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

Lecture by Laura Agustín at the University of Geneva

Discussant: Agnes Földhazi

5 October 2010, 1815 – 2030

Geneva, Uni Mail, Bd du Pont-d’Arve 40, Room MR160

Sex workers, support groups, academics and concerned citizens welcome! Possibility of interesting discussion over drinks afterwards.

Sex at the Margins questions several popular beliefs about migrants who sell sex: that they are all passive victims, that the job of selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín argues that the label ‘trafficked’ does not accurately describe most migrants and that a Rescue Industry disempowers them. Based on extensive research amongst migrants who sell sex as well as social helpers, Sex at the Margins demonstrates how migration policy marginalises informal-sector workers and how anti-prostitution campaigns turn sex workers into casualties of globalisation.

Laura María Agustín, PhD, is author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (Zed Books 2007). A lifelong migrant herself, she has worked in a wide range of both formal and informal jobs in the Americas and Europe, including NGO and academic projects. Since the early 1990s she has studied irregular migration, commercial sex and trafficking. She has published widely in academic journals, mainstream media and online and blogs regularly at lauraagustin.com.

Agnes Földhazi received her PhD in Sociology at the University of Geneva, exploring power relations in the sex trade. Her research interests include the effects of globalization on the sex trade, health prevention with disenfranchised actors and feminist research methodology.

Organised thanks to Network Gender Studies CH and MAPS – Maison d’analyse des processus sociaux, Faculté des lettres et sciences humainesUniversité de Neuchâtel.