Tag Archives: laura agustín

HIV and Sex Work: The View from 2012

Sexual-health outreach, Machala, Ecuador, Photo Rosa Manzo

Research for Sex Work #13 is out, and as its editor this year I am happy with it. This journal was first published by Vrije Universiteit Medical Centre in Amsterdam in 1998 and since 2004 is published by the NSWP. Writings by sex workers and research that centre their words and concerns have priority for publication.

The NSWP has five official languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese. Each issue is published in English plus one other of these; this edition is bilingual English-Chinese. Articles come from all over the world.

The call for submissions went out last June. Some editions are general, but most have a special theme. This year’s theme is HIV and Sex Work – but hold on before you click away because that sounds uninteresting, disease-oriented, victimising or too technical – the view from 2012 is different! Read my introduction to the edition below to hear why; the table of contents follows.

HIV and Sex Work – The view from 2012 Issue 13, December 2012

Not so long ago a journal issue called HIV and Sex Work would almost certainly have focused on epidemiological studies of female prostitutes. More sensitive authors might have said sex workers and acknowledged that men and transgender people also sell sex. They might have stopped calling sex workers vectors of disease and begun calling them a high-risk group, and when that term was recognised to be stigmatising they might have switched to talking about at-risk populations. In discussing efforts to diminish the spread of HIV, researchers might have talked about harm reduction, and they might even have invoked the need to ‘involve’ sex workers in health promotion. But sex workers would rarely have been the protagonists in research, the writers of published critiques or the strategists of campaigns. HIV and AIDS as topics were the terrain of institutions. This issue of Research for Sex Work reflects a small shift. Here HIV and Sex Work doesn’t mean an array of epidemiologically-oriented studies but the frame for critiques of and questions about policy, laws and programmes. Articles not written by sex workers themselves base their conclusions on what sex workers say. Here no one tells sex workers how to run their lives.

CSWONF at IAC 2012, Photo Hou Ye

Research from CSWONF in China shows how policing is a central issue for HIV-prevention. In her speech at the International AIDS Conference Cheryl Overs highlights how technological fixes threaten to push aside sex workers’ rights. Brendan Conner exposes how the Global Commission on HIV and the Law erases problems of male sex workers by using epidemiological-style ‘populations’. Empower Foundation tell how they were ousted from the Global Fund’s HIV programme for sex workers in Thailand when they criticised priorities. Matthew Greenall and Abel Shinana propose research that foregrounds local sex workers’ needs. And Tiphaine Besnard shows how stigma against women who sell sex has been behind discriminatory policy since the 19th century.

Condoms from St James Infirmary, Photo PJ Starr

Audacia Ray and Sarah Elspeth Patterson describe how activists have brought such critiques into the world of political lobbying through a campaign against the use of condoms as evidence against prostitutes in New York State. The concept of outreach takes on new meaning in Ecuador, as sex workers from Asociación ’22 de junio’ and Colectivo Flor de Azalea educate men about sexual health. Not all the news is good. Nicoletta Policek’s study reveals how HIV-positive women not involved in selling sex refuse to accept sex workers as equals. But even in the more repressive settings described by Kehinde Okanlawon/Ade Iretunde and Winnie Koster/Marije Groot Bruinderink, sex workers resist stigma and subvert discrimination. Diputo Lety tells Elsa Oliveira the story of how one sex worker empowered herself after testing positive for HIV. And although the fragility of African sex-worker networks is noted, this Research for Sex Work has no fewer than four contributions from Africa. Numerous high-quality images enhance our understanding of HIV and Sex Work. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this issue.

Table of Contents

  • HIV and Sex Work: the View from 2012 (Laura María Agustín)
  • Anti-Pornography Crackdowns: Sex Work and HIV in China (China Sex Worker Organisation Network Forum)
  • Living With HIV: How I Treat Myself (Told by Diputo Lety to Elsa Oliveira)
  • Men At Work: Male Sex Workers, HIV and the Law (Brendan Michael Conner)
  • Blaming Disease on Female Sex Workers: A Long History (Tiphaine Besnard)
  • Working With the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Empower Foundation Thailand)
  • Sexual-Health Outreach in Machala, Ecuador (Asociación ‘22 de junio’ and Colectivo Flor de Azalea)
  • Promoting Sex Worker-Led Research in Namibia (Matthew Greenall and Abel Shinana)
  • The Tide Can Not Be Turned without Us (Cheryl Overs)
  • Gay Parties and Male Sex Workers in Nigeria (Kehinde Okanlawon and Ade Iretunde)
  • No Condoms as Evidence: A Sex-Worker Campaign in New York (Audacia Ray and Sarah Elspeth Patterson)
  • ‘The Space Which Is Not Mine’: Sex Workers Living With HIV/AIDS in Venice and Edinburgh (Nicoletta Policek)
  • Female-Condom Use in Zimbabwe, Cameroon and Nigeria (Winny Koster and Marije Groot Bruinderink)

Direct link to the pdf of HIV and Sex Work – The view from 2012.

Angela Villón at the Kolkata Freedom Festival, Photo Luca Stevenson

Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Listen to Sex at the Margins: It’s now an audiobook

Do you still think audiobooks are a minor format only used by people that can’t read print? Think again, I certainly have. When books like Sex at the Margins become audiobooks, something is afoot. People are now learning to learn and absorb and enjoy non-fiction while lying in baths, stuck in traffic, glued to exercise machines, cooking meals and trying to shut out everyone else on public transport.

Actually some people don’t have to learn, they already used radio this way.

Audible Editor-at-Large Susie Bright entitled her announcement

The Rescue Industry is Built on Migrant Sex Workers’ Backs:
Laura Agustín’s Rip Roaring Exposé.

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

Laura Agustín has almost singlehandedly changed the international debate about the definition and exploitation of the “sex trafficking” world as it is manipulated and exploited by NGOs, the Rescue Industry and major political players.

The corruption and dissembling that is going in the name of “saving victims” is truly shocking, and that’s why Sex at the Margins has been on every feminist, public policy, and migrant rights desk since its first appearance.

“This groundbreaking book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work; that migrants who sell sex are passive victims; and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest.”

The fact that Agustín is an international multi-lingual genius, who can appear in Sweden or Italy or Nairobi at a moment’s notice to speak truth to power, has turned the world on its ear when the usual liars come out to press their sanctimonious case on “fallen women.” She will not suffer fools gladly and she WILL demand evidence.  (Check out her debate with Mira Sorvino at the UN!)

Whatever Laura does next, Margins will remain as the classic that started the fireworks. As far as I’m concerned, this book is the vanguard of feminism and the bleeding edge of migration consciousness.

Narrated by Robert Blumenfeld, who we last heard reading Euclid’s Widow and Paul Bowles short stories!

-Susie Bright

Susie was one of the first to review Sex at the Margins, on Susie Bright’s Journal and she’s the editor responsible for its becoming an audiobook. I am very grateful for her loyal support.

Note: Amazon’s database is sprawling and incompletely integrated. So sometimes, according to how and when and where you happen to search, you may arrive at a page for Sex at the Margins which does not link to the Kindle or Audible edition (although both are subsidiaries of Amazon). In that case the easiest route is to go to the dedicated online shops for the non-paper versions.

Sex at the Margins at Audible.com, where you can listen to a sample. The whole book occupies 6 hours and 45 minutes.

Sex at the Margins at the Kindle Store.

Sex at the Margins on the Nook and Kobo too.

Sounds like a mantra.

Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

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

Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry has made into Ebook big-time.

Kindle for the USA at Amazon-US

Kindle for the UK at Amazon-UK

And it’s on the Nook at Barnes & Noble and on the Kobo.

Susie Bright’s reaction to the ebook news was

Laura Agustín’s revolutionary book Sex at the Margins which has changed the discussion of ‘trafficking’ and the Rescue industry forever… is now on Kindle! Finally!

The book was published five years ago but is not out of date – a testimony, I’m afraid, to the intransigence of the trafficking framework and the refusal everywhere to address migration policy. I can confidently say, unfortunately, that the situation is worse than ever no matter where you are – there’s real globalisation for you. Early reviews said

It is always refreshing to read a book that turns an issue on its head. Laura María Agustín’s trenchant and controversial critique of the anti-trafficking crusade goes a step further: it lays out the matter – in this case, ‘human trafficking – on the operating table, dissects it, unravels its innards, and shows the reader, in gory, sometimes eye-watering detail, why everything we think about it is Wrong with a capital W. It’s a jarring read; I imagine that those who make a living from campaigning against the scourge of human trafficking will throw it violently across the room, if not into an incinerator. Yet it may also be one of the most important books on migration published in recent years. – The New Statesman, Brendan O’Neill

Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality. – Lisa Adkins, Professor of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London

Sex at the Margins elegantly demonstrates that what happens to poor immigrant working women from the Global South when they ‘leave home for sex’* is neither a tragedy nor the panacea of finding the promised land. Above all, Agustín shows that the moralizing bent of most government and NGO programs have little to do with these women’s experiences and wishes. This book questions some of our most cherished modern assumptions, and shows that a different ethics of concern is possible. – Arturo Escobar, University of North Carolina

Nineteen of the 20-some reviews in academic journals are available to read on this website, along with other articles and interviews about it: Reviews/Interviews. Most of the academic reviews are very positive; a few dismiss the book completely for reasons less than serious!

Sex at the Margins – Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
1. Sexual Commotion
2. Working to Travel, Travelling to Work
3. A World of Services
4. The Rise of the Social – and of ‘Prostitution’
5. Grasping the Thing Itself: Methodology
6. From Charity to Solidarity: In the Field with Helpers
7. Partial Truths
Works Cited
Primary Sources

I hope that the availability as a mainstream ebook will make it possible for more people thinking of becoming Rescuers to pause and reconsider. Give it to them!

*The book’s original title was Leaving Home for Sex, thus Escobar’s reference.

Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Don’t Talk to Me About Sewing Machines (to rescue me from selling sex): Videos

Two videos from Don’t Talk to Me About Sewing Machines at the AWID conference in Istanbul recently. The slogan comes from a couple of centuries of social work focused on Rescue and Rehabilitation: First remove the woman from prostitution, then give her alternative employment. Historically, sewing – with or without machines – has been the default alternative, despite the fact that many women have gone into sex work having rejected sewing work. As for sewing lessons, a lot of girls on the planet are still taught to sew as part of their traditional gender upbringing, so the idea that Rescue ladies are required to teach this skill is often ridiculous.

First here is Wi, from Empower, with voiceover in English (at the event she spoke Thai and Liz, also from Empower, translated). I’m putting them here in case they are useful for didactic purposes – like in a classroom. Thank you to Dale from APNSW for these.

Then me at the same session, trying to link my ideas with Kthi Win’s plenary speech an hour earlier and with Wi’s presentation, including the showing of the funny film Last Rescue in Siam (sometimes I feel the Rescue Industry’s proper genre is tragi-comedy). I didn’t speak for 23 hours and 40 minutes, don’t worry.

There are now three videos on the Naked Anthropologist’s youtube channel.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Sex workers at AWID reject feminist fundamentalism

kthi win plenary awid istanbul 2012I am Kthi Win from Myanmar and I am a sex worker. I manage a national organisation for female, male and transgender sex workers in Burma and I am also the chairperson of the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers. Until now, organising anything in Myanmar has been very difficult. People ask, How did you set up a national programme for sex workers? And my answer to them is Our work is illegal. Every night we manage to earn money without getting arrested by the police. We used to work and organise together, so we use this knowledge in order to work out how we can set up the National Network without making the government angry.

This is the opening of Kthi’s plenary speech last Saturday at the AWID conference in Istanbul; at the end Kthi asked those in the hall – 1500-2000 – to stand and repeat with her Sex work is work! Most people did what she asked; no one protested. I presume hard-core abolitionists chose to stay away from this session. You can listen to Kthi’s speech, too.

laura agustin awid 2012

Photo by Debolina Dutta

I was at this event most of last week, part of a group promoting a vision of sex work, migration and feminism that emphasises agency, the state of being in action, taking power, making decisions even when presented with few options. We overtly challenged the reductionist, infantilising ideology that has come to dominate mainstream policy and faux journalism (like The New York Times’s) by attending many sessions and commenting.

I spoke at Don’t Talk to Us About Sewing Machines, moderated by Meena Seshu from SANGRAM in Sangli, India. Wi from Empower spoke first about her research into the state of sex work in Thailand; then she showed the film Last Rescue in Siam, which makes fun of police raids on bars where people are harmlessly singing and drinking. Dale from APNSW then showed a clip from a raid in India that shows sex workers physically resisting police ‘rescue’.

Rebekah Curtis of TrustLaw reported the session in The Word on Women – Anthropologist slams raids “rescuing” sex workers, and I am glad she reproduced these words of mine:

Large amounts of money go into these programmes to rescue people who in many, many, many cases do not want to be rescued, she said, adding that many women choose sex work as a preference to jobs such as domestic work.

We’re talking about the ability to recognise that someone else can make a different decision from your own about her economic or mental or emotional empowerment, she added. That if you want to rescue someone you need to know very well first what it is that they want before you rush in to help them.

I hope our interventions in this very large international women’s event have been worthwhile: one never knows.

Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Sex on Sunday: Greatest Hits from BBC World Debate on Human Trafficking (for fans)

For those with a sense of humour about these things, here’s a six-minute video comprising the most dramatic moments from the BBC World Debate in Luxor where Mira Sorvino jumped down my throat, the head of Interpol conceded I had the right to speak, Ashton Kutcher claimed the average age of entry into prostitution is 13 and I met Siddharth Kara, whose book I reviewed the other day. What an experience.

The original programme is 50 minutes, too long for all but the most devoted, so Carol Leigh and I collaborated to produce this version for a Stella event in Montreal last November, which played to laughs the whole time (but of course they are super insiders).


The Scarlot Harlot and I have known each other since 1996, when I arrived in Miami, worked as a secretary and saved up my $10-an-hour salary to buy a laptop and find out what the Internet was. In the middle of one night I found the Bayswan website and figured out how to send my first email. Carol responded and we met in person in early 1997, on the occasion of another first for me – a conference – organised by GAATW, in Victoria, British Columbia. It was about trafficking, a term I had scarcely heard at the time. Fifteen years later, well – what else is there now except trafficking? Which is what I am trying to resist in these clips. Thank you, Carol.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Sex at the Margins available as ebook

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

Sex at the Margins in Stockholm: Migration & Prevention

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

Real media coverage for critique of anti-trafficking Rescue Industry

It is rare for critical commentary on the anti-trafficking movement to get real media coverage, so this story from Vancouver seems significant. I don’t like the title, because it narrows a broader argument, but titles are written by editors with other priorities.

Naked Anthropologist Laura Agustín claims antislavery movement harms sex workers

Charlie Smith, The Georgia Straight, 24 November 2011

An author and scholar who likes to refer to herself as the Naked Anthropologist has compared the current climate against human trafficking to the panic over white slavery in the late 19th century. Laura Agustín, author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (Zed Books, 2007), told the Georgia Straight by phone that in the earlier case, there was an uproar over whether Caucasian and Jewish women moving to New York or Buenos Aires, Argentina, were being traded as slaves.

While she won’t use the word “panic” to describe the current situation (“I try to avoid these labels,” she said), Agustín suggested that there is a widespread “rescue movement”, led by governments and the United Nations, which is trying to characterize a range of issues—migrant sex workers, child labourers overseas, and people who pay huge fees to immigrate—as “slavery”. Using this terminology gives a growing “antislavery” movement, largely based in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, the moral justification to launch interdiction programs as part of an international justice movement.

“I don’t think anyone cares about the women or about sex,” Agustín claimed from a hotel room in Toronto. “This is some kind of enormously funded thing about organized crime…men in government, feeling threatened by other men who aren’t participating and are having parallel societies. It’s up in the cultural stratosphere with terrorism.”

Agustín, an advocate for sex workers’ rights based in Sweden, has a PhD from The Open University in the United Kingdom. She said that the words “human trafficking” started entering the lexicon in a serious way around 2003 and 2004. Now, she maintained that the language is shifting to emphasize slavery. She bluntly described this movement as a colonial initiative.

“The protagonists to end slavery are the same Anglo-Saxon people that were in the 19th century, so you get the trafficking ambassador for the U.S. government invoking [British antislavery crusader] William Wilberforce and arguing that the U.S. and the U.K. have a special mission to go out to other people’s countries and save people,” Agustín said.

Most people don’t have an issue with this. Agustín, on the other hand, said the problem with the rescue industry, which involves many nongovernmental organizations, is that it doesn’t pay nearly enough attention to the choices that people are making to improve their lives. While researching migration in the 1990s, she spent time on a Caribbean island where there was a tradition of large numbers of women moving to Europe, where they would work in one of two jobs: as a maid or selling sex.

“People tried to decide which they wanted to do, and they weighed their options,” she said.

Later in Madrid, Agustín spent time studying people who helped these migrants and who felt sorry for them. She said these rescuers didn’t weigh the downside for women who are forced out of prostitution against their will. “I asked the question: why is selling sex not considered a service?”

The answer, which arose out of her anthropological research, was that there was no rescue industry until the rise of the European bourgeoisie. “They positioned themselves as the ones who knew best about how to live and designated a number of people to be victims,” she said. “And prostitutes were high on the list. They had not been considered victims before that.”

Agustín accused Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times of indulging in a similar attitude by cheering the closure of brothels in the developing world without asking what happens to these workers. “He’s an egregious example of a white person who assumes that he’s doing good, who assumes that he knows how other people should live,” she alleged.

Laura Agustin will speak at 7 p.m. on Sunday (November 27) at the Vancouver Public Library central branch. Admission is by donation.

Laura in Toronto: VENUE CHANGE for sex trafficking, sex work and rescue talk

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

Sex work, migration and the Rescue Industry in Ottawa

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

Women as second-rate citizens of globalisation, 6 October, Brighton, talk by Laura Agustín

Five Steps Backward: How women become second-rate citizens of globalisation

Talk by Laura Agustín

6 October 2011
13.00 to 14.30

Institute of Development Studies, Knots Meeting Area
University of Sussex

Library Rd, Falmer, Brighton
East Sussex BN1 9RE

See area map
and campus map.
Trains and buses go to the campus from Brighton centre

Whether the subject is migration, surrogate motherhood, international matchmaking, tourism and expatriatism or plain old commercial sex, women are consistently assigned the passive role. They cannot make their own decisions, men pursue them relentlessly for evil ends and their sexual bodies are innately vulnerable. A Rescue Industry from the enlightened middle class is required to save women from themselves everywhere. How did we get here after 50 years of women’s liberation, affirmative action programmes and both state and UN policies to instate Gender Equality?


–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Migranten som resenär: Laura Agustín i Arena

Migranten som resenär
Laura Maria Agustín

Arena #2 april 2011 – Den nya underklassen Invandraren är tillbaka. Vilka är vi och dom?


På lyxiga semesterorter i Dominikanska republiken solar turister nära stränder där småbåtar frekvent ger sig ut mot Puerto Rico. Mona-kanalens förrädiska strömmar vimlar av hajar och många av båtarna kapsejsar. Men nästan alla dominikaner känner ändå någon som har lyckats klara resan. De som har tagit sig över gränsen måste sedan passera genom Puerto Ricos västra träskmarker, där den amerikanska gränspolisen väntar. De som tar sig förbi dem kan stanna på ön eller fortsätta till Miami, New York eller Europa. Presumtiva migranter försöker hitta erfaret sjöfolk med båtar starka nog att klara stormar och som inte överlastar båtarna med alltför många passagerare.

I boken The Suffering of the Immigrant beskriver sociologen Abdelmalek Sayad hur länder som tar emot migranter uppfattar migration som ett irriterande socialt problem som måste ”hanteras”. Sayad ser de överväldigande hinder som nordafrikaner möter i Frankrike som en tydlig strukturell konsekvens av kolonisering, utan att för den skull offerförklara migranterna. I stället argumenterar han kraftfullt för att erkänna dem som handlande subjekt. Förmågan att se och erkänna den sortens agentskap – att även missgynnade migranter är huvudpersoner i sina egna liv – har sin grund i en förståelse för hur migrationer börjar.

När jag bodde i Dominikanska republiken, var ett av mina uppdrag att besöka samhällen där utflyttning var väletablerat. Jag mötte kvinnor som ville resa till Europa, där de två valmöjligheter som fanns att tillgå var att arbeta som inneboende hembiträde eller att sälja sex. De vägde riskerna och fördelarna mot varandra och diskuterade huruvida de skulle klara anpassningen. De flesta av dem hade inte någon längre formell utbildning, men de var varken naiva eller ointelligenta.  Om de stannade hemma var deras bästa alternativ fortfarande hemhjälp eller att sälja sex, men till långt lägre löner och utan de nya horisonter en resa kan erbjuda.

Potentiella migranter drömmer också om att få se kända platser, träffa nya människor, bli självständiga, lära sig ett nytt yrke, få nya idéer – precis som människor i rika länder gör. Att resa är utvecklande för alla resenärer – inte bara för rika turister, och för många människor är dessa resor deras största chans att ta reda på mer om världen.

När jag reste runt på ön och in i Haiti, hörde jag dussintals människor prata om hur de skulle komma i väg. Européer tar för givet att deras resevisum beviljas av vilket land de än vill besöka. Medborgare i länder som Dominikanska republiken vet att deras ansökningar om turistvisa aldrig kommer att beviljas. Liksom när det gäller att få ett arbete och arbetstillstånd utomlands, utgör de statliga riktlinjerna en begränsning – arbetstillstånden omfattar bara ”kvalificerade” jobb, vilket gör att många migranter väljer att resa utanför det formella regelverket och tar ”okvalificerade” jobb i den svarta ekonomin.

För att få tillgång till de här arbetena kan resenärerna behöva nytt namn och pass, en falsk vigselring, flygbiljetter, pengar att visa upp för gränspoliser och råd om vad man ska säga till dem, någon som möter upp vid flygplatsen och någonstans att bo när de kommer fram. Jag träffade många människor som erbjuder de här tjänsterna till potentiella migranter, inklusive deras egna familjemedlemmar, gamla vänner, bekantskaper bland turister och frilansande entreprenörer. Eftersom den här resemarknaden inte är reglerad, finns det inget bra sätt att veta vem som gör ett bra jobb och vem som behandlar migranterna korrekt, förutom via ryktesvägen: berättelser från kunder som smugglats ut säkert.

Jag pratade med Lucía, en strippdansös som hade väntat på det rätta tillfället att ge sig av i flera månader. Hon ville åka till Paris, men hade inte hittat rätt erbjudande ännu. Miriam, med två års universitetsstudier och erfarenheter av arbete som tandläkarassistent, funderade på ifall statussänkningen att bli hembiträde skulle vägas upp av de pengar hon kunde tjäna i Italien, där hennes syster bodde. Båda kvinnorna visste vilka priser och villkor de önskade och besökte platser där smugglare samlas regelbundet för att höra vad som erbjöds.

En del såg mig som en möjlighet. En kypare började prata med mig efter att ha serverat kaffe, Continue reading

BBC Human Trafficking Debate now in UK: Mira Sorvino’s Moral Outrage

Mira Sorvino was not wearing her Mighty Aphrodite clothes when she attacked me at the BBC World Debate programme on Human Trafficking. Her dress was a demure tartan instead, though with high transparent platform heels.

The programme has become accessible online in the UK, which it was not originally, so if you couldn’t see it before try again – it may now be watchable wherever you are. I wrote about the background to this show before I was flown to Luxor for it and afterwards when it went online in January.

Editors cut and re-arranged the debate from its original sequence, softening Mira Sorvino’s personal attack on me by placing it quite late, when in reality she freaked out only a few minutes after we began – after I had answered a question only twice, I think. She was backed by an audience composed of non-critical anti-trafficking campaigners brought in by the UN and Mrs Mubarak, now fallen from prestige but acting like a queen at the time (December 2010). There’s more about the Sorvino experience at the Huffington Post, but I can’t explain whether or not she knows how to reconcile her earlier sex-worker role with her moral outrage now.

If you have time to click here, I’d be grateful to know if it is not available wherever you are – that is, if you get a message saying Not available in your area. Even if you don’t have the time or will to watch the whole thing. If you want to see La Sorvino, she comes a few minutes into Part 4.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Only playing stupid about sex trafficking? Pull the other one, Ashton

December 2010, Luxor

I have found Ashton Kutcher’s behaviour towards the Village Voice tediously adolescent, but I did finally comment on a blog post I doubt Kutcher wrote himself, despite his claim that he only played stupid as an actor. He won’t read the comment himself, either, and, if he did read all the material he boasts about here, why didn’t he run into long-published warnings about the misuse of data on children and trafficking?

Jul 03, 2011
Laura Agustin said…
And in Luxor, did you listen to me on the BBC panel? Or did you pull faces and groan every time I spoke, along with others from Hollywood? Were you interested in any of the issues I brought up, or did you simply ignore them and stand up to repeat the wrong statistic that the average age of entry into prostitution is 13? In order to get big applause? I had been talking about diversity amongst people who travel and sell sex, you changed the topic to bring up the erroneous figure of 13, which, if you have done the research you say you have, you know is simply taken from a single study and being misused horribly. You can’t claim to be knowledgeable about a field if you haven’t read a wide range of research – not emotional stories, not ideological rhetoric. Will you take a look at my book, Sex at the Margins? my blog, which has loads of resources your government agencies will never tell you about?

In the photos, Ashton is playing a role the UN wrote for him and other celebrities: pretending to be an expert. Above, he occupies main stage at an event I’ve described as a revival meeting in Luxor, Egypt, last December. I did not take this picture or witness this particular moment, but I was in Luxor at the same time because the BBC World Service flew me there. Also to play a role, no doubt about that, but is it too much to argue that nearly 20 years of reading, field work, publishing in peer-reviewed journals and successfully defending a phd thesis actually do constitute expertise?

Those are the reasons the BBC invited me to be the lone measured voice on the television debate Can Human Trafficking Be Stopped? which you can view on their website. There you will see the film stars heroically standing up for their cause, but the editors have manipulated the footage, changing the order of events, so you can’t see how Mira Sorvino attacked me personally, or understand that Kutcher stood  to declaim about the average age of entry into prostitution being 13 in response to my remarks about diversity amongst people who sell sex. Sex, lies and videotaping tells more of the story.

Now, because I support the Village Voice in its attempt to put facts in the foreground, I am holding them to the same standard they hold Kutcher to. In their Real Men article, the VV claims The thinly veiled fraud behind the shocking “100,000 to 300,000 child prostitutes” estimate has never been questioned, and that is also not true and a bit arrogant. I exposed the slip about trafficked children versus children at risk almost a year ago in a story about CraigsList, but then I suppose the VV means no Big Players questioned it. Or it means that when the authors googled for sources they didn’t bother to go further than the dozens of repetitive items that come up first simply because they sit on Big Players’ websites: media factories of one sort or another. No amount of seo tweaking can change Google’s inherent bias towards the Big Boys; you won’t find an independent like me at the top.

Kutcher writes

I’ve spent the last 2 years meeting with every expert on the issue of Human Trafficking that I can find, reading countless books, meeting with victims and former traffickers, and studying effective international models to combat trafficking.  We are working with the State Dept, the Department of Homeland security, and multiple NGO’s.

Isn’t it interesting that both Kutcher and Sorvino (the no-goodwill ambassador for the UN drugs and crime people, on the right in the second photo) place so much faith in the Big Boys – government and police? Kutcher has never spoken to anyone I know, and I know a lot of experts. As for his claim about countless books, maybe that’s because he can’t count.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Ambassador CdeBaca’s incoherent ideas on trafficking and slavery

Luis CdeBaca is a US government employee with the misleading title Ambassador-at-Large for Trafficking. I am told this means he reports directly to the President, so he is largely free to do what he likes. At an event I attended in Washington DC last year, he said people ask why he doesn’t address the root causes of trafficking in his work and gave his answer: My budget is only $25 million, so obviously I can’t address root causes. Only $25 million, well that explains it. He went on to say he therefore would continue to concentrate on raids and rescues.

He spoke stirringly of the UK-US alliance to end this scourge and leaned heavily on a supposed connection to William Wilberforce, an evangelical Christian Englishman who neocolonialists claim to be responsible for the end of slavery. In this account no mention is made of the original conquests that set up new and reinforced existing slave economies or of native resistance movements and revolutions: No, one White Man did it practically singlehandedly, and by the way he was also an enthusiast of the Society for Suppression of Vice (father of the Obscene Publications Act, by the way, amongst other repressive delights).

I was surprised CdeBaca was at the Washington event, because all the other speakers were critical of his sort of approach and rhetoric, which is why I accepted the invitation. Thus unprepared, I became very wound up when he cited the US Constitution as justification for interference around the globe, so much so that I scrapped what I had intended to say to the large audience of government and ngo employees and instead, when it was my turn, lambasted the ambassador’s speech. I slipped once and said fucking as an adjective because, I can’t help it, imperialism is the subject that most boils my blood. There were a couple of blanched faces amongst the organisers but also some cheers from the audience, and CdeBaca had left already, anyway. I didn’t know before I went that the Woodrow Wilson Center is supposed to be a hallowed hall, but I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t have said it even if I had known. They describe my talk like this:

While Laura Agustín also critiqued U.S. policy toward human trafficking, her primary focus was on combating the assumption “that the U.S. and other sacred nations must take action” against human trafficking. Rather than assuming that trafficked persons need to be rescued, Agustín believes that we must interrogate the structure of ‘rescue’ efforts that can at times feel more like arrest, abuse and deportation. She also emphasized that migrants are not always passive victims, but rather are courageous, active agents, willing to risk the hazards of the informal economy in order to find work and pay in developed countries. She concluded that the current international discourse on protecting the rights of trafficked workers is misplaced and recommended that developed countries begin to legally recognize more jobs in the informal economy.

CdeBaca was in the audience at the BBC World Debate in Luxor, too, where he heard one of the panellists, Siddharth Kara, inflate so-called estimates of slavery into the 20-millions. That’s one of the places in that programme where I cut in and expressed disbelief, asking how exactly such a figure was reached and why the topic had shifted suddenly from trafficking to slavery. No problem for Kara, however, since the figure is reached by simply including vast categories of people, from child labourers in general to any woman selling sex and potentially to any worker in the informal economy. These are slaves, now, remember, not just trafficked people.

At a recent event at the Vatican, of all places, CdeBaca estimated between 12.5 and 27 million people are trapped in slavery around the world, ranging from children forced to work as domestic servants or in sweatshops to women coerced into prostitution. And here are statements all ascribed to him in Up to 27 million trapped in slavery worldwide (the incoherency might come from the reporter, there’s no way to tell.)

Countries where migrants arrive should try to identify potential victims and protect them, rather than opting for immediate repatriation which often sends them back into the hands of human traffickers. LA: Here he says people shouldn’t be deported (ghastly euphemism, repatriated) because they will run into traffickers again.

Tens of thousands of migrants are fleeing turmoil in North Africa, with many trying to reach Europe by boat, but the problem of slavery exists all over the world. . . Now he switches to saying slavery is everywhere, so presumably it’s on all the borders, too.

The European Union has urged African border authorities to bolster controls to prevent human smugglers taking advantage of the situation. But . . . it is more effective to fight slavery in the countries where the victims are exploited. Here he says it’s no good closing borders and implies they should be open, but I am not clear how this is connected to his claim that fighting slavery should happen in European countries. He seems to be saying it’s no use trying to do anything in the countries of origin, let all these folk get into Europe and then save them.

You don’t fight trafficking on the borders, because people don’t yet know they are trafficking victims, it’s only when they get to where they are going that they are enslaved. People should be keeping an eye on where these refugees end up, what kind of jobs they are being put into and how they are being treated. Again he’s against hardened border controls, but his statement that victims don’t know they are victims till they get inside is a silly and demeaning generalisation, since, if something has gone wrong lots of migrants know so at an early stage. He also calls enslaved migrants refugees, showing ignorance of what the term means in migration policy.

These statements do not add up to a plan. CdeBaca clearly wants to criticise European border policy, but his solutions are incoherent. Maybe he did hear what I said in Luxor, however, about one solution lying in revising antiquated and arbitrary distinctions between informal and formal sectors of the economy, so that people being called slaves could have some labour rights and people being called trafficked might get work permits to do jobs in other countries.

People are always telling me that these moral entrepreneurs went to Harvard and such places, as though that means they must be right. Maybe they are intelligent and got nice degrees, but their understanding of migration, social processes and precarious labour is practically non-existent. Being in campaign mode seriously distorts analytic ability.

By the way, note that images of white imperialism work two ways; in the Tintin picture blacks are carrying a white, while in the other picture a white is carrying a black. In both pictures, the white is in charge.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Migranten som resenär (sexindustrin inkluderade) : Lauras artikel i Arena

Jag har en artikel i aprils Arena. Upplagans tema: Invandraren är tillbaka. Vilka är vi och dom? och min artikel heter Migranten som resenär. Troligen är det första gången en sån behandling av migration och sex publiceras på svenska (jag skrev inte den titel, som är lite lam).

For those who thought it was impossible, an article of mine in the magazine Arena, whose April theme is migration. My article is called The Migrant as traveller and is about migration, gender, sex, tourism, neocolonialism and trafficking. The title is weak, and I didn’t choose it, but my opinions were not modified for or by the publication. The cover shown at the right shows someone being stamped them, as in us and them.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

New Sexuality Studies: including sex work, migration and trafficking

I’m pleased to say that the editors of this textbook included a chapter on migrant sex work and trafficking, and I wrote it. Imagine: undergraduate students actually learning how complicated these issues are, and in a general sexuality text. Boggles the mind. My bit is near the end.

Introducing the New Sexuality Studies 2nd edition published 14 February 2011 by Routledge, Edited by Steven Seidman, Nancy Fischer, Chet Meeks

Table of Contents Part 1: Sex as a Social Fact 1. Theoretical Perspectives by Steve Seidman 2. The Social Construction of Sexuality interview with Jeffrey Weeks 3. Surverying Sex interview with Edward Laumann Part 2: Sexual Meanings 4. Popular Culture Constructs Sexuality interview with Joshua Gamson 5. Sexual Pleasure by Kelly James 6. Purity and Pollution: Sex as Moral Discourse by Nancy Fischer 7. Sex and Power by Kristen Barber 8. Sexual Politics in Intimate Relationships: Sexual Coercion and Harassment by Lisa K. Waldner 9. Gay and Straight Rites of Passage by Chet Meeks Part 3: Sexual Bodies and Behaviours 10. Medicine and the Making of a Sexual Body by Celia Roberts 11. The Body, Disability and Sexuality by Thomas Gerschick 12. Sexualizing Asian Male Bodies by Travis S. K. Kong 13. Sex and the Senior Woman by Meika Loe 14. Polishing the Pearl: Discoveries of the Clitoris by Lisa Jean Moore 15. Orgasm by Juliet Richters 16. Anal Sex: Phallic and Other Meanings by Simon Hardy 17. Sexual Intercourse by Kerwin Kaye 18. Viagra and the Coital Imperative by Nicola Gavey Part 4: Gender and Sexuality 19. Unruly Bodies: Intersex Variations of Sex Development by Sharon E. Preves 20. Transgendering: Challenging the ‘Normal’ by Kimberly Tauches 21. Transsexual, Transgender, and Queer interview with Viviane Namaste 22. Gender and Heterosexism in Rock-n-roll interview with Mimi Schippers 23. Adolescent Girls’ Sexuality: The More it Changes, the More it Stays the Same by Deborah L. Tolman 24. Not ‘Straight’, but Still a ‘Man’: Negotiating Non-heterosexual masculinities in Beirut by Ghassan Moussawi 25. How Not to Talk to Muslim Women: Patriarchy, Islam and the Sexual Regulation of Pakistani Women by Saadia Toor 26. ‘Guys are just Homophobic’: Rethinking Adolescent Homophobia and Heterosexuality by CJ Pascoe 27. Mis-conceptions about Unintended Pregnancy: Considering Context in Sexual and Reproductive Decision-making by Jennifer A. Reich Part 5: Intimacies 28. Romantic Love interview with Eva Illouz 29. Gender and the Organization of Heterosexual Intimacy by Daniel Santore 30. Shopping for Love: On-line Dating and the Making of a Cyber Culture of Romance by Sophia DeMasi 31. Covenant Marriage: Reflexivity and Retrenchment in the Politics of Intimacy by Dwight Fee 32. Interracial Romance: The Logic of Acceptance and Domination by Kumiko Nemoto 33. Lesbian and Gay Parents by Yvette Taylor 34. Parners of Transgender People by Carey Jean Sojka Part 6: Sexual Identities 35. Straight Men by James Dean 36. Sexual Narratives of ‘Straight’ Women by Nicole LaMarre 37. Lesbians interview with Tamsin Wilton 38. The Disappearance of the Homosexual interview with Henning Beck 39. Gay Men and Lesbians in the Netherlands by Gert Hekma and Jan Willem Duyvendak 40. The Bisexual Menace Revisited: or, Shaking up Social Categories is Hard to do by Kristen Esterberg 41. Bisexualities in America interview with Paula Rodriguez Rust 42. Multiple Identities: Race, Class, and Gender in Lesbian and Gay Affirming Protestant Congregations by Krista McQueeny Part 7: Sexual Institutions and Sexual Commerce 43. One is Not Born a Bride: How Weddings Regulate Heterosexuality by Chrys Ingraham 44. Change and Continuity in American Marriage by Erica Hunter 45. The Political Economy of Sexual Labor interview with Elizabeth Bernstein 46. Sex Sells, but What Else Does it Do? The American Porn Industry by Chris Pappas 47. Sex Workers Interview with Wendy Chapkis 48. Conflicts at the Tubs: Bathhouses and Gay Culture and Politics in the United States by Jason Hendrickson 49. Queering the Family by Mary Burke and Kristine Olsen 50. Pleasure for Sale: Feminist Sex Stores by Alison Better Part 8: Sexual Cultures 51. Sexual Liberation and the Creative Class in Israel by Dana Kaplan 52. Internet Sex: The Seductive Freedom To by Dennis Waskul 53. The Time of the Sadomaschoist: Hunting with(in) the ‘Tribus’ by Darren Langdridge 54. Secret Sex and the Down-lo Brotherhood by Justin Luc Hoy 55. Wait… Hip Hop Sexualities by Thomas F. DeFrantz 56. Gay Men Dancing: Circuit Parties by Russell Westhaver Part 9: Sexual Regulation and Inequality 57. Sexuality, State and Nation by Jyoti Puri 58. Iran’s Sexual Revolution by Pardis Mahdavi 59. Christianity and the Regulation of Seuxality in the United States by Joshua Grove 60. The Marriage Contract by Mary Bernstein 61. Healing Disorderly Desire: Medical-therapeutic Regulation of Sexuality by P. J. McGann 62. Schools and the Social Control of Sexuality by Melinda Miceli 63. Law and the Regulation of the Obscene by Phoebe Christina Godfrey Part 10: Sexual Politics 64. Gay Marriage: Why Now? Why At All? by Reese Kelly 65. The US Supreme Court and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Rights by Gregory Maddox 66. The Politics of AIDS: Sexual Pleasure and Danger by Jennifer Gunsaullus 67. The Pro-family Movement by Tina Fetner 68. Politics of Sex Education Interview with Janice M. Irvine 69. Gender and Sexual Politics: American Gay Rights and Feminist Movement by Megan Murphy 70. Sexual Dissent: A Post-identity Culture of Sexual Resistance in the Case of Lebanese Nonheterosexuals by Steven Seidman 71. War and the Politics of Sexual Violence by Margarita Palacios & Silvia Posocco Part 11: Global and Transnational Sexualities 72. Condoms in the Global Economy by Peter Chua 73. Sexual Tourism Interview with Julia O’Connell Davidson 74. Migrant Sex Work and Trafficking by Laura Agustín 75. The Public and Hidden Sexualities of Filipina Women in Lebanon by Hayeon Lee 76. Mexican Immigrants, Hetersexual Sex and Loving Relationships in the United States Interview with Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez 77. Gender, Sexuality, and the Lebanese Diaspora: Global Identities and Transnational Practices by Dalia Abdelhady

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Review of Sex at the Margins in American Ethnologist

Bronislaw Malinowski’s fieldwork tent in the Trobriand Islands during Europe’s First World War

Lorraine Nencel, of Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit, published a review of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry last August in American Ethnologist. There are now reviews of this book in 23 academic journals that I know about. (You can read Don Kulick’s, Dan Allman’s, Ken Plummer’s, Elizabeth Bernstein’s, Meena Poudel’s and a few others on this website).

One of the unspoken requirements for writing a review is to find defects in the book, and these can be the most interesting comments. (I do chuckle sometimes at the fact that reviewers rarely criticise the same defects, however – there are always new and different things to complain about.) In this case, Lorraine asserts that I ‘lost my balance’ as researcher when I included my own reactions to situations where I was participant observer. To me, and I still think this, including my own reactions was a requirement for doing reflexive research: that is, I don’t believe any of us does research without having emotions, prejudices and other responses based on our own histories.

Reflexivity, broadly defined, means a turning back on oneself, a process of self-reference (Aull Davies 1999)

Referring to my own reactions was, to me, a requirement, and I am pretty sure my thesis adviser agreed. I said this to Lorraine in an email, and her reply was that I needed to make this all more explicit.

Maybe so. When I was editing the thesis to make it into a Zed Book, I had to cut the original, and great swathes of repetitive or tedious discussion (required for academic work) were done away with. Perhaps the original made my thinking on the researcher’s effect on her research more overt. Anyway, Lorraine ends by saying after reading this book the reader will not be able to think, hear, or talk about migrant sex work and trafficking the same way again. Thank you, Lorraine.

Laura Agustín’s book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and NGO workers who have ventured into the domain of working or researching “human trafficking.” By simplifying her language and omitting internal text references, the author aims to make this book accessible for experts, academics, and extension workers. Academically, its merits can be sung for the way she managed to debunk existing myths about migration and sex work; identifying the problems, gaps, and silences in contemporary theories and by doing so, unclosing the fuzzy nature of migration for sex work in its diversity. Agustín argues and illustrates that sex work is one of the different but limited alternatives available for illegal migrants in Europe. She analyzes sex work within the group of service activities such as domestic help and personal care—showing that all these activities share similarities in regard to their exploitive and insecure nature. She sustains that sex work must be analyzed within the broader frame of migration theory to understand its complexity. This is one of the objectives of the book. Despite the similarities shared by these different activities, the multitude of studies published on migration and “human trafficking” have isolated sex work from other migration options constructing a separate category of victims that lack agency and autonomy. Agustín wants to understand how and why this occurs. The search for the answer to these questions guides her throughout the book. Finally, a personal motivation led her to this study, namely, being a sex work researcher and activist and previously working in NGOs working with sex workers and migrants, she wants to understand why the life of people who sell sex has not improved, in spite of organizations’ efforts and the many studies dedicated to this goal.

The book opens with a short introduction presenting various vignettes that immediately contrasts sensationalist media representations of migrant sex workers with the actual motives for women choosing to migrate. These include economic motivations but places them side by side with migrants’ desires for other things such as adventure and travel. From that moment on, the reader becomes aware that migrant women’s motivations and experiences are diverse and cannot be represented homogenously. The second chapter initiates the development of Agustín’s theoretical argument. She defines a migrant as a traveler sharing a common process rather than identity with others. The chapter examines definitions such as labor migration and “feminization of migration,” to show, for example, that female migration is not a new phenomenon, criticizing studies that conceptualize the “feminization of migration” as a recent development. It zooms in on migrant sex workers and explains how “trafficking discourses” and the “rescue industry” define migrant sex workers as (trafficked) victims because of the way they leave their home countries and arrive to Europe, that is, through debt bonding. The chapter counteracts these theories of “trafficking” and highlights women’s agency. Using empirical quotes, a picture is painted that portrays migrant women generally to be aware of the consequences of debt bonding. A distinction is made between being aware of the consequences of debt bonding and finding oneself on arriving in Europe in exploitative and violent work conditions— this distinction is generally not recognized in the trafficking literature. In the third chapter, she follows the same road of analysis criticizing the use of concepts such as informal sector, the types of work that migrants do, and the position of sex work therein. She successfully analyzes sex work as a supply and demand relationship. Sex workers are depicted as individuals consciously offering services. The quotes used to illustrate clients’ motivations reveal that far from being deviant, clients perceive buying sex as a demand for a service.

Chapters 4 and 6 should be read together. By tracing in chapter 4 the historical development of “the “rise of the social” in the 19th century, Agustín attempts to understand how the development of the philanthropic discourse that targeted the poor and particularly prostitutes in need of help is reflected in contemporary discourses and initiatives of the “rescue industry.” The chapter illustrates that it was in this period that the “prostitute” as a stigmatized, victimized, morally weak identity was constructed. Chapter 6, based almost entirely on ethnographic fieldwork, dives into the world of governmental and nongovernmental organizations’ activities and documents and shows that even projects that distance themselves from antiquated labels such as the “prostitute,” replacing them with more neutral terms like sex work, do not escape from the 19th century notions of prostitution and help.

Critical analyses of the “rescue industry” are few and hard to find. Agustín should be applauded for her originality and her willingness to put herself in a vulnerable position as researcher and activist. Still it is here, where certain weaknesses can be found. While the link between the 19th-century socially invented object “the prostitute” and the contemporary category of the prostitute or sex worker is analytically strong, the same does not hold true in relation to the development of 19th-century philanthropy and its connection to the contemporary “rescue  industry.” Agustín expects the reader to accept this assertion, but the analysis would benefit by illustrating this link more explicitly. Perhaps this can be partially attributed to the fact that in chapter 6 the author loses her balance between herself as a researcher and as an activist. Agustín’s report of her research findings expresses the irritation and annoyance she felt in the field while accompanying outreach workers. Although she rightfully concludes the chapter expressing the need for help organizations to be reflexive about their work, this conclusion is also applicable to the author. The researcher’s lack of reflexivity concerning her own reactions and position makes her theoretical claim concerning the relationship between 19th-century philanthropy and the contemporary situation less convincing. Nonetheless, after reading this book the reader will not be able to think, hear, or talk about migrant sex work and trafficking the same way again.

Lorraine Nencel, American Ethnologist, Volume 37, Number 3, pp 601-602.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

Naked Anthropologist emailings and facebook: how to get Laura Agustín’s news

laura agustin lipsI sympathise with people who don’t want to subscribe to blogs, either via email or rss feeds. Occasionally I do a big emailing to those in my address book, and yesterday was one of those occasions. If you would like to be on my list for these very occasional mailings, write to me via the contact form (located to the right). One snag is that some systems, including a spam machine called Vade Retro and those controlling spam for mindspring, earthlink, wanadoo and ya, have put my own isp (nodo50) on a blacklist. Emails from me never get through to people with those addresses, so if you want to be on the list, give me an alternate address. Nodo50 have tried to get it fixed to no avail, and various tests people have done from their own individual ends are no use, and these tightening up of spam filters will always be changing.  I don’t want to migrate my address book anywhere else, thank you – know that advice is coming.

On another communications front, you can be my facebook friend and subscribe to my blog via fb’s Networked Blog system. On fb I also post interesting Internet news, and sometimes quite good conversations come about as a result.

I don’t myself use twitter because I am told it only makes sense if one is willing to be attentive, original and responsive there, which I can’t be. Feel welcome to tweet anything useful from here to your heart’s delight.

laura agustin backview

Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist