while waiting for the big move. “When I finished my English course I started practicing here because there is a large English-speaking visiting client base in [our] country,” admitted Christine, 28. “But my real goal is to one day go to the United Kingdom, America … or even just to Nigeria.”

How people-smuggling looks: Gambia to the Canaries

Here are excerpts from a BBC story from a couple of years ago that I post now because most people have no idea what ‘smuggling’ and ‘trafficking’ look like where they begin. An entire boat-building industry exists to supply vessels that will make one trip and then be destroyed at their destinations: see BBC photo collection. This story is about undocumented migrants leaving from Gambia and arriving at Spain’s Canary Islands.  

Gambia – new front in migrant trade
Lucy Fleming, 10 October 2006

The cost of the journey is between $880 to $1,250… “The agents tell you that you have a 50/50 chance – the boat may sink or you may get sent back,” says a tourist resort worker in his thirties, who was approached in Serrekunda about making a trip two months ago.

“Senegalese carpenters have been brought in to build the boats, which take about a month or two to build,” a local trader in the area explains. “That will cost more than 100,000 dalassis ($3,539), but the boats can hold between 60 to 120 men,” he says. As well as getting passengers and boats, the agents also purchase supplies: between 10 to 15 barrels of fuel, food for the trip – which takes about one week, water, first-aid packs and medicine for sea sickness.

Many Gambians complain about the near impossibility of obtaining a visa for the European Union; and the allure of being able to earn the equivalent to several months’ wages in one day . . .

Photos © BBC 

Sayad’s The Suffering of the Immigrant: book review by Laura Agustín

The Suffering of the Immigrant is still one of the best books I know about the experience of migration. The book demonstrates how suffering does not have to equal victimisation and, most importantly, how migration is the inevitable consequence of colonialism. The migrants discussed left Kabylia, in northern Algeria, and went to France.

Book Review by Laura Agustín in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol 29.3 pp 703-15, September 2005

Abdelmalek Sayad, 2004: The Suffering of the Immigrant. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Initially I thought this book’s title might signal the growing trend to victimise migrants, but I was wrong. On the contrary, The Suffering of the Immigrant presents the strongest possible arguments for recognising migrants’ agency in the face of inherent, structural conditions that are all against them and whose consequences they must, undoubtedly, ‘suffer’.

Whereas many contemporary commentators refer to migration as a phenomenon of ‘globalisation’, Abdelmalek Sayad makes no bones about which stage of globalisation we should be looking at: the north’s imperialist colonisation of the south. Most commentators agree that current migratory flows are related to free-market capitalism’s need for flexibility, moving its workplaces around the world while workers move to find them. And probably few would deny that ‘earlier’ colonial relations were implicated, especially where migrants move to their former ‘mother countries’.

But Sayad obliges us to consider a more serious proposition, that migrations are a structural element of colonial power relationships that have never ended. His case study is the Algerian migration to France in the second half of the twentieth century, during which time many migrants passed from being French (citizens of the colony) to Algerian (citizens of an independent Algeria) and back to French (as legal workers and residents in France), with the complication that the majority were Berber peasants. The colonial relationship is seen in the subordination of the economic and social life of rural colonies to the industrial activity of the country in which peasants become ‘workers’.

Sayad’s arguments, however, go much further than this particular case. First, he demonstrates how discourses of migration focus on the situation of ‘immigrants’ — meaning, on how receiving countries view immigration as their own social problem. With this move, the dominant member of the migration relationship firmly maintains control over knowledge and management of this ‘problem’, according to which immigrants are always ‘lacking’ necessary skills and culture. Sayad insists that research must begin at an earlier stage, a demand that has begun to be met by a trend towards studies of ‘transnational’ migrations. But Sayad points to a more intransigent problem here, in which countries of origin participate in the negative construction of their own citizens abroad, construing them as simply absent, treating them as martyrs to the country’s economic good and considering them traitors who lose their original culture and become contaminated by another. If they do manage to return, they are pathologised as being difficult to ‘reinsert’ into society. Sayad shows how individual migrants reproduce this colonialist view of themselves as subaltern misfits only useful in an accountant’s version of migration that selectively calculates ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’.

Sayad debunks categories of migration imagined to be separate, in which ‘settler migrants’ supposedly value families and domestic morality more than ‘labour migrants’, as well as the idea that labour migrations are transitory and without a political dimension. Rather, he suggests that all migrants are united by a distancing from their original home, wracked by guilt that they should never have left and, having done so, that they will not perform well enough. Though they may achieve legal status, they are always treated as foreign by their second country and referred to via ‘digestive’ metaphors about their capacity to be assimilated, integrated or inserted into society. They fail to perceive the social, medical and other ‘helping’ sectors as being on their side. Their loyalties are divided, they don’t know which patrie is really theirs and they experience an alienation from their own children, who may have no interest in their ‘homeland’. They are doubly excluded from real political participation in both countries of origin and reception, thus being deprived of even

the right to have rights, to be a subject by right . . . to belong to a body politic in which [they have] a place of residence, or the right to be actively involved — in other words the right to give a sense and a meaning to [their] action, words and existence (p. 227).

While some of this may seem familiar to migration scholars, its presentation renders it new. Sayad belonged to the group he studied: emigrant from Kabylia, immigrant in France. He gives significant space to migrants’ own words, sometimes in the form of long, repetitive and even confusing testimonies. Although one can imagine his anger over the many injustices he recounts, he recognises their cultural logic.

Sayad makes an important contribution to migration study in his development of Bourdieu’s analysis of ‘state thought’, which he considers one of our most intractable cultural givens. Slurring migrants as ‘hybrids’ and ‘bad’ social products, society manifests its fear of those who ‘blur the borders of the national order and therefore the symbolic value and pertinence of the criteria’ used to establish differences between nationals and foreigners (p. 291). For Sayad, nothing less than the delegitimising of the state is necessary, the denaturalising of what we consider passionately real — our national being.

This is a book about men. The Algerian case that Sayad details was initially about single males, who are pictured as alienated from a natural cycle of courtship and marriage. Sayad reproduces one man’s speculation on a potential woman migrant’s fate: ‘whilst she might gain something by coming here . . . she’d pay a high price for it . . . she would be imprisoned in one room . . . she would miss the sky’ (p. 156). Given the current protagonism of so many women in migration, their absence here is notable, and in this sense Sayad’s case-study imposes a restriction. Given the wealth of ideas here that go far beyond any single case, this restriction can be forgiven.

Before Sayad died he asked his friend and colleague, Pierre Bourdieu, to make a book of the disparate manuscripts he had produced over the years. The result is intellectually rigorous, anthropologically perceptive, moving and poetic.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Trafficking, smuggling, chaos: Undocumenteds aiming at UK

Below are exceprts from a migration story in the Observer. There’s quite good information here but also note the confusion about the word trafficking: much of what’s described here should be called smuggling, according to UN protocols. Note particularly:

Though many immigrants travel independently, others use organised criminal traffickers for at least some of the journey

If migrants ‘use’ people to help them cross borders illegally, these are meant to be described as smugglers. It’s a hard distinction to maintain consistently, but in this story people are clearly travelling because they chose to and sometimes paying for help. The help can end up being abusive, of course.  The word refugee is also used. Some of the people interviewed might have a case for asylum but many do not. Also the word criminal is peppered around unnecessarily.

Gender note: Everyone mentioned in the story is male, but what’s described applies to women who migrate without documents as well, and illustrates why getting into a ‘protected’ situation can be tempting, why getting into sex work may be a temporary solution, and so on.

I’ve highlighted in bold some common realities known to those who study or hobnob with undocumented migrants, and removed some material you can read on the original site. Note the immensely pragmatic attitude shown by those interviewed: they are going against legal policy, they know it, they will keep trying, they are not crying about it. It’s not a victimising article.

Why do I want to get to Britain? It has to be better than everything else

Jason Burke, Norrent-Fontes, France, 8 March 2009

The three tents are clustered in a ditch, beside a field, in the middle of nowhere. . . .A tractor bumps past, a crow flaps across the grey sky, the traffic on the A26 Paris-Calais motorway 500 yards behind a small wood is barely audible. It is an unlikely place for a refugee transit camp, the last stop before the UK. The nearest town is two miles away: the grubby two cafes and post office of Norrent-Fontes.

But the ditch is a temporary home for 26 young Eritreans and Ethiopians trying to get to Britain by hiding in the lorries that stop in the layby every night. And their situation is far from unique. An investigation by the Observer has revealed scores of such makeshift settlements containing an estimated 1,500 people, including women and children, scattered across a huge swath of northern France.

There are camps as far west as the Normandy port of Cherbourg. . . and as far north as the Belgian ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend. In Paris, an estimated 200 young immigrants who are on their way to the UK sleep in parks every night. . . Continue reading

Male sex worker in Kenya with ‘important’ clients

Recently on a history-of-sexuality list, people complained about blanket statements regarding ‘Africans’, given the enormous diversity of people and cultures across the many countries on that continent. I agreed with the complaints, but at the same time I don’t care much for national orientations, either, as though people labelled Kenyan or South African exhibited a set of defining characteristics that can be pinned down, just because they were born there.

The following story is about one man in one city in one country, but for those of us who work in or study the sex industry anywhere in the world, it’s a familiar story. The headline emphasises the social status of the clients – as though it were big news – but there are other interesting details, which I’ve highlighted in bold.

Behind The Mask – a website magazine on lesbian and gay affairs in Africa

kenyan male sex workers serve ‘politicians and religious leaders’
26 January 2009

Nanjala Majale

MOMBASA – 26 January 2009: Panning out to Mombasa, the second largest city in Kenya, a young good-looking well-groomed man sits on a bamboo chaise lounge. He is a male sex worker, who caters only for male clientele. He has a slightly bored expression on his face, but is willing to talk about his lifestyle and line of work.

“I don’t know why they think there are only a pocketful of homosexuals in this country”, Brian mused before the interview even started, staring absentmindedly at his nails. “Our main market is not the white tourists who come down here. We cater for people in Nairobi, Meru and even Mandera!” He went on to say, in a slightly feminine tone, that last December he spent the entire month, fully paid, in Nairobi. “I had fun!” Brian enthused.

Brian is one of many male sex workers who cater exclusively to male clients. He regularly attends one of four health centres that serve MSM in the coastal town, set up with the help of the International Centre for Reproductive Health (ICHR) an institution that teaches men about safe sex practices and offers occasional counselling. In a study published in the June 2007 edition of AIDS, researchers estimated that at least 739 MSM were selling sex to other men in and around the city of Mombasa, a “sizeable population that urgently needs to be targeted by HIV prevention strategies,” the research said.

24-year-old Brian says he initially got into the business to make money. “Nowadays sometimes I do it just for pleasure, but mostly it’s for the money. I work only five times a week,” he declared. Asked whether he is a homosexual Brian confided “I was raped by a neighbour when I was about eight years old and from that time I started getting sexual urges – more for men than women. I didn’t take any action after the rape, because I was threatened”, he revealed, explaining that he suffered emotionally for a while before coming to terms with it.

“I started actively going with boys when I was in secondary school. I was in a boarding school and I had about 40 boyfriends during my four years of studying there,” he said with a seemingly shy but proud expression. “I didn’t have sex with all of them, but I liked the romance. After college is when I came out and from then I would look for people who want serious relationships.”

Brian revealed that his first few relationships did not work. “Most people just wanted to have sex and then they would often cheat on me. I have never desired to have a sexual relationship with a woman though. Maybe one day I will, just to try.”

“In my business, I charge about KSH 1,200 per shot. But that’s on the lower side for the younger clients. I only give two shots, once at night and once in the morning. I don’t stretch myself.” “I don’t like old guys,” he confided with a low voice, “so with those ones I charge a bit extra, about KSH 2,500 and that is just for the night.” Brian says that despite the stigma that faces homosexuals, more specifically from society, police, and the church, their clientele is made up of people in these very segments.

It was revealed at a June 2007 conference on Peer Education, HIV and AIDS, in Nairobi, that MSM face high levels of stigma and discrimination. Agnes Runyiri of ICHR said at the forum that homosexuality is considered taboo, un-African and anti-Christian.

It [homosexuality] is very common. The only problem is stigma. That is why we are scared to come out. But in a real sense, our clients are politicians, businessmen, religious leaders – I’m very sorry to say – but it’s true,” Brian pointed out. Since every business has its own down sides Brian narrated that “sometimes you get bad customers who pay you less than the agreed amount or disappear with your money.”

“Luckily, I have never had a violent customer although I was in a violent relationship once. He used to beat me up and say that it was because I had become naughty, that is why I had to break it off”, he said shrugging.

He also underlined that safe sex is key in his line of work, and even generally with men who have sex with men. “There is a safe clinic [ICHR] that I work with. I started as a peer educator, but since I have a background in journalism, I now work as a counsellor. We have very many gays, who are messing about and they don’t know that they are. We deal with prevention of HIV/AIDS and it is helping because many of us were dying.”

He says it’s unfortunate that homosexuals are mistreated in most health institutions, an issue which he thinks the government should look into. “I wish that the government would sensitise the whole country to accept that this thing [homosexuality] is there and we have to help these guys out. The more we push it under the table, the more we are going to die.”

“What we need is health rights, not even marriage rights because I don’t think even my family would allow me to do that [be a homosexual]. They need sensitisation. People don’t understand that we are normal human beings, it is just that our sexual preferences are different”, he concluded.