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Sex workers and Violence against Women: Utopic Visions or Battle of the Sexes?

13 January 2012 in sex work, trafficking by laura agustin | 14 comments | print print

The other day, discussing the recommendation that DNA should be taken from men who buy sex, I ended with a question: how can anyone maintain a utopic vision about gender equality that relies on punishing so many people as criminals? That reminded me I had asked the same question in an article published more than ten years ago.

Although I wouldn’t write it exactly the same way now, I stand by its basic ideas. If Gender Equality is one of feminism’s goals, how can we imagine it without reducing everything to black and white, perpetrator and victim, crime, crime, crime? Click for the pdf or keep reading here.

Sexworkers and Violence Against Women: Utopic Visions or Battle of the Sexes?

Laura Maria Agustín

Development, 44.3, 107-110 (2001)

Sexual exploitation and prostitution

In the movement to construct a discourse of ‘violence against women’, and thus to raise consciousness about kinds of mistreatment which before were invisible, the stage has been reached where defining crime and achieving punishment appears to be the goal. While it is progressive to raise consciousness about violence and exploitation in an attempt to deter the commitment of crimes, I hope to show that the present emphasis on discipline is very far from a utopic vision and that we should now begin to move toward other suggestions for solutions.

The following argument uses the example of prostitution or ‘sexual exploitation’ as an instance of ‘violence against women’, but the approach can apply to any attempt to deal with not only definitions of gender and sexual violence but with proposals to deal with them. When applied to adult prostitution, the term ‘sexual exploitation’ attempts to change language to make ‘voluntary’ prostitution impossible. For those who wish to ‘abolish’ prostitution, therefore, this change in terms represents progress, for now language itself will not be complicit with the violence involved. For those who may or may not want to ‘abolish’ prostitution but who in the present put the priority on improving the everyday lot of prostitutes, this language change totalizes a variety of situations involving different levels of personal will and makes it more difficult to propose practical solutions. When applied to the prostitution of children, the term ‘sexual exploitation’ represents a project to change perceptions about childhood. For those who believe that the current western model of childhood as a time of innocence should become the ‘right’ of all children in the world, this term is very important.

Criminalization of clients

Efforts to change sexist, racist and other discriminatory forms of language have long been a focus of projects of social justice in western societies, and the push to define ‘violence against women’ clearly forms part of this movement. Along with this, we see a strong move to have actions that fall within these new definitions proclaimed as crimes and their perpetrators punished. If prostitution is globally redefined as sexual exploitation (by ‘globally’ I mean that no distinctions are made according to whether prostitutes say they ‘chose’ sex work to any extent), therefore, all those who purchase sexual services, called usually ‘clients’, become ‘exploiters’.

Obviously, different terms function better or coincide more with different situations, but when social movements consciously work to change language they almost inevitably eliminate these differences. Since there are still plenty of places in the world where prostitutes are simplistically viewed as evil, contaminated, immoral and diseased, campaigns to change language so as to see the lack of choice and elements of exploitation in prostitutes’ situations are positive efforts to help them. Why, then, do these positive efforts have to be based on finding a different villain, to replace the old one?

I am referring to the discipline-and-punishment model that these efforts to change language and change perception inevitably use: in constructing a victim they also construct a victimizer—the ‘exploiter’, the bad person. After that, it is inevitable that punishment becomes the focus of efforts: passing laws against the offense and deciding what price the offender should pay. This model of ‘law and order’ is familiar to most of us as an oppressive, dysfunctional criminal justice system. We know that prisons rarely rehabilitate offenders against the law; we know that in some countries prison conditions are so bad that riots occur frequently, and if they don’t, perhaps they should. We also know that it is usually extremely difficult to prove sexual offenses (because of how the law is constructed, because of the difficulty of all these definitions of victimization, because legal advice can find ways out, etc.). Yet we continue to insist on better policing and more effective punishment, as though we didn’t know all of this.

International regulations on trafficking and sexual exploitation

My own work examines both the discourses and the practical programming surrounding the European phenomenon of migrant prostitution, the term used to describe non-Europeans working in the European sex industry (and, indeed, everyone who travels from one place to another in that vast network of diverse businesses). In most countries of the European Union, migrants appear now to constitute more than half of working prostitutes, and in some countries possibly up to 90 percent (Tampep, 1999). This situation has caused a change in the thinking on violence: now ‘traffickers’ of sex workers are discussed more than their clients. Because so many of the migrants come from ‘third world’ countries, ‘trafficking’ discourses have become a forum for addressing ‘development’ projects such as structural adjustment policies of the International Monetary Fund. But the more active debates have concerned violence, in a way that constructs them as organized crime.

One of the fora of this highly conflictive discussion was the United Nations Commission for the Prevention of Crime and Penal Justice, which met various times in Vienna to elaborate protocols on the trafficking of migrant workers. Two distinct lobbying groups argued over definitions of words such as consent, obligation, force, coercion, deceit, abuse of power and exploitation. Two distinct protocols were produced, one which applies to the ‘trafficking of women and children’ while the other to ‘smuggling of migrants’. The gender distinction is clear, expressing a greater disposition of women –along with children– to be deceived (above all about sex work), and also expressing an apparently lesser disposition to migrate. Men, on the other hand, are seen as capable of migrating but of sometimes being handled like contraband, thus the word agreed on is not trafficking but smuggling. The resulting protocols now form part of the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UN, 2000), which member countries will debate individually and decide to sign or not.

What is the problem? In an effort to save as many victims as possible, the protocols totalize the experience of all women migrants working in the sex industry, and all those who help them migrate—a wide array of family, friends, lovers, agents and entrepreneurs, as well as small-time delinquents and (probably, but this is not proved) big-time criminal networks—are defined as traffickers. Every kind of help, from preparing false working papers, visas or passports to meeting migrants at the airport and finding them a place to stay, is defined as the crime of trafficking.

The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) specifically tries, both at the Vienna meetings and internationally, to fuse the two concepts of ‘trafficking’ and ‘prostitution’ and to define them both as crimes of violence against women. Not only everyone who helps people migrate and work in the sex industry but everyone who buys sexual services ends up defined as an exploiter, a rapist and a criminal. CATW favours legislation to penalize clients of prostitutes (CATW, 2000).

The booming sex market

The problem with proposing the penalization of sexual ‘exploiters’, or clients of prostitutes, comes from the magnitude of the phenomenon, which is almost never confronted. Statistics are unreliable for all sectors of an industry overwhelmingly unrecognized legally or in government accounting, and which operates informally and relies on bribes, legal loopholes and facades. However, we can understand from the many studies of different aspects of the sex industry that it is booming. Prostitution and exploitation sites are so numerous everywhere that customers cannot be exceptional cases (yet they are often spoken of as if they were ‘perverts’ or ‘deviants’). Rather it is clear that adult and adolescent men everywhere consider it permissible to buy sexual services, and some estimates calculate that most men do it at some time in their lives.

More than 20 years ago, one Roman prostitute calculated this way:

Rome was known to have 5,000 prostitutes. Let’s say that each one took home at least 50,000 liras a day. Men don’t go more than once a day. That means that for someone who asked 3,000 liras in a car, to arrive at 50,000 she had to do a lot, maybe twenty or so. Figure it out, 20 times 5,000 comes to 100,000 clients. Since it’s rare for them to go every day, maybe they go once or twice a week, the total comes to between 400,000 and 600,000 men going to whores every week. How many men live in Rome? A million and a half. Take away the old men, the children, the homosexuals and the impotent. I mean, definitely, more or less all men go. (Cutrufelli, 1988: 26, author’s translation)

Read the rest of this entry »

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Sex work, danger and law in Canada: Xtra!

16 December 2011 in sex work by laura agustin | No comments | print print

I have not turned my back but have been travelling too steadily for the past five weeks to keep the blog up properly – although the Kristof kerfuffle was intriguing (follow-up here). The Canada tour was incredibly interesting, and I have many people to thank and follow up. First let me republish this article from Xtra!, Canada’s gay and lesbian news site, that puts a transgender sex worker first and goes on to discuss Bedford v Canada, the planet’s most significant contemporary legal case on the meaning and status of prostitution. The government is bizarrely arguing

that the purpose of the prostitution-related provisions in the Criminal Code was to eradicate prostitution by discouraging sex work.

In other words, that selling sex is inherently dangerous and therefore prostitutes are asking for it. See bolded section below, as well as the section with me in it.

The dangers of sex work in Canada

Andrea Houston, Xtra! 12 December 2011

Every night Lexi Tronic risks her life at work. If she gets beaten or raped, she feels she can’t call police to report the attack because – at least for now – Tronic is also a criminal. “What happens when you’re trapped in someone’s car with the doors locked? You don’t have any options. It’s fight or flight,” she says. Tronic is a 10-year veteran in the sex trade who has worked both on the streets and from her home, as many sex workers have, she says.

On Dec 17, the transgender and sex-workers-rights activist will join others to mark the ninth annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Such violence is a pervasive problem that is largely preventable and often ignored, she says, noting that most violent crimes against sex workers go underreported, unaddressed and unpunished. Tronic started as a sex worker in Winnipeg at Higgins Ave and Waterfront Dr, a notorious spot known for transgender sex trade workers, she says. “One of those hardcore areas where girls turn up dead or missing.”

Canadians are still haunted by the name Robert Pickton, who brutally murdered as many as 49 women, most of whom were sex workers from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.Toronto is no different, says Tronic. “Women are getting attacked and abused daily. Sex workers are easy targets. And because sex-trade work is not legal, many of these women are afraid to go to the police because they’ve had negative experiences, especially trans women. Police not only berate them for being a sex worker, they bully them for being a trans sex worker.”

Sex workers deserve the same rights as everyone else, she says. The profession is perceived to be dangerous, and it is, Tronic notes, because the laws make it so.”The police victimize the victim by saying it’s their fault,” she says. “[Sex work] is no more dangerous than working a midnight shift in a 7/11. It becomes dangerous because it’s not legal and we don’t have the safeguards for resources that the rest of the public do, like being able to go to police and seek help and safety. ”Regardless how many laws governments write, nothing will ever eradicate sex work. It is always going to be here,” Tronic says. Therefore, the working conditions need to change.

Last year, Ontario Justice Susan Himel struck down three key anti-prostitution laws that create hazardous working conditions — laws against communicating for the purposes of prostitution, keeping a common bawdy house and living on the avails of the trade. Himel ruled that the laws make prostitution more dangerous.

The federal and Ontario governments are now appealing that landmark ruling, arguing that there is no obligation to maximize the safety of sex workers because it is not a constitutionally protected right to engage in the sex trade.

For the past four years, lawyer and Osgoode Hall professor Alan Young has represented sex workers Terri-Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott, who are challenging the laws that criminalize sex work in Canada. He argued the appeal in June in front of five judges. “I had a good time in the Ontario Court of Appeal,” he says, with boyish excitement. “I just got to sit back and watch the government squirm as they tried to overturn this decision.” The appeal court’s decision could be released tomorrow or months from now, Young says.

Likely contributing to the delay is the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision that upheld British Columbia’s right to operate a supervised drug injection site. The court ordered the federal government to abandon its attempts to close Vancouver’s Insite facility, agreeing with scientific evidence that the site saves lives without increasing crime.

The Insite decision offers a parallel situation for the case against Canada’s prostitution laws, Young says. “It’s a constitutional violation from a government action that is increasing a risk of harm.” “The thrust of the decision is very strongly in support of what we argued for sex work,” he says. “[Insite] has to be considered. It would be senseless not to.” Young expected the decision by November. “So I believe they are struggling with this.” The case will eventually end up in the Supreme Court of Canada sometime next year; that court’s decision will be the final word. If the laws are struck down, Young says, they must be replaced with appropriate regulation. “I still think we shouldn’t put a brothel next to a junior high school.” Ultimately, sex workers should drive reform, he says.

But, even once sex work is made legal, there will always be some sex workers who choose or are forced to work outside the margins. It’s called “survival sex work,” Young says. “Look at cigarettes. They are legal, but there is a huge black market for people who want to avoid tax. That has been a big problem in other countries. Legal regimes are set up for sex workers, but people don’t enter into them. They stay underground . . . So it’s not solving problems for everybody. What it is doing is giving sex workers who choose to be sex workers some autonomy to take care of themselves.”

There is already a black market within the black market, fuelled largely by human trafficking across borders, something Maggie’s: The Toronto Sex Workers Action Project, says is not the same as sex work. Sex work is a job that sells some form of sexual service. Trafficking is coerced or forced labour and sex slavery. That distinction is important because the decision Canada makes will have a ripple effect internationally.

Laura Agustín – Photo Andrea Houston

Laura Agustín, a sex-workers-rights advocate and an expert on undocumented migration, visited Toronto Nov 24 to discuss her book Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry. She says the criminalization of sex work in North America contributes to international human trafficking and enslavement.

For migrants trying to get to countries like Canada, the sex trade is sometimes the only option, especially for women and trans women who may not, for whatever reason, get work as maids. “For some it’s a chance at a better life,” she says. “But because it’s invisible and happening in an underground economy, there’s lots of opportunity for exploitation or abuse.”Agustín says the sexual liberation movement is not over yet, and it won’t be until sex work is viewed widely as any other profession. “Why do people get so excited? In a capitalist society people can buy and sell anything they want, even motherhood, by hiring a nanny, but not sex. Why? ”Rather than look at sex workers as victims in need of rescuing out of the trade, she says, sex workers should be empowered from within the community to make the trade safe.

“When legalization happens, you will see a lot of women leave the streets and be able to come work indoors,” Tronic adds. Regulation, such as occupational health and safety, will be created at the local level, and hopefully, sex workers will be at the table making decisions like any other taxpaying industry stakeholder. “Wouldn’t it be great to one day see us so evolved that sex workers are given rights and treated like people? They could form unions, pay into benefits, a pension plan. That’s my dream,” Tronic says.

Changing the laws means Canada must stop looking at sex work through a moralistic lens. Maggie’s says selling sex is a pragmatic and sensible response for someone with a limited range of options. If a person is doing sex work but would rather not be, it is the lack of available options that is the real problem – not sex work. Queer youth, trans women, people of colour and indigenous people often face limited economic options and discrimination. “For many, sex work is the best or only option for work, and we work to improve the conditions of work.”

–Laura Agustin, the Naked Anthropologist

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Migrant maid unlikely to risk all for sex, even if guest is DSK

21 May 2011 in migration by laura agustin | 7 comments | print print

In accusations of rape and other sorts of sexual aggression, those who were not there can only imagine what actually happened, which is why so many judicial cases fail to convict the accused. Because no matter how much smoke and bluster all sides throw up, judges and juries in the end often confront a he said-she said scenario in which the level of consent to acts is impossible to know. This applies everywhere, including to the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and a hotel maid.

The maid was a migrant – that’s why I am writing about it, although the case may be interesting for many other reasons. Her name seems to be Nafissatou Diallo, and she may have come to New York from Guinea or, according to which source you look at, from some other west African country, and maybe it was three years ago or perhaps it was ten, frustrating some writers. But no matter where she came from or when, conspiracy theorists fail to consider how generally unlikely it is that a migrant person who has managed to obtain a steady job with an employer of some reputation, Sofitel, would risk losing that job. Her employment is important to the case because for a migrant it means legal security of a kind not easily available, and on the basis of this alone I find it hard to imagine Diallo would fabricate an accusation against a guest, or engage in a sexual romp with one, for that matter.

Reporters sniffing around to find more about her are finding neighbours who testify to how quiet and ‘good’ she is – the stereotypical counterpart to insinuations that a woman is slutty or ‘bad’. Mentions of her being a practicing muslim, a headscarf-wearer and a single mother are all just as demeaning as claims that she is suspect because she does not wear a scarf or go to a mosque. It’s all sexist drivel. Automatic feminist calls to support the woman are not much better, resting on a gender-rigid idea that the man in the case is suspect by definition. Note Le traitement de l’affaire DSK entretient la confusion des esprits and L’« affaire Strauss-Kahn » : confusion des genres. Perhaps, though, it is beginning to feel more feasible for women to publicly accuse men of sexual crimes, without fear that they will be automatically disbelieved. That would be nice.

It would also be nice for commentators on France’s culture of discretion over public figures’ sex lives to realise that sexual assault and rape do not actually fall into the category sex life as usually conceived.

The Sofitel Times Square where events took place has a magnifique theme, public rooms named for the usual Paris sites: Bastille, Concorde, Madeleine, Montmartre, St Germain, Trocadero. The claim from a friend of DSK that it is suspicious the maid would be working alone in the hotel room is debunked by someone who’s actually stayed in it, who also says the place is not so fancy after all, despite the price. Side note: the BBC World Debate people put me in a Sofitel in Luxor, Egypt, last December whose four stars must have been bought, so crappily ordinary was it.

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist

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Bedford v Canada and Judge Himel: ‘It is not important for scholars to present information that contradicts their own findings’, says anti-prostitution witness

2 October 2010 in sex work by laura agustin | 18 comments | print print

The judge’s text explaining why she decided Ontario’s prostitution laws to be unconstitutional is a model of thoughtfulness and reason. The hearings took place in October of 2009, and I like to think Judge Himel took a year to read through the evidence submitted as well as all the historical legal material. The latter were undoubtedly the most important to her thinking, the meanings of the concepts in the past which she found to be indefensible in the present. I say this because the submitted research results nearly all came from qualitative studies and the testimonies of both sex workers and ‘experts’ were not much use to her, for different reasons. The judge’s thinking process is helpful to me because I am interested in the idea of evidence – what qualifies, how it’s judged.

Below are excerpts addressing the Judge’s experience of listening to opposing testimonies, opinions about the harm of laws on society and on those who sell sex. Whilst it is clear that a lot of testimonies just cancelled each other out, creepy ideas about research were revealed, too. The worst witness statement is the one used as the title of this post. Does anyone think that because a person is an academic he has any principles? I have the impression that the judge was fairly appalled by the advocating and declaiming she was forced to listen to. In fact, I am surprised that the anti-prostitution witnesses did not think strategically about moderating their strident tone before appearing in a court of law.

Evidence from prostitutes themselves

[85] The applicants submitted affidavits from eight witnesses who described their perceptions and experiences of working as prostitutes. During oral argument, the applicants’ counsel submitted that the purpose of these witnesses was to provide “corroborative voices” . . . [86] The affiants came from varied backgrounds and from across Canada, but largely shared the experience of finding prostitution in indoor venues generally safer than street prostitution (indeed, a few experienced no violence at all working indoors). . . they entered into prostitution without coercion (although financial constraints were a large factor) and most reported being addiction-free and working without a pimp.

[87] The respondent tendered nine affidavits from prostitutes and former prostitutes, whose stories painted a much different picture. The respondent’s witnesses gave detailed accounts of horrific violence in indoor locations and on the street, controlling and abusive pimps, and the rampant use of drugs and alcohol.

[88] While this evidence provided helpful background information, it is clear that there is no one person who can be said to be representative of prostitutes in Canada; the affiants are an extremely diverse group of people whose reasons for entry into prostitution, lifestyles, and experiences differ.

The idea of expert witnesses

[99] While neither party disputed that the other party’s witnesses were, in fact, experts, a great deal of argument and evidence was devoted to criticizing these witnesses. Both parties alleged that certain experts were biased, that conclusions were generalized beyond the sample studied, that studies were methodologically flawed . . .  [114] The following factors are relevant to the consideration of the weight to be given to expert evidence:

  • a) Unwillingness of the expert to qualify an opinion or update it in the face of new facts provided (often in cross-examination);
  • b) Bold assertions without a properly outlined basis for the claim;
  • c) Refusal to restrict opinions to expertise or the expertise demarked by the judge as required by the court;
  • d) Lack of sufficient independence from the party proffering the expert; and
  • e) Prior history as an advocate on the topic.

[182] In reviewing the extensive record presented, I was struck by the fact that many of those proffered as experts to provide international evidence to this court had entered the realm of advocacy and had given evidence in a manner that was designed to persuade rather than assist the court. For example, some experts made bold assertions without properly outlined bases for their claims and were unwilling to qualify their opinions in the face of new facts provided. While it is natural for persons immersed in a field of study to begin to take positions as a result of their research over time, where these witnesses act primarily as advocates, their opinions are of lesser value to the court.

[183] The evidence from some of these witnesses tended to focus upon issues that are, in my view, incidental to the case at bar, including human trafficking, sex tourism, and child prostitution. While important, none of these issues are directly relevant to assessing potential violations of the Charter rights of the applicants.

[352] I find that some of the evidence tendered on this application did not meet the standards set by Canadian courts for the admission of expert evidence. The parties did not challenge the admissibility of evidence tendered but asked the court to afford little weight to the evidence of the other party.

[353] I found the evidence of Dr. Melissa Farley to be problematic. Although Dr. Farley has conducted a great deal of research on prostitution, her advocacy appears to have permeated her opinions. For example, Dr. Farley’s unqualified assertion in her affidavit that prostitution is inherently violent appears to contradict her own findings that prostitutes who work from indoor locations generally experience less violence. Furthermore, in her affidavit, she failed to qualify her opinion regarding the causal relationship between post-traumatic stress disorder and prostitution, namely that it could be caused by events unrelated to prostitution.

[354] Dr. Farley’s choice of language is at times inflammatory and detracts from her conclusions. For example, comments such as, “prostitution is to the community what incest is to the family,” and “just as pedophiles justify sexual assault of children….men who use prostitutes develop elaborate cognitive schemes to justify purchase and use of women” make her opinions less persuasive.

[355] Dr. Farley stated during cross-examination that some of her opinions on prostitution were formed prior to her research, including, “that prostitution is a terrible harm to women, that prostitution is abusive in its very nature, and that prostitution amounts to men paying a woman for the right to rape her.” [356] Accordingly, for these reasons, I assign less weight to Dr. Farley’s evidence.

[357] Similarly, I find that Drs. Raymond and Poulin were more like advocates than experts offering independent opinions to the court. At times, they made bold, sweeping statements that were not reflected in their research. For example, some of Dr. Raymond’s statements on prostitutes were based on her research on trafficked women. As well, during cross-examination, it was revealed that some of Dr. Poulin’s citations for his claim that the average age of recruitment into prostitution is 14 years old were misleading or incorrect. In his affidavit, Dr. Poulin suggested that there have been instances of serial killers targeting prostitutes who worked at indoor locations; however, his sources do not appear to support his assertion. I found it troubling that Dr. Poulin stated during cross-examination that it is not important for scholars to present information that contradicts their own findings (or findings which they support).

[358] The applicants’ witnesses are not immune to criticism. . . During cross-examination, Dr. Lowman expressed discontent with portions of his affidavit, citing “careless” language and “poorly reasoned argument.” Dr. Lowman rightly takes responsibility for the content of his affidavit, which was drafted for him by law students. In his affidavit, Dr. Lowman made a direct causal link between the Criminal Code provisions at issue and violence against prostitutes; however, during cross-examination he gave the opinion that there was, rather, an indirect causal relationship. Such inattentiveness on such a crucial issue is indeed concerning. During cross-examination, Dr. Lowman gave nuanced and qualified opinions, which more accurately reflect his research.

Note: I was asked to be an ‘expert witness’ a few years ago and couldn’t see what it was I’d be expert in, exactly. I was relieved it didn’t come off in the end and much more, now, although I don’t go in for stridency, myself.

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Decriminalisation of sex work/prostitution: argument from SWEAT

11 June 2010 in sex work by laura agustin | 1 comment | print print

SWEAT (Sex Worker and Advocacy Task Force, in South Africa), give a good, clear argument for removing laws that criminalise the sale or purchase of sex.

World Cup and HIV: Decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa

Leading up to the 2010 soccer World Cup, sex work has come under intense public scrutiny in South Africa. Concerns about sex work, HIV and the increase in visitors to the country during the mega-event have come at the same time as a review of the country’s laws on prostitution. In the light of this, several civil society groups are pushing for greater protection of sex workers’ human rights during the World Cup, and ultimately for the complete decriminalisation of sex work.

In the short term, the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Task Force and its allies are demanding that sex workers have the right to work for the period of the World Cup. They are seeking guarantees for sex workers’ personal safety, including freedom from police harassment, and access to free, quality and respectful health care.

In the longer term, a campaign is being put together to push for the decriminalisation of sex work, based on several arguments:

  • sex work will not go away;
  • there are many harms associated with sex work, but these can best be dealt with by other areas of criminal law or by non-legal interventions;
  • anything short of decriminalisation makes those harms worse, particularly to sex workers themselves; and
  • enforcing a sense of morality through the law is likely to generate all sorts of other harmful immoralities.

Sex workers are often marginalised and face multiple barriers to accessing health and social services, a situation exacerbated by criminalisation. Criminalisation also prevents sex workers from reporting abuse to the police or seeking legal recourse after rape or sexual assault. Decriminalisation offers the most effective means of addressing HIV and ensuring that human rights are respected.

So what is decriminalisation of sex work? It means that consensual sexual contact between two adults in private is legal. Any other arrangement of the law around sex work – be it criminalisation of the sex worker and/or the client, regulation of sex work, or something in between – leaves some consensual money-based arrangements between sex worker and client outside the law. And these are the contacts most likely to be non-consensual, violent, abusive, and unsafe.

Many international bodies already recognise the value of decriminalization. A number of countries have moved away from total criminalisation of sex work. Only one – New Zealand – has explicitly decriminalised sex work, choosing instead to adopt a human rights and public health framework.

The New Zealand Prostitution Reform Act was passed in 2003, after a campaign driven by sex workers, the public health community, many women’s’ groups and human rights organisations. It was promoted on various grounds – gender justice, pragmatic law, and the preference of the people most damaged by criminalisation, i.e. sex workers themselves.

The effects of the legislative change were measured five years later. Contrary to public fears, no increase was found in the number of people entering sex work during this period. Sex workers reported improved working conditions and wellbeing, feeling safer under the new legal framework, and being able to negotiate safer sex and report abuse to police.

As South Africa prepares for the culmination of its debate on the best legal framework for sex work, we can only hope that reality, research and rigorous debate dominate the process, and that policy processes will approach sex work pragmatically, placing public health benefits above ideological interests. In that case, decriminalisation will be the only rational outcome.

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Men and football: a recipe for sexual violence?

8 June 2010 in sex work by laura agustin | 5 comments | print print

Men and football: the assumption that these make a super-volatile combination that will lead to violence against women is everywhere, yet there is no real research backing it up. It feels intuitive, something like Oh my god, they get so worked up and nationalistic at those matches, they scream and take off their shirts, and look at how some hooligans bash each other, and they get so drunk they don’t know what they’re doing. Okay, but the connexion with sex is? Some think that these activities involve a rise in testosterone, which could mean fans become rapacious about wanting to have sex, and in their blind fervour go racing off to fuck anything in sight. Or, correlations have been made between drinking alcohol in heavy quantities and becoming aggressive – for some people, not all – but the aggression usually comes in the form of fighting amongst other drinking men. Or is the idea that some general amoral, violent side rises up via the enthusiasm for sport in a way that makes fans want to grab women? Sometimes the assumption is just that when bunches of guys get together they are liable to run amok. The World Cup is feared to bring out the worst in its fans.

It’s muddled thinking, however. Stag parties, in which groups of men ritualistically drink and whoop it up together, often have a sexual element, but that usually consists of paying dancers or sex workers to come perform. That’s a contract in a party setting, not the rape of the Sabine women. It’s certainly true that drinking men in celebrating groups like to flirt at or harrass women, talk about sex to them and tell each other about their sexual exploits. All that can be annoying or threatening but cannot be taken as evidence that these men are more likely to visit sex workers or behave badly with them if they do. And, of course, if they drink enough there is definite evidence that both the ability and desire to have sex diminish.

It seems some are also afraid that fans will contract hiv during the World Cup. Is the assumption that they will lose their heads completely and forget to use condoms, in the general havoc? This stuff gets pretty loony, fitting in with the false claim of 40 000 trafficked prostitutes in 2006.

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Migrant farm workers in Italy: Any identity but victims?

21 January 2010 in migration by laura agustin | 2 comments | print print

Earlier this month Calabrians and itinerant African farm workers came to blows. One politician said ‘We have to go to the root of the problem: mafia, exploitation, xenophobia and racism, which are too many roots. Also it is implied that migrants are found in southern Italy only because trafficking rings and mafiosi have forced them to be there. There are indeed controlling gangs in Calabria: There’s no doubt but that men from the ‘Ndrangheta shot at the immigrants, just to remind everyone that they control the territory: Alberto Cisterna of the National Anti-Mafia Squad. But another interpretation of the conflict was For all these years clandestine immigration has been tolerated, which feeds crime: Interior Minister Roberto Maroni. Crime – always a politician’s safe fall-back position.

Unaddressed is a typical contemporary dysfunctional migration policy that doesn’t want these migrants at the same time that native farmers need them. These farm workers, like their more famous counterparts from Mexico in the US, move from one area to another as harvests are ready: tomatoes in Campania, grapes in Sicily, olives in Puglia and Calabria for oranges.

It is also unclear what ‘evacuation’ meant in this case, whether the workers might be deported or what their status will be.

Below this story follows some background from Médecins Sans Frontières.

Migrants evacuated from southern Italian town 

9 January 2010, BBC

Italian authorities have evacuated hundreds of migrants from a southern town and brought in extra police after violent protests broke out. Some 320 African migrants, many of whom work as fruit-pickers in Calabria, were taken by bus to an emergency centre.

Extra police were deployed after two days of riots, during which 37 people were injured and cars were set alight. The violence broke out after two migrants were shot at with pellet guns by a group of local youths. Italy’s Interior Minister Roberto Maroni prompted a storm of criticism from the leftist opposition by suggesting that the violence was the result of not addressing the issue of illegal workers in the country. “There’s a difficult situation in Rosarno, like in other places, because for years illegal immigration - which feeds criminal activities – has been tolerated and nothing effective has ever been done about it,” he said according to Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper.

Opposition leader Pierluigi Bersani said: “Maroni is passing the buck … We have to go to the root of the problem: mafia, exploitation, xenophobia and racism.”

Some 320 African migrants – mainly from Ghana and Nigeria – were taken by bus from the southern town of Rosarno to a reception centre at Crotone, some 170km (105 miles) away. Local residents applauded as the eight buses carrying the migrant workers left the town, AFP reports.

Police said reinforcements had been called in at intersections and squares in the town to keep order on Saturday. Many of the migrants, most of whom work as fruit-pickers in the region’s citrus farms, live in difficult conditions – camped in abandoned factories and buildings with no running water or electricity, and were paid as little as 20 euros per day.

Italy: MSF Assists Migrant Workers Living in Appalling Conditions

29 September 2009, Médecins Sans Frontières 

For the sixth consecutive year, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is providing health care to undocumented seasonal migrant workers in southern Italy. Once again, poor living and working conditions pose a serious threat to their mental and physical health.

Since mid-August, thousands of migrants have been flocking to the southern Italian region of Puglia for the annual tomato-picking season. The majority are from sub-Saharan Africa, living in Italy undocumented and in appalling sanitary conditions in abandoned houses and cardboard shacks without electricity or gas. Since last year, following MSF’s requests, regional authorities have taken some measures to improve living conditions for migrants, such as providing water tanks and latrines,” said Antonio Virgilio, MSF’s head of mission in Italy. “However, this is still far from enough to meet their basic needs.”

Issa, 20, from Ivory Coast, has been in Italy for two months and works in the tomato farms in Puglia. “If all goes well I will earn 30 euros (US$44) per day here, but I don’t have work every day. I live in a shack and I sleep on a mattress on the floor. I didn’t think I would have such a bad life in Italy.”

Limited access to health care, inadequate shelter and exploitation at work are some of the difficulties faced by the seasonal migrants. The consequences are seen during MSF medical consultations. Gastrointestinal complaints and general body pain are common. “These migrants are getting sick as a consequence of the conditions they are subjected to,” said Alvise Benelli, an MSF doctor in Puglia. The MSF team in Puglia provides free medical and psychological care to the undocumented migrant workers. They also facilitate access to public health facilities.

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Sex workers and researchers defend clients in Vancouver

2 December 2009 in migration by laura agustin | 7 comments | print print

Sex worker Susan Davis advocates the decriminalization of prostitution

Clients as monsters and misfits, exploiters and rapists, dysfunctional or weird: that’s how many who hate prostitution and the sex industry generalise all men who buy sex (they skim over women who buy sex because that’s not the gender-equality road they want to follow.) If you attend meetings where sex workers are present, you will hear another story, in which all sorts of guys buy sex for all sorts of reasons, most of them quite ordinary. In these excerpts a researcher amongst clients also speaks up.

Sex workers defend buyers

Shadi Elien, Straight.com, 26 November 2009

Veteran sex worker Susan Davis wants people to know that her “clients aren’t the bogeymen they are made out to be. I love what I do,” Davis told the Georgia Straight in an interview at the Vancouver Public Library’s central branch. “I think the guys are the best; a lot of them are my friends. Some I’ve known for 18 years. How do you not become emotionally attached?”

Davis, who has been in the business for 23 years, insisted that stability and security for sex workers can only come with decriminalization of prostitution. FIRST, a national coalition of feminists who support sex workers’ rights, hosted a lively forum on the subject at the library on November 23. Davis, who was on the panel, suggested that men who buy sex can actually help enhance the safety of those in the trade. “I think that clients are our biggest resource in trying to combat exploitation, trafficking, and exploitation of youth within the sex industry,” declared Davis, a member of the West Coast Cooperative of Sex Industry Professionals, in the interview.

Another panellist, SFU sociology instructor and researcher Chris Atchison, echoed Davis’s sentiments. He revealed the results of an extensive three-year study—called “Johns’ Voice”—that documents the relationship between buyers and sellers of sex in Canada. “I wanted to understand how these men engage in purchasing behaviour and what their relationships with sex-trade workers are about,” Atchison told the audience. “I wanted to know whether social and legal intervention such as the Swedish model is warranted by any empirical evidence.”. .

. . . The men he spoke to were seeking companionship and a connection with the sex workers they patronized, he said, adding that they wanted to engage in a safe and respectful relationship. He also reported that many customers saw the same sex worker for months or years, and that 79 percent said they wished to see prostitution decriminalized and regulated.

“I’m not here to present a picture of the sex buyer as some wonderful guy or say that they are all great, salt-of-the-earth people,” he said. The “Johns’ Voice” project showed that between one and two percent of clients have been brutally violent toward a sex worker. Those are the people the law must address, according to Atchison. . .

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Undocumented migrants, inflexible employment systems

30 November 2009 in migration by laura agustin | 1 comment | print print

At the end of this piece published the other day I talk about a step I’ve long considered to be part of a partial solution for the myriad problems associated with undocumented migration. Often, in the victim narratives that surround irregular migrants, it’s assumed that all find employment only because they can be brutally exploited and underpaid. The employment scene is more diverse than that, and often people might be employed – chosen for a job, that is – but employers aren’t allowed to hire them. The work permit system allows migrants to work only in the place and manner specified in the first application: no job-switching is possible. And those who’ve got into a country illegally cannot apply for a work permit for a legal job. The inflexibility does no good for anyone’s economy.

The Ease of Righteous Causes: What to feel about undocumented migration

London Progressive Journal, Issue 98, 27 November 2009

It was easier when one could talk about asylum as a benevolent offering to virtuous people downtrodden in their own countries. It was easier when the category of refugee seemed transparent, when we knew about fewer armed conflicts and less, perhaps, about who was Right and who was Wrong. It was easier to be a country that could openly say Come here. We care. We are a civilised people and will help you.

Now that there are too many people asking for asylum and calling themselves refugees – ‘too many’ being an unquantifiable number – it is not so easy. One can still try to limit the talk to the most egregious armed conflicts, the biggest ones, or the ones where the good guys can more easily be distinguished from the bad. But one has the sense of the ground slipping away beneath the conversation.

The other day I saw Welcome, Philippe Lioret’s film about the miserable situation in and near Calais, where French police tear down wretched shelters whilst young men cry. It’s a good film but takes the easy path as far as the protagonist’s reason for wanting to reach Britain: he is in love with a girl in London. This romance allows anyone who watches the film to identify with his quest and root for him as he swims the Channel. But what if the romantic motive were missing?

Anti-immigration voices use the term ‘economic migrants’ as a pejorative, an accusation against people who don’t qualify as refugees from officially (and arbitrarily) designated conflicts. In the current climate, a migrant is actually more likely to be sympathised with if he or she presents as a victim than as an able-bodied person willing to take almost any sort of paid job available. Or, in the case of Welcome, if he is in love.

Many looking at the images of smashed camps around Calais would like to know why those sad young men insist, against every obstacle, on remaining there and continuing to try to get into Britain. One said, in response to a reporter’s question, that there is respect for human rights in the UK. He may really believe that, but the same sort of ‘respect’, for what it’s worth, exists in other European countries. Given the extreme difficulty now of getting through the Channel Tunnel and into non-Schengen Britain, it’s logical to wonder why they don’t turn left to Spain or right to Belgium or almost anywhere else in Europe.

Rather than believe that the UK is a human-rights paradise, we should understand that such migrants are trying to get here simply because that’s where their networks led them. When these men were thinking about leaving home they talked to everyone they could about the possibilities. If family, friends or paid smugglers had led them to another European capital, that’s where they would be. And that’s where they’d now be facing different problems, less interesting to media cameras than those in Calais. But their networks brought them to the north of France, and the same networks cannot now provide an alternate plan – particularly not from far away, back in Afghanistan or Iran.

At this point – the point experienced by Welcome’s hero – to find that it’s near impossible to get across the Channel is staggering. One got this far on information that was paid for. Now the last few stages turn out to be much harder than promised. Those unable to swim for ten hours in cold water face options of paying an unknown local smuggler, hanging on in place, despite French police actions, or changing life-plans drastically without good advice. Even an environment as hostile as Calais can seem better than a complete unknown.

The story is similar for many women migrants described as trafficked in the mainstream media. When thinking about leaving home, they, too, talked to everyone they could about the possible options. They also followed routes known to family, friends and smugglers. If they passed the Schengen barrier and the water surrounding the UK, it helped that their methods were different – they didn’t try to hitch a ride through the tunnel. Now, of course, they can also be described as economic migrants, and, as such, be deported if caught – unless they can prove egregious enough treatment to qualify as victims of trafficking. But the prospects for being allowed to stay with a normal residence permit are slim.

Migration is now a phenomenon that governments want to manage. A 2002 White Paper describes five techniques used to combat illegal immigration: ‘strategic enforcement measures, identity management, increasing employer compliance, greater policy co-ordination both within and between governments and regularisation.’ Other proposals refer to ‘earned regularisation’, by which illegals able to prove their social worthiness would be granted amnesty, and ‘open borders’, which would focus on getting people jobs and integrating them socially.

All are more complicated and less easy to understand than No Borders, the dream of many that has no chance of success in a Europe combining more united and centralised policies with intensified nationalisms. In this climate, things are unlikely to improve for migrants who only want to come, work and be left alone. But many on the left resist taking a pragmatic stance that would accept the current political climate. There is also a tendency to hold onto the victim-categories – the ones that show the men’s tears in Calais and talk about sexual slavery for women.

It’s harder to face up to the fact that many migrants are complicit with the dodgy enterprises that help them get new lives. Why? Because they know that there are opportunities for getting paid jobs, even if they are in the ill-named informal economy, which means they cannot be used to get work permits and visas. The jobs are there, in construction and agriculture, or as a nanny, sex worker or restaurant employee. The fact that one’s status will be illegal once one arrives recedes in importance; the fact that one will be unable to convert from illegality to legality without leaving the country can’t be expected to sink in beforehand. The object is to arrive.

In the harder context we see today, whether in London or Calais or Copenhagen or Amsterdam, the question is whether the availability of paid jobs couldn’t mean, in and of itself, that migrants can be employed legally. Forget governmental concepts like formal-informal economies for a moment. If a legal employer offers paid employment to a migrant, should that employment not allow him legal status? Why not? If he or she is paid a normal amount and taxes are paid by all, what’s the problem?

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Migrant sex workers in hair salons and saunas, Wuhan, China

28 September 2009 in migration, sex work by laura agustin | 5 comments | print print

This report comes in China Labour Bulletin, a publication interested in work: jobs. The tone supposes that selling sex is not desirable but does not make a big thing of it. Instead, the unprotected status of workers as workers is highlighted. Abuses are committed by clients, police and employers, but there is no rhetoric about sex work as violence per se or about trafficking. The women discussed are migrants; the best job they could find upon arriving in the city was selling sex. But the research shows that after three years, all but a few had moved on to another job. That means that sex work was a stepping-stone to other things they had no access to immediately on arrival., which is the normal situation for migrants of all kinds. The report says they worked ‘irregular hours’, which is often interpreted to mean something negative, but which many people prefer. Note: 1000 yuan = 100 euros

Sex workers in Wuhan vulnerable and exploited

China Labour Bulletin, 23 September 2009

Young, poorly educated sex workers in the central Chinese city of Wuhan are routinely abused by clients but have little or no recourse to justice. Most do not trust the police and the vast majority (about 80 percent) have no knowledge of their legal or civil rights, according to a recently published survey

Researchers from Wuhan University interviewed 300 low-end sex workers, mainly employed in small-scale hair salons and saunas in the city’s red light district, and found that around half had been the victims of crime, with clients usually stealing money or mobile phones. Most “leisure” (休闲) establishments in Wuhan had a “pay first” policy but, nevertheless, 37 percent of the interviewees said they had been cheated by their clients. Over half the respondents said they had been verbally abused by clients, while 20 percent had been beaten or physically abused, and small number were even raped or abducted while working.

For the majority of sex workers, their only recourse in these situations was to go to their boss or their boyfriend for help, but in the majority of cases there was little the boss could do. Only 26 percent of respondents said they would definitely report an abusive client to the police, 37 percent said they would not go to the police, while the remaining 37 percent were ambivalent. Two thirds (64 percent) of the respondents said they’d never had any dealings with the police, and over half thought the police were of no help, while 16 percent considered the police to be a hindrance. Only one third (31 percent) thought the police could provide any help.

The majority (56 percent) of the 300 interviewees were aged between 18 and 25 years, 12 percent were younger than 18-years-old, while 15 percent were over 30 years of age. Most (62 percent) only had a middle school education at best, 21 percent had been to high school, and 16 percent had attended technical high school, while only one interviewee had been to university.

The survey indicated that many sex workers were driven by poverty in rural areas in Hubei and neighbouring provinces to come to Wuhan in search of work. However, their lack of education meant they could not find any better jobs in the city. About half (51.8 percent) had been working the sex industry for less than a year, and the vast majority regularly moved from salon to salon in search of better conditions. Only three percent of those interviewed had been in the industry for more than three years.

The vast majority worked irregular hours, between eight and ten hours a day, and earned up to 3,000 yuan a month. Nearly half (44 percent) earned less than 1,000 yuan a month, while only 16 percent could earn more than 3,000 yuan. The plight of Wuhan’s sex workers is largely representative of China as a whole, and is indicative of the many dangers that young women from the countryside face when they travel to the city in search of work.

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