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Leaving Home for Sex: Cosmopolitanism or sex trafficking or both?

25 September 2011 in migration, sex work, trafficking by laura agustin | 2 comments | print print

It is striking that in the year 2001 women should so overwhelmingly be seen as pushed, obligated, coerced or forced when they leave home for the same reason as men: to get ahead through work.

Sex trafficking and human trafficking were not words on everyone’s lips when I wrote the above ten years ago. I was trying to figure out what was special and problematic about migrants who sell sex, believing that migrants are migrants, no matter what jobs they end up getting (including prostitution or sex work). Nowadays, a lot of the social conflict is about statistics: how many are trafficked, how many are illegal migrants. But even more it is about definitions, world views, ideas about sex and money, the insistence that a particular cultural view should be everyone’s.

Most conversations about migrants who sell sex present black-and-white versions of something that is almost entirely grey. For moral crusaders who would rush to legislation or attempt to prove that one sort of law is better than others, my vision is not satisfying. I say Stop, slow down. Until you comprehend the myriad elements present amongst people who leave home to go to another country and sell sex, you shouldn’t be passing laws about them. Of any kind. This is not useless postmodern dithering but the position that until you understand the minimum about how people experience their own lives you cannot responsibly take actions to help them. If you don’t care what they say themselves then don’t talk about helping and admit that control is what you want: the power to make people stop doing what you don’t approve of and start doing something else, whether they want to or not.

Leaving Home for Sex is the first piece I published that defined what my work would be for the next few years. At the time it was unusual not to use the term prostitute, but I also didn’t just substitute the term sex worker. Instead, I tried to describe how selling sex can be an occupation that works out all right for migrant women without their taking on a definite identity based on it. You will see ‘Challenging place’ in the original title because the piece was written for a special journal issue on women and place – the local and the global. I suggested that migrant workers didn’t fit into that framework but could sometimes be viewed as cosmopolitan subjects: that neither poverty nor bad jobs nor lack of complete ‘choice’ over your life prevents you from also becoming cosmopolitan.  Click on the title to get the pdf.

Leaving Home for Sex

Laura Mª Agustín, Development, 45.1, 110-117 (2002).

As soon as people migrate, there is a tendency to sentimentalise their home. Warm images are evoked of close families, simple household objects, rituals, songs, foods.[1] Many religious and national holidays, across cultures, reify such concepts of ‘home’ and ‘family’, usually through images of a folkoric past. In this context, migration is constructed as a last-ditch or desperate move and migrants as deprived of the place they ‘belong to’.Yet for millions of people all over the world, the birth and childhood place is not a feasible or desirable one in which to undertake more adult or ambitious projects, and moving to another place is a conventional—not traumatic—solution.

How does this decision to move take place? Earthquakes, armed conflict, disease, lack of food impel some people in situations that seem to involve little element of choice or any time to ‘process’ options: these people are sometimes called refugees. Single men’s decisions to travel are generally understood to evolve over time, the product of their ‘normal’ masculine ambition to get ahead through work: they are called migrants. Then there is the case of women who attempt to do the same.

Research in a marginal place: Geographies of exclusion

For some time I worked in educación popular in Latin America and the Caribbean and with latino migrants in North America and Europe, in programmes dedicated to literacy, AIDS prevention and health promotion, preparation for migration and concientización (whose exact translation does not exist in English but combines something about consciousness-raising with something about ‘empowerment’). My concern about the vast difference between what first-world social agents (governmental, NGO workers, activists) say about women migrants and what women migrants say about themselves led me to study and testify on these questions. I have deliberately located myself on the border of both groups: the migrants and the social, in Europe, where the only jobs generally available to migrant women are in the domestic, ‘caring’ and sex industries. My work examines both the social and the migrants, so I spend time in brothels, bars, houses, offices, ‘outreach’ vehicles and ‘the street’, in its many versions. Data on what migrant women say come from my own research and others’ in many countries of the European Union; women have also been interviewed before or after migrating in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. Data on what social agents say come from my own research with those who work on prostitution issues in those countries, including as evaluator of projects for the International Labour Office and the European Commission.

Although researchers and NGO personnel have been working with migrant prostitutes for nearly twenty years in Europe, publication of their findings remains outside mainstream press and journals. Most of the people who have met and talked with many migrant prostitutes are neither academics nor writers. ‘Outreach’ is conceptualised as distinct from ‘research’ and generally funded as HIV/AIDS prevention. This means that the published products of outreach research are generally limited to information on sexual health and practices; the other many kinds of information collected remain unpublished. Some of those who work in these projects have the chance to meet and exchange such information, but most do not. Recently, a new kind of researcher has entered the field, usually young academic women studying sociology or anthropology and working on migrations. These researchers want to do justice to the reality around them, which they recognise as consisting of as many migrant prostitutes as migrant domestic/‘caring’ workers. Most of these researchers do oral histories and some have begun to publish but it will be some time before such findings are recognised. Stigma works in all kinds of ways, among them the silencing of results that do not fit hegemonic discourses.[2] The mainstream complaint says ‘the data is not systematised’ or ‘there is no data.’ In my research, I seek out such ‘marginalised’ results.

Discourses of leaving home

It is striking that in the year 2001 women should so overwhelmingly be seen as pushed, obligated, coerced or forced when they leave home for the same reason as men: to get ahead through work. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Sex in ‘Sex Trafficking’: about sex acts and nationality

16 June 2011 in migration, sex work, trafficking by laura agustin | 6 comments | print print

This article addressing the idea of ‘sex’ in sex trafficking was published a few years back in American Sexuality. I wonder if they would invite me to say such things again? Everything having become so extremely moralistic now, an anthropological view like this is seen as the work of the devil. It is still on their website, though and is now available in French courtesy of Thierry Schaffauser.

The Sex in ‘Sex Trafficking’, American Sexuality, Autumn 2007

Why do we think migrant sex workers need rescuing?

By Laura Agustín

The title of this publication notwithstanding, I don’t believe there are national sexualities. But our language reflects vague impressions of how people in other cultures do sex—a tongue-kiss, ‘French’; anal penetration, ‘Greek’; penis-between-the-breasts, ‘Cuban’. They are stereotypes most of us don’t take seriously, and the national tags vary according to what country we’re standing in. But everywhere we have notions that out there somewhere are strange, wonderful, and exotic kinds of sex waiting for us to try.

But what about sex trafficking, denounced in the media as a rampant crime linked to global gangs and insecurity at borders? The U.S. government, claiming to be the world’s moral arbiter, spends millions issuing an annual report card rating other countries’ efforts to combat this crime and trying to rescue victims around the world. The implication is clear: ‘American’ ideas about sex and morality are the right ones for the planet. In other words, if the ideal of ‘American’ sexual relationships is accepted everywhere, the enslavement of women and children will end.

In the West, in the present, many people believe that sex should express love. This ‘good’ sex is also said to provide a key way to discover personal identity—who we really are, our innermost selves. It is assumed that feelings of love increase pleasure (quantitatively) and intensify it (qualitatively), resulting in meaningful passion that is expressed through long term, emotionally committed relationships. Other sexual relations then seem wrong, among them anonymous, public, and ‘promiscuous’ sex. Above all, ‘real’ love and sex are said to be incompatible with rationality and work—at least that is the way many wish it to be.

At the same time, people wonder: Is there a boom underway in the buying and selling of sex, part of a general sexualization of contemporary culture? Since objective data is impossible to gather when businesses operate outside the law, we cannot know whether sex-and-money transactions are going on more than ever, but we certainly know we see and hear about them more. So although we tell a powerful story about sex and love belonging together, we also understand that people want other kinds of sex. We hear about people who buy and sell sex from our friends, acquaintances, the media, and sometimes through reporting on migration—which is where ‘sex trafficking’ comes in.

In a context of increasing hostility toward migrants, it grates on people’s nerves to think that many might prefer to use sex to earn money instead of washing dishes, babysitting, working in a sweatshop, or picking fruit—for much less money. But migrants—who come in all sizes, shapes and colors, and from infinitely varying backgrounds—are just trying to get by as best they can on what can be a very rocky path. Migrants who cross borders to work need to be flexible and adaptable to succeed. They often do not know beforehand how they will be living, and they may not know the language. They may not find the food, music, or films they like, or the mosque, temple, or church. Everything looks different; they feel lonely. They may feel enormous pressure to pay back debts contracted to undertake their journey, and they may fear being picked up by the police. But they have arrived with a plan, some names and addresses, and some amount of money.

When migration policy is tightened at the same time that low-status jobs are abundantly available, a market opens up to help migrants cross borders. Some of this looks just like legal travel, but much of it involves bigger risks and higher costs, and some entails egregious exploitation—whether migrants are destined to work in mines, private homes, sweatshops, agriculture, or the sex industry.

Some migrants prefer to do anything rather than sell sex—for instance, ‘mules’ who take on the job of carrying drugs inside their bodies. Once across a border, past work experience and diplomas, whether white-collar or blue, are usually not recognized. Migrant schoolteachers, engineers, nurses, hairdressers and a range of others find only low-status, low-paying jobs open to them. Many of them, from everywhere on the social spectrum, would rather work in the sex industry—in one or the other of a huge variety of jobs.

Bars, restaurants, cabarets, private clubs, brothels, discotheques, saunas, massage parlors, sex shops, peep shows, hotel rooms, homes, bookshops, strip and lap-dance venues, dungeons, Internet sites, beauty parlors, clubhouses, cinemas, public toilets, phone lines, shipboard festivities, as well as modelling, swinging, stag and fetish parties—sex is sold practically everywhere. Where these are businesses operating without licences, undocumented workers can easily be employed: the paradox of prohibition. For migrants who are already working without official permission, these jobs may well seem no riskier than any other.

To understand why headlines insist that all migrant women who sell sex are ‘trafficked’, we need to go back to the popular idea that the proper place of sex is at home, between ‘committed’ lovers and family. When only this kind of relationship is imagined to be equitable and valid, it becomes easier to think that women from other cultures are poor, backward, vulnerable objects passively waiting for exploitation by rapacious men. With these notions, from the point of view of the comfortably sheltered, no one would opt to sell sex and migrants must be forced to do it.

What can we know about the actual sex involved in this moral conflict? We know all ‘sex acts’ are not the same in the context of loving relationships, and they are not all the same just because money is exchanged for them. Migrant workers sell millions of sexual experiences every day around the world to customers from different cultures, learning and teaching through experience how physicality mixes with skill, sophistication, hostility, tenderness, insecurity, respect.

When we have sex with others we influence each other, and although a single interaction may not have a lasting impact, many sexual agreements are complex or often repeated. Occasionally, a single experience can change the course of a life. In a commercial relationship, on one side are people flexible about how they make money, on the other are people wanting to fulfill a desire or experiment. These relationships take place in actual social contexts—indeed, sex itself is often subsidiary to the conspicuous consumption of alcohol or entertainment, to cruising or just to men being men together. Since everywhere men are granted more permission to experiment with sex and have more money to spend, their tastes help determine what’s offered and with whom, whether they be women, men, or transsexuals.

These millions of relationships, which take place every day, cannot be reduced to undifferentiated sex acts or eliminated from cultural consideration just because they entail money. Both client and sex worker may be acting seduction, flirtation, and affection when they are together, but camaraderie, friendship, love, and marriage also occur. And both sides are fascinated by sexual differences, imagined to be ‘national’, exotic, and real.

How we perform sex, what we feel when we do particular things, depends on our cultural (not national) contexts: how we were taught to do them and by whom, what we were permitted to try out, whether we talked to others about what we were doing and what we wanted. When we engage sexually with others, we learn and teach, we influence each other and change how we do things—often without knowing it. Because people are poor, or have left their countries to work abroad, or take money in exchange for sex does not change their humanity, their capacity to feel, respond, learn, or teach, whether sex is at issue or not.

Sex trafficking headlines claim that all migrant women who sell sex are invariably being abused, without regard to their diverse backgrounds and without asking them how they feel. But many reject being defined as sexually vulnerable and in need of ‘rescuing’ and protection. Everyone does not feel the same way about sex—in rich countries like the United States, or in any other country. Nationality is a poor way to understand human beings and their sexualities.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

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They Speak, But Who Listens to (Migrant) Sex Workers?

17 February 2011 in migration, sex work by laura agustin | 6 comments | print print

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 »

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Sex workers travel on their own to the World Cup, and elsewhere

10 June 2010 in sex work, trafficking by laura agustin | 2 comments | print print

How about this reasonable, common-sense story about sex workers from African countries north of South Africa who plan to travel there for possible commercial opportunities? I am told that travellers from richer continents may feel nervous about going to a blacker, poorer country with a high rate of hiv and a history of a certain kind of violence. But this is a relative view, since travellers from poorer countries with different perceptions of violence and hiv may easily see South Africa as a good place to work. Not to mention that many big cities in richer countries offer high levels of scary violence in certain neighbourhoods, so it’s meaningless to generalise about whole countries or continents.

The reporter didn’t have to say ‘feverishly’ in the first line, a typical effort to sensationalise a perfectly ordinary activity: travel. Not ‘trafficking’, unless you start worrying about Melvis’s friends in Johannesburg and the truck drivers that will drive Mwale there. Note the Gender Minister’s fear that the workers may get in under the guise of doing something else and then go into sex work.

Malawi: Prostitutes gear up for WC 2010

Mabvuto Kambuwe, AfricaNews, 18 May 2010

Sex workers in Malawi are feverishly saving towards the World Cup 2010 in South Africa. They are not going to support their teams but to warm the beds of soccer fans who want to quench their sexual desires. One said: “I think time has come for African sex workers to make money through the World Cup.”

The global football showpiece has generally become a common ground for prostitutes to rake in millions from thousands of tourists. This reporter spoke with some commercial sex workers in Malawi about their plans ahead of the World Cup.

Melvis, who stays in the commercial city Lilongwe, said she has arranged with a Johannesburg-based friend to pitch camp with her until the tournament is over. She said: “Although South Africa is very far from here, I am prepared to get there before the kickoff. It will be easy for me to stay in South Africa for more than 20 days because I have a friend who stays in Johannesburg and I am expecting to return home with more money to start another business so that my life will improve”.

Her colleague Febbie Mwale said she cannot allow the money making opportunity during the FIFA main event to slip out of her fingers. She said she is hoping to quadruple her average daily income of US$34 (R250) when she lands in South Africa. Mwale said going to South Africa is no big deal for her. She has been there several times with truck drivers who happened to be her clients.

19-year-old Chrisy said: “If I fail to go to South Africa during the World Cup I hope our business will still improve here at home because some of the fans will be coming to Africa for the first time and they will be interested to visit countries like Malawi. I hope this World Cup is going to work to our advantage because I have been interested to have more clients like whites so I believe during this period I may get some.”

Malawian Minister of Gender and Children Development Patricia Kaliati expressed fears that some of these prostitutes would be in South Africa under the pretext of going for genuine business but would later go into prostitution. . .

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Easy to travel? Think again: Surveillance and policing at European borders

2 April 2010 in migration by laura agustin | 2 comments | print print

Do you doubt how European borders are increasingly surveilled and policed? I was recently invited to

Towards E-Borders
The impact of new technologies on border controls in the EU

Border control is a key element of the European Union’s policy as defined and developed in the new Stockholm Programme adopted in December 2009. In recent years, the European Union has tried to make full use of the latest electronic technology to provide a way of collecting and analysing information on everyone who travels to or from the EU. The ultimate aim is to monitor internal and external borders to ensure greater security, effectiveness and efficiency.

To this extent, the EU is currently working to develop and adjust surveillance and information systems such as Eurosur, Schengen Information System (SIS I and II), Visa Information System (VIS), Passenger Name Records (PNR), entry/exit system, etc.

Different Member States have successfully delivered pilot projects which make full use of new technologies to ensure that controls at borders are continually adapted to maintain a high level of internal security. Ireland recently approved the development of an Irish border information system (IBIS) which operates on the basis that passenger information collected by carriers prior to departure are sent to an Irish Border Operations Centre where it is screened. The United Kingdom implemented the iris recognition immigration system (IRIS), a biometric entry system, which recognises the unique iris patterns of a person’s eye to allow quick entry for pre-registered passengers at selected ports in the UK.

This seminar intends to take stock of the use and the impact of new technologies on EU borders. European and national initiatives will be debated. The role of Frontex and Europol to ensure greater security at EU borders will also be discussed.

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UNAIDS People on the Move, including mobile sex workers and their clients

15 February 2010 in migration by laura agustin | 5 comments | print print

Last year I contributed comments and resources to a UNAIDS paper written to support discussion for their Thematic Segment on People on the Move—Forced Displacement and Migrant Populations. The paper gives basic information on types of movement and links between mobility and HIV vulnerability, including how to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. ‘The paper points out that mobile people and international migrants are diverse, ranging from highly educated and high-earning professionals, to low-earning unskilled and exploited labourers. Although very different circumstances may drive migration and mobility, it is not mobility per se, but the conditions under which people move—and the ways they are treated throughout the migration cycle—pre-departure, in transit, at destinations and upon return—that most determine their vulnerabilities, which in turn affect their risks of acquiring HIV.’

This language and tone are to be celebrated, departing as they do from the usual crude separation assumed to exist between a freely-choosing middle class that always travels happily versus a downtrodden, forced poor that ‘migrates’, often unhappily. The paper is available as People on the move – forced displacement and migrant populations

I’m pleased that a boxed highlight in the report called Mobile sex workers reads pretty straightforwardly (no heavy emphasis on victimhood) and refers to clients without demonising them.

Sex workers are highly mobile both within and across national borders. Documented and undocumented migration for sex work often occurs between neighbouring countries, but there is also considerable inter-regional movement. The migration and mobility of sex workers can significantly increase their vulnerability to HIV and sexually transmitted infections. Many migrant and mobile sex workers, especially those who are undocumented, are excluded from basic education, legal and public health-care systems, and are vulnerable to violence and other forms of abuse from customers, criminal gangs and corrupt law enforcement officials, with little or no social or legal support and protection. In addition, migrant sex workers face additional cultural and linguistic barriers that adversely impact upon their ability to access local services and support networks. To reduce HIV risk and vulnerability for mobile and migrant sex workers there are key actions that need to be funded and implemented for all sex workers irrespective of their gender (women, men, transgender) or legal status. These include access to HIV prevention and treatment services, comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services, legal information and advice and necessary social services. To support these services, training of healthservice providers and law enforcement agencies addressing stigma, discrimination and violence needs to be developed along with occupational health and safety standards to make sex work safer.

Clients of sex workers are also highly mobile and their behaviour determines epidemic speed and severity (Commission on AIDS in Asia, 2008). Currently, few programmes target clients directly to promote safer sexual behaviour. Such programmes should: be provided in the workplace (where appropriate); be based on the different settings where sex work occurs; provide clients with information to protect sex workers, their regular sexual partners and themselves from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections; emphasize client responsibility to treat sex workers with dignity and respect; and incorporate approaches to eliminate genderbased violence in the context of sex work.

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Ships, shipping, seamen and sex work

17 August 2009 in sex work by laura agustin | 6 comments | print print

The tradition of inviting prostitutes onto ships at anchor is old. Nowadays, many of these invitations apply to ships anchored some distance from actual ports. Migration regulations being what they are, many seamen cannot go ashore – visas might never be granted or be too much trouble to try to apply for. Therefore, it’s common for recreation to be brought on board. A few years back I visited the Caribbean coasts of Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Colombia, where I met people who try to make money when ships arrive and seamen want to party. Someone on the ship rings up a contact on shore who puts out the call to meet at a certain small boat that will sail out to the side of the freighter. A lot of these are young women, some are young men, some are older and a lot of them are poor. Climbing up the precarious rope ladder above the sea onto the deck is a necessary requirement.

Parties last days, fun is had by some, money is paid to some, and sometimes these groups overlap. A lot of it is about drink, drugs, food and music. Most people who board ships to share leave with sailors do not call themselves prostitutes or sex workers. They are party girls who like long hedonistic sieges and who accept gifts when it’s time to go home, and they are known the world over.

To meet seafarers who do have permission to disembark, sex workers and folks with no such identity make their way to port bars when ships come in, sometimes migrating from the interior.

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How people-smuggling looks: Gambia to the Canaries

30 April 2009 in migration, trafficking by laura agustin | 1 comment | print print

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 

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Border Thinking

27 February 2009 in migration by laura agustin | 5 comments | print print

More and more people are having border experiences like the one described here in a piece first published on the Greek site Re-public in June 2008. For all the people writing to me about this sort of thing, and all those who were thinking about it, here it is again. Footnote: I’ve been through the queue at Stansted a few times since, this time with a new and better passport-visa combination, but I always feel the same spooky insecurity.

Border Thinking,

Last month, I flew into Stansted Airport, in the southeast of England, where the disembarking traveller is met by an enormous black structure looming high above the large passport-control area. UK BORDER it reads, in giant letters. In fact, at this point one is geographically well inside the country, the coast having been crossed while still in the air. But the message is clear and ominous: you aren’t In until you’ve got past the police.

As usual, waiting in the queue for Others – non-Europeans – is nerve-wracking. As I wait, I worry. Do I still look enough like my passport photo? Do I look like a drug dealer, terrorist, prostitute or
harmless tourist? Are my clothes wrong, is my hair okay? What will they think about how I speak English? Should I smile or rather demonstrate I understand the gravity of the situation? Which official will I get, the younger woman or the older man and which is better? And so on.

Holding my passport, I look down at the little white UK Landing Card and wonder, for the millionth time, why I am asked to tick one of two boxes, Male or Female. Apart from the pain this causes people who don’t definitely identify with one or the other, why do they ask this? Why do they ask for birth date and nationality, when all passports carry this information? I wonder where these cards wind up, in storage or dumped in the rubbish.

When it’s my turn, the official asks me for information she is already reading on my Landing Card, or on my visa. I answer, and then she repeats the questions, in the skeptical tone I have come to know so well. Finally she lets me through, and I have the sensation of having got away with something, even as I know I am not doing anything ‘wrong’. And every time I go through this it gets harder, as though they think that my continuing desire to be here were a crime.

No borders?

It is easy to complain about all this. It is easy to make border policy seem like a clear right-left choice between control and freedom, an oppressive device set up by our fathers, the men in business suits and military uniforms. From the border-keepers’ point of view, classifying and scrutinising travellers before they enter and while they are inside is essential to reducing risk and chaos for their own citizens. The project to make a European ‘union’ tries to celebrate diverse local nationalities, ethnicities and cultures while simultaneously identifying true pan-European values: enlightenment, humanism, rationality, progress. Inevitably this means that cultural systems arriving from outside may be viewed as inferior, backward or suspect – a repellent idea to many.

But to say ‘Let there be no borders’ is like saying let’s do away with traffic regulations, allowing unlicensed drivers to go as fast or slow as they want on streets with no stoplights, lanes or marked exits. Read the rest of this entry »

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Male sex worker in Kenya with ‘important’ clients

11 February 2009 in sex work by laura agustin | 1 comment | print print

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.

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