Receiving Help

One of the basic principles of my work has been respect for what people say about themselves. Before I emerged from the streets into academic rooms where people use big words and are considered Important Members of Society, I did a hundred different jobs, including manual labour, which in many ways I like best. I did community organising, aids-prevention and literacy (alfabetización is a better word) in the Paulo Freirean tradition of educación popular, which is why, when I decided to go back to school after decades away, I did a master’s degree in education (whose practitioners are not considered Important Members of Society).

My original question from what academics call the field was: Why is there such a big difference between how migrants who sell sex talk about themselves and how outsiders talk about them? It didn’t take long to encounter the postcolonial idea that marginalised people’s voices were silenced. At the same time, I had always known expressive, noisy activists among all sorts of marginalised groups. I thought, the problem is not that people are not allowed to speak but that no one listens. In the following piece, published 12 years ago, I speculate about educational activities that might work among migrants that would not look like outside authorities choosing how to ‘help’ them. The ideas are not out of date all these years later, when I might also call them Naked Anthropology.

They Speak, But Who Listens?

Laura María Agustín

In Women@Internet: Creating Cultures in Cyberspace, ed. W. Harcourt. London: Zed Books, 1999, pp 149-161.

A Parable of Connexion

Scene: A small room with a bed and a washbasin.
Characters: A man and a woman.

It’s the third time this man has paid to spend time with this woman. She only speaks a few words of his language, but he seems kind and she decides to take the risk. She tells him she is being held prisoner and wants to get out. Will he help her?

The man is sympathetic but he doesn’t want to get too involved, certainly not to take charge of this woman. So he takes out his cellular phone and says: “Make any call you want.”

The woman hasn’t used a telephone in months. The only number she knows by memory is her sister’s, back in the Ukraine (…or Paraguay….or Burma). She has trouble dialling, doesn’t know any of the codes, but the man helps her. They have to hurry, because he’s only paid for a short time, and they have to whisper, because there are people in rooms on both sides of them.

The call goes through! Her sister answers. The woman can only say, “Help! Get me out of here! I’m being held prisoner!”
“Where are you?” asks her sister.
“In Israel (…or Holland…or Thailand)”.
“But where exactly?”
“I don’t know.”

Stories like this have made headlines all over the world. In the usual version, the faraway recipient of the call begins a long, arduous search for help through hotlines to embassies and international police. In the end, there is a raid and the woman who made the call is liberated. The police, who knew about the brothel all along, are not the heroes of the story. Neither is the client, who took no risks. In fact, the hero of the story is the small cellular phone that enabled the prisoner to connect to the world and be heard. The story does not end perfectly, however, because the woman is deported, and this is not what she wanted.

When I consider the possible uses of new technology for migrant women, I begin with stories like this one. Here, people are enabled to communicate vital pieces of information. Here, there are processes and chains of events and people help each other. Before we can move to the question ‘How will the Internet benefit migrant workers?’, other questions must be considered, for these are not simple or straightforward situations.

Geographical double-think

Although commercial sex is now recognised as a global, multi-billion dollar industry, its workers–in their millions–are only referred to as ‘illegals’, as victims of ‘trafficking’ and as potential ‘vectors’ of HIV/AIDS–when they are referred to at all. The same London newspaper that runs the story of ‘liberated sex slaves’ in Malaysia never mentions the problems migrant Chinese women have finding childcare (or fish sauce) in London. It is the age-old technique of ‘disappearing’ people simply by not acknowledging them.

To be deemed worthy of recognition and of help, where you are is all-important. The same person identified as ‘indigenous’ in the Andes and included in projects of traditional aid is viewed, if she migrates to the North, as a job-stealer, welfare bum, ghetto resident, drug dealer and addict, candidate for deportation and firmly outside the scope of traditional development aid. Unless she puts on some kind of native dress and plays pan-pipes, whereupon she may qualify for ‘cultural’ funding and will probably be left alone by the police–that is, if she plays well enough to gather audiences.

Those who seek to correct this geographic double-think–whether they are involved in battles for fairer immigration law or for better working conditions for domestics, dancers or prostitutes–often talk about rights: the right to communicate, the right to health care. Similarly, when possible uses of new information and communication technologies are mentioned, we hear about the right to access. But access is a tricky thing with people who are being watched and controlled, don’t have much money and are itinerant. Migrant labourers, whether women or men, whatever their labour, have difficulty finding and using the benefits of settled society. Migrants who don’t enjoy ‘legal’ status or whose status depends on a certain amount of fraud or deception, must be extremely cautious about requesting and using services. Migrant prostitutes have the added problems of having to navigate a labyrinth of laws concerning their work. The problems here are logistical and the need is for wireless, rapid and discreet connexions.

The literacy myth and the new information culture

Beyond questions of access lie dreams of educational growth, spiritual expression, ‘liberated voices’ that media like the Internet offer. Again, advocates often mention rights: to education, to ‘life-long learning’, to ‘self-expression’ or ‘self-realisation’. The ‘rights’ argument, however, sets the discussion firmly within First World norms, where citizens not only already have better access and service but more citizens are prepared to take advantage of them. To use the WorldWideWeb and even the simplest e-mail programme, after all, requires a very high level of literacy.

Classic ‘Development’ projects, whether applied to populations located in the Third World or to migrants who have left it, have assumed that Progress happens in stages, of which literacy is the first. Read the rest of this entry »