The Disappearing of a Migration Category: Migrants Who Sell Sex is the article that broke the ice about women who travel and sell sex for a living. I submitted it to a journal I knew would be sympathetic in 2004, but it took them two and a half years to publish it – that’s how hard it was to find peer reviewers who would actually review the article rather than angrily dismiss it as wrong. The premise was obvious: Although migration had come to form a large interesting international field of study, with all sorts of subcategories and theories, migrants who sell sex were not mentioned anywhere. That was the topic of the article – the disappearing of a group, and ideas about why.
I am glad to say that the article opened the door for a generation of researchers who before that could find little or no academic work to refer to when trying to explain what their research was showing them: that many migrant women preferred selling sex to their other options, whatever those were and wherever they came from. Many younger researchers (such as phd students) were doing ethnographic research with migrants, which meant getting to know them sometimes quite well and hearing the details of their lives. Whether or not these researchers assumed beforehand that migrants who sell sex are all forced or trafficked into it, their research revealed that such an assumption is often wrong. Of course there were other researchers finding people who did feel forced and trafficked: the point is there was and is a lot of variation, but this was not acknowledged. The abstract of the article reads:
Migrant women selling sex are generally neglected by migration and diaspora studies. The moral panic on ‘trafficking’, a prolonged debate within feminism on commercial sex and some activists’ attempts to conflate the concept of ‘prostitution’ with ‘trafficking’ combine to shift study of these migrants to domains of criminology and feminism, with the result that large numbers of women’s migrations are little known. This article reveals the silences at work and where the attention goes, and theorises that the shift from conventional study to moral outrage facilitates the avoidance of uncomfortable truths for Western societies: their enormous demand for sexual services and the fact that many women do not mind or prefer this occupation to others available to them.
I wonder whether some of these sex workers figure that if they fly in and stay close to the airport and then fly out again they can elude the Rescue Industry? More autonomy than this is hard to imagine, though I suppose some will say the women are forced to fly by their pimps. Cheaper air fares might be credited for helping people avoid exploitation, too, though.
Amsterdam – With the prospect of duty-free shopping, casino gambling and upscale restaurants, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has always had plenty to offer the weary traveler. However, a new pleasure is on offer to those waiting to board flights, according to De Telegraaf, which reported Friday that a fleet of prostitutes has touched down.
The paper says enterprising hookers are taking advantage of cheap air travel to jet into the bustling Dutch airport from Eastern Europe. Having arrived, they pick up male travelers and typically take them to a handful of budget hotels set up to allow passengers to rest and wash. As soon as they’re finished, the women simply hop back on a plane and fly home. They “can earn lots of money, much more than in their own countries,” the Amsterdam Prostitution Association told Radio Netherlands.
Schiphol Airport has not commented on the development although De Telegraaf said it had confirmed its story with several airport employees. Located a 20-minute drive southwest of Amsterdam, it is the main airport in the Netherlands and is Europe’s fifth largest, with around 45 million passengers passing through each year.
Migrants who use smugglers to help them travel but can’t pay for services beforehand may borrow and agree to work off the debt however smugglers want. The formal term debt bondage makes this practice sound more drastic than it need be: total unfreedom is not the norm and does not warrant newly fashionable slavery language, which bondage is. Migrants accept that borrowing money is necessary and the loan of money is considered a service provided for a fee. Of course, when smugglers turn abusive, migrants may not know how to get away, and things can get bad. But consider the following description of debt bondage from ‘Through the Looking Glass: Finding and Freeing Modern-Day Slaves at the State Level’ by Michelle L. Rickert.
For example, in Vietnamese nail salons, as recounted by one nail technician who has grown up in the nail business, if a person wants to come over to the United States, she will work with a family member in the United States who will finance the move. Once in the United States, she will live with the family member and pay about three-fourths of her paycheck as payment of the debt. The nail technician recounted this story to explain how Vietnamese nail salon owners help new immigrants out; however, one can see how this situation could easily be abused, and that there is a slippery slope between smuggling and trafficking.[56]
In Pennsylvania, Lynda Dieu Phan recruited A.V. from Vietnam and held her in debt bondage without compensation for over three years.[57] Phan preyed upon the fact that A.V. could not read or write English and coerced her into signing over all of her bank statements and checks.[58] A.V. worked six days a week for eleven hours a day and five hours on Sundays. She was not paid anything except some of the tips that were given to her by customers. Furthermore, she was forced to cook and clean at Phan’s home where she lived. Phan brought over another young woman from Vietnam, and the two girls shared a room, sleeping on the floor.[59] After three years of A.V. working without pay, she had fulfilled her debt. However, Phan did not tell A.V. that she had fulfilled her debt; A.V. did not complain until 2007—seven years later.[60]
56. Interview with Anonymous Nail Technician, in Lynchburg, Va. (Jan. 8, 2010).
57. United States v. Phan, 628 F. Supp. 2d 562 (M.D. Pa. 2009) (deciding a motion concerning the validity of seizing certain documents while searching the house pursuant to a search warrant).58. Id. at 566.
59. Id.
60. Id.
I first published this piece in 2002, but its message is truer than ever as rescue operations presently receive large amounts of funding in many parts of the world. I am republishing it here since so many new people have entered a research field and joined social movements to save people without understanding how it all started – in conversations about women and travel. Note: Since all brothels are ‘legal’ in Sydney I shouldn’t have used the word, which implies there are also ‘illegal’ brothels. Thanks to Scarlet Alliance for the correction.
Laura Agustín, June 2002, Research for Sex Work 5, 30-32. pdf
In October 2001, while on a trip to Australia and Thailand, I met five Latin American women with some connection to the sex industry: the owner of a (legal) brothel and two migrants working for her in Sydney, and two women in a detention centre for illegal immigrants in Bangkok. These five women were from Peru, Colombia and Venezuela; they were from different strata of society; they were very different ages. They also all had quite different stories to tell.
The brothel owner now had permanent residence in Australia. Her migrant workers had come on visas to study English which gave them the right to work, but getting the visa had required paying for the entire eight-month course in advance, which meant acquiring large debts. The Madam was very affectionate with them but also very controlling; they lived in her house and travelled with her to work. She was teaching them the business; the outreach workers from a local project did not speak Spanish.
Of the two women detained in Bangkok, one had been stopped in the Tokyo airport with a false visa for Japan. She had been invited by her sister, who had been an illegal sex worker but now was an illegal vendor within the milieux. The woman had been deported to the last stage of her journey, Bangkok; there she had been in jail for a year before being sent to the detention centre. The second detained woman had been caught on-camera in a robbery being carried out by her boyfriend and others in Bangkok, after travelling around with them in Hong Kong and Singapore; she had just completed a three-year jail sentence before being sent to the centre (and she also had completely false papers, including a change of nationality).
Both detained women were waiting for someone to pay their plane fare home, but no one was offering to do this, since their degree of complicity in their situations disqualified them from aid to victims of trafficking, and not all Latin American countries maintain embassies in Thailand. Only one person from local NGOs visiting the detention centre spoke Spanish.
How can we understand these stories?
Given the very different stories these women have to tell, labelling them either ‘migrant sex workers’ or ‘victims of trafficking’ is incorrect and unhelpful to an understanding of why and how they have arrived at their present situations. The placing of labels is largely a subjective judgement dependent on the researcher of the moment and is not the way women talk about themselves, something like the attempt to make complicated subjects fit into a pre-printed form. The following descriptions illustrate this complexity.
While the two new migrants in Sydney seemed accepting of the work they had just begun doing, there was clearly ambiguity about the significance of the language course on which their visas were based, and their debts did not leave them much choice about what jobs to do.
The migrant to Japan believed she would not have to sell sex, but her own family had been involved in getting her the false papers, and she was suffering considerable guilt and anguish. The woman caught in the robbery seemed to have sold sex during her travels, but without any particular intention or destination being involved, nor did she give the matter much importance. The total number of outsiders implicated in their journeys and their jobs was large; nationalities mentioned were Pakistani, Turkish and Mexican. The need for research to understand how all these connections happen is urgent, but funders are unlikely to finance research that does not fit into one of the currently acceptable theoretical frameworks: ‘AIDS prevention’, ‘violence against women’ or ‘trafficking’.
These frameworks reflect particular political concerns arising in the context of ‘globalisation’, and they are understandable. Elements of the stories of people such as those I have described may share features with typical discourses on ‘trafficking’, ‘violence against women’ and ‘AIDS’, but these are prejudiced, moralistic frameworks that begin from a political position and are not open to results that do not fit (for example, a woman who admits that she knew she would be doing sex work abroad and willingly paid someone to falsify papers for her).
The desires of young people to travel, see the world, make a lot of money and not pay much attention to the kind of jobs they do along the way are not acceptable to researchers that begin from moral positions; neither are the statements by professional sex workers that they choose and prefer the work they do. Yet ethical research simply may not depart from the claim that the subjects investigated do not know their own minds.
Why do we do research, anyway?
A theoretical framework refers to the overall idea that motivates services or research projects. For service projects with sex workers this framework might be a religious mission to help people in danger, a medical concept of reducing harm or a vision of solidarity or social justice. Most projects with sex workers focus on providing services, not doing research, though often the line between them is not easy to draw.
Service projects accumulate a lot of information over time, but it seems as though the only thing governments want to know about is people’s nationalities, how old they are, when they first had sex and whether they know what a condom is. Many NGO and outreach workers would like to publish other kinds of information, research other kinds of things. But where, how? If their research proposal does not reflect one of the existing research frameworks regarding migrant prostitution – ‘AIDS prevention’, ‘trafficking’ or ‘violence against women’ – it will be hard if not impossible to find funding.
Some of my own research concerns people who work with sex workers, like the people who read this publication. Continue reading →
Protocols attached to the UN Convention on Transnational Organised Crime (Palermo, 2000) attempt to distinguish between the trafficking and smuggling of people. The trafficking protocol explicitly mentions women, children, coercion and prostitution and fails to mention the will to travel. The smuggling protocol, in contrast, discusses men as migrants and does not mention sex or prostitution. This gender bias has several negative, confusing effects and is far from vaunted goals of Gender Equality.
Women are positioned as sexually vulnerable above all
Women are lumped with children as though we were children
Women are not seen as capable of initiating migrations
Women are not seen as capable of preferring to sell sex over other options
Men are not seen as capable of being trafficked in the worst sense
Men are not seen as capable of preferring to sell sex over other options
Men are associated with dodgy behaviour such as paying someone to help them get around the rules
The following three news clips illustrate how sex and gender often have little to do with irregular (also known as unauthorised, undocumented and illegal) travel. These incidents would be called smuggling. In at least two of the following cases migrants can’t be called undocumented, because papers have been provided for them – just not their own correct papers. The point is that many skilled smugglers and traffickers go about their business without resorting to the sort of obvious violence and near-kidnapping that makes sensational stories. Whether a candidate for travelling abroad to work considers selling sex or not,his or her best route is to find someone to arrange for convincing papers. While campaigners shriek about near-kidnappings and women in chains, the industry in false papers goes on its sophisticated way. This is one reason why queues get longer and slower at borders. Note in two of the following cases that officials (one from an embassy and one from a national immigration bureaucracy) are the smugglers.
NB: The fact that false papers were provided does not mean that no traumatic experiences were involved for migrants, that there was no violence or that they knew exactly what they were getting into. We also don’t know which jobs they got or whether they liked them. Sex is not the defining element to these stories, yet many migrants who sell sex use these conventional, if illegal, methods for entering other countries.
NEW YORK – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigator Pedro Cintron was arrested for taking bribes from human smugglers and helping them to illegally transport Chinese people from Ecuador to the United States. The World Journal reports that once convicted, he could be sentenced into prison for up to 57 years. Cintron, 52, investigated Chinese human smuggling from Ecuador to the United States in 2004 and 2005. He took over $20,000 bribe from the smuggler and helped several Chinese successfully land to the United States.
NEW YORK — An employee at the Consulate of the Dominican Republic in New York City has been arrested on charges of migrant smuggling.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested 48 year-old, Francisco Estevez, also known as “Danilo,” on charges of using his family’s passports and consular visas to bring dozens of illegal aliens into the United States from the Dominican Republic during 2007 through 2008.
According to the indictment unsealed Monday in Manhattan federal court, as a full-time employee at a consular post, Estevez held a diplomatic visa that allowed him and his family members-his mother, wife, and six children-to enter and reside in the United States. In addition, he and his family were entitled to receive expedited process at passport control at the airport.
Commencing in approximately October 2007, up to and including July 2008, Estevez allegedly took advantage of his A-2 visa status to smuggle into the United States numerous Dominican nationals who posed as members of Estevez’s family, using the family’s passports and A-2 visas. Estevez made on average two trips per month to the Dominican Republic to identify aliens who could pose as members of his family and charged each alien approximately $10,000 to bring the migrants into the country illegally.
Estevez is charged with two counts of alien smuggling and if convicted, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. He was arrested Friday upon his entry into the United States and is scheduled appear today before a United States Magistrate Judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
California Journal For Filipino Americans, Jun 28, 2006
PHILADELPHIA – A Filipino man has admitted to smuggling an estimated 25 undocumented immigrants into the United States on stolen third-country passports for which they paid as much as $15,000 each, reports California Journal For Filipino Americans. Roehl Rivera, 41, of Cabanatuan City, Philippines, smuggled undocumented immigrants between May 2005 and January 2006 on Continental Airlines flights from Hong Kong to Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, according to prosecuting attorney Christopher Christie. Rivera and three others were detained at the airport on Jan. 6. They were caught traveling on altered passports illegally obtained from Micronesia’s embassy in the United States. Rivera, who is charged with conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants for private financial gain, faces up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.
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.
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.
Nella nostra società le sex workers diventano un pò meno “cattive ragazze” solo se associate ad un immaginario di vittimizzazione che le vede povere immigrate in balia del pappone di turno che le sfrutta. Non crediamo sia possibile ridurre tutte le donne che praticano lavoro sessuale a vittime, perché a svolgere questo tipo di lavoro non sono soltanto donne. La realtà è molto più complessa, fatta delle scelte individuali di ognuna, scelte legate alla voglia d’indipendenza, alla propria condizione materiale, ai percorsi migratori che si scontrano con le leggi della fortezza Europa di Schengen, alle politiche ed al discorso pubblico in materia di prostituzione, nonché alle disuguaglianze di genere e alla discriminazione sociale.
Le migrazioni delle donne Le migrazioni delle donne come ristrutturazione delle relazioni di genere per Laura Ma Agustín , dicembre 2003 Mentre si continuano...
For many interested in normalising the sex industry, New Zealand’s legislation seems the best. A couple of years ago I pointed out how this good legislation was instituted at the expense of migrants, with a clause prohibiting their legal employment thrown in as a sop to anti-trafficking zealots. This aspect of the law has failed, unsurprisingly to those who know that prohibitionist laws have no successful track record when sexual practices are concerned.
The New Zealand Prostitutes Collective estimates a third of sex workers in the country are now migrants. That is a lot. Many are Chinese. In 2008 a man jumped out a Chinese brothel window (photo) and died, apparently panicking at the police’s Gestapo tactics during an immigration raid. The following story does not explain whether brothels referred to are licensed but employing undocumented migrants or illegal themselves. Either way, it is clear that the decriminalisation of prostitution law excluding migrant sex workers has made their situation as risky and raid-ridden as is it in countries with other kinds of legislation – and in the name of anti-trafficking. Note: CBD means Central Business District in Auckland.
Candice, a petite Chinese girl, fusses over a customer as she pours him a cup of oolong tea wearing nothing more than a see-through blood-red coloured camisole and knee-high fake leather boots. But behind her smile and calm appearance, the 21-year-old sex worker on Auckland’s North Shore confesses to be living on the edge. “I have to look happy, but I worry all the time if there is an immigration check or even if my client is an undercover immigration officer,” she said.
Candice is one of the many illegal prostitutes who arrive in New Zealand either on a visitor or student visa to work in the sex industry. The arrival of illegal Chinese sex workers have driven an industry that has been decriminalised back underground, says the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective. “We’re now looking at two industries – an industry which is supported by decriminalisation, and an industry which is having to be underground again,” said Catherine Healey, the collective’s national co-ordinator, when asked how Chinese sex workers have influenced the sex industry here. “Predominantly, the illegal part of the industry is Chinese,” she said.
Although prostitution was decriminalised in 2003, it is illegal for those on a temporary visa, such as students and tourists, to work in the sex industry. The collective does not record if a prostitute is working illegally, but Miss Healey said Chinese now make up nearly a third of the 1700 sex workers in Auckland – outnumbering Maori and Pacific Islanders, and behind only Pakeha.
Last year Immigration New Zealand, which only investigates when a complaint is received, found at least eight foreign sex workers working illegally. A client, who frequents a Chinese “massage centre” in Takapuna, says the $40-per-hour charge was the draw. “Even with everything included, it rarely goes beyond $80 with one of these Chinese girls,” he said.
NZPC Auckland Manager Annah Pickering said other sex workers charged upwards of $100 per hour, and her organisation has produced a Chinese leaflet urging sex workers to “value themselves” and charge higher rates. Miss Pickering said because of the large number of Chinese sex workers here, it was now an “integral part” of its operations to have many of its information and education brochures translated into Chinese. A Chinese-speaking staff member had been employed by the collective, but she died suddenly from an illness earlier this year, and a replacement was being sought. Miss Pickering said about a third of the brothels and massage parlours in Auckland are run by Chinese operators.
One of them told the Herald it was common to let sex workers “freelance” at his brothel in the CBD. “They are just like customers renting a room from us. We do not employ them or pay them a commission, their customers are their paymasters,” explained one central city operator. “We don’t know and we don’t ask about their personal details, including their immigration status.”
Chinese sex workers, who spoke to the Herald on the basis of anonymity, said money was the main reason they came here and none had plans to settle here. “Even when I charge $80, it is more than I ever earn back in China,” said a 21-year-old from Hunan, here on a student visa. Despite her illegal immigration status, she felt “safe” working here because the only offence she was committing is with immigration and not the police.
A 19-year-old said she found New Zealand “boring” and believed she could do more with the money she earned here back in China.
Sex Trafficking Fantasies in New Zealand Nightmare, by Nikolaj Abildgaard The other day I wrote about a protectionist clause in New Zealand’s Prostitution Reform Act that was...
Note: J’ai écrit ceci car la Ministre de l’Intérieur du Royaume-Uni a lancé sa proposition législative visant à criminaliser l’achat de sexe auprès des personnes «contrôlées pour le gain d’une autre personne». Une tentative précédente de criminaliser tout achat de sexe, s’est toujours fait conspuer. Cette version de la demande abolitionniste est totalement inapplicable, ainsi que stupide et condescendante envers les hommes et les femmes en général. Non seulement les étranger(e)s, ceux-celles qui ont la peau brune, les ‘autres’ en seraient la cible – mais les britanniques blanc(he)s ordinaires qui seront considéré(e)s comme insuffisamment indépendant(e)s pourrait être accusé(e)s d’être «contrôlé(e)s» par d’autres. Ce n’est que dans cette ligne de travail que les gens sont tenus de travailler seuls et en isolement – aucun lieu de travail, managers, collègues ne sont permis!
Le monde mystérieux du sexe à travers les frontières
par Laura Agustín, 19 novembre 2008, The Guardian.
Les dernières propositions du gouvernement pour les travailleurs du sexe ne contribuent guère à résoudre le problème de la traite des êtres humains
Aujourd’hui, le gouvernement propose que payer pour des rapports sexuels avec celles qui sont “contrôlées au profit d’une autre personne» soit une infraction pénale. En haut de la liste sont les victimes de la traite, et la défense des clients qu’ils ne savaient pas que les femmes auront été victimes de la traite est déclarée irrecevable. Mais les clients peuvent encore avoir une issue. Comment, demanderont ils, la police peut elle prouver que les travailleurs du sexe ont été victimes de la traite?
La police aura à identifier les vraies victimes de la traite en vue d’identifier les clients en défaut – une entreprise notoirement difficile. Dans quelques cas très médiatisés, des victimes auto-identifiées nomment et aident à trouver leurs exploiteurs, et parfois ces trafiquants sont poursuivis avec succès. Mais ces cas sont rares. Plus souvent, il est difficile de signaler des migrants qui ne savaient rien au sujet de leurs emplois futurs, qui n’ont rien accepté de leurs voyages illicites et qui sont prêts à dénoncer leurs agresseurs, qui peuvent être des amis de la famille ou d’anciens amis et amants.
Plus d’une décennie auparavant, tout en travaillant dans un organisme de prévention du SIDA dans les Caraïbes, j’ai visité une petite ville célèbre pour être un marché pour la migration informelle. Dans un café, un garçon m’a offert tout ce que j’aurais demandé en retour pour l’aider à atteindre n’importe quel endroit en Europe. Plus tard, j’ai rencontré une femme déterminée à voyager vers Paris pour travailler. Très informés sur les prix, elle évitait les courtiers promettant de “s’occuper de tout”.
J’ai visité un village où la plupart des familles parlaient avec fierté des filles qui les entretenaient en vendant du sexe à l’étranger. Et j’ai rencontré beaucoup de gens qui ont organisé des documents et des transports pour les voyageurs, certains contre frais de chargement et d’autres comme obligation familiale. Les chercheurs comprennent ces réseaux sociaux et les stratégies communautaires utilisés pour obtenir les migrations en cours. Si peu d’emplois sont disponibles à la maison, les institutions locales tentent rarement d’empêcher de tels voyages. Pour ceux qui sont impliqués, ce voyage peut se ressentir irrégulier, mais non criminel, étant donné le marché du travail pour les migrants à l’étranger.
Le hic, c’est que la plupart des emplois disponibles ne sont pas reconnus par les régimes nationaux d’immigration qui ne valorisent que des professionnels hautement formés et de l’emploi du secteur formel. Les permis de travail ne sont pas accordés pour des emplois à faible prestige dans les cuisines, les ateliers clandestins, boîtes de nuit ou dans l’agriculture. La réglementation stricte des marchés du travail peut être décrite comme un moyen de promouvoir l’augmentation des travailleurs non autorisés.
La convention des Nations unies contre la criminalité transnationale organisée essaie de faire la distinction entre la traite et le passage clandestin d’êtres humains, mais il ya encore une certaine confusion sur ce que veut dire quoi. Le protocole sur la traite mentionne les femmes, la coercition et la prostitution, mais pas la volonté de migrer, alors que le Protocole contre le passage clandestin parle des hommes comme de migrants. Des réunions pour parvenir à des définitions ont été prolongées et avec conflit, et le désaccord sévit encore sur ce que les mots clés tels que la coercition, la force et la tromperie veulent dire dans des situations concrètes.
Nul ne peut avoir les bonnes statistiques là où les déplacements impliquent de faux papiers ou des visas dépassés et où les emplois sont dans l’économie informelle. Le rapport du gouvernement fédéral américain annuel sur la traite repose sur des estimations approximatives de la CIA, la police et l’ambassade, des situations qui ne sont pas comprises de la même façon dans toutes les cultures et classes sociales. Quelques chiffres pour les victimes de la traite se référent à tous les migrants qui se prostituent, tandis que d’autres exigent la preuve que les victimes ne savait rien de ce qui se passait. Pour prouver un cas, les enquêteurs doivent se concentrer intensément et longuement, et la connaissance de plusieurs cultures, des contextes politiques et des langues sont nécessaires. Même alors, les histoires ont tendance à être ambiguës et les victimes impliquées dans la faute.
Une migration réussie exige une certaine sophistication et l’accès aux réseaux sociaux fournissant des connaissances, des contacts et de l’expertise. Les migrants les trouvent entre amis, familles et petits entrepreneurs récents, la plupart d’entre eux ne seraient pas qualifiables de criminalité organisée, avec ses accents démoniaques, ou même comme des gangsters. Cela permet de tenir compte de l’échec de la police de localiser un grand nombre de trafiquants: les migrants ne sont pas désireux de dénoncer les gens qui les ont aidés, même quand ils n’ont pas obtenu l’accord qu’ils espéraient. Les migrants qui réussissent doivent être aventureux, flexibles dans la prise de risques, ils sont souvent fiers des tribulations qu’ils ont survécu.
Certains imaginent la migration impliquant de la vente du sexe comme fondamentalement différente, car ils considèrent le sexe comme intrinsèque à l’autonomie de soi et ruiné par l’argent. D’autres considèrent le sexe comme une activité humaine comme une autre engagée pour toutes sortes de raisons. Ce qui n’est pas réaliste est d’exiger que tous les migrants qui vendent du sexe soient complètement forcés ou totalement libres. Beaucoup de ces migrants objectent d’être catalogués comme des victimes passives – une affiche que des travailleurs d’un bordel de Chiang Mai, en Thaïlande, liste la façon dont les opérations de sauvetage causent du mal. Cela ne veut pas dire que la situation est juste ou que personne ne souffre, mais plutôt que les sauveteurs ne comprennent souvent pas.
Si, comme de nombreux commentateurs du Guardian le déclarent, vous croyez qu’une femme britannique puisse préférer vendre des services sexuels à d’autres options, alors vous devez autoriser cette possibilité aux personnes d’autres nationalités, qu’elles vivent en dehors de leur pays d’origine ou non. Tout le reste est du colonialisme. C’est de la même condescendance que de déclarer qu’elles ont toujours été obligés de migrer, comme si elles n’avaient aucune volonté, préférence ou capacité à planifier une nouvelle vie.
Le problème avec la proposition du gouvernement de criminaliser l’achat de services sexuels de celles “contrôlées pour le gain” (qu’elles soient migrantes ou citoyennes du Royaume-Uni) est de savoir comment définir le contrôle – un autre mot au sens glissant qui ne concorde pas avec les relations qui peuvent entraîner un sentiment d’affection et d’obligation ainsi que de la coercition et de la tromperie. Les clients des travailleurs du sexe ne peuvent exiger que les procureurs prouvent l’improuvable: que les migrants sont sans ambiguïté exploités contre leur gré et souhaitent instantanément être expulsés – ou, comme le gouvernement l’a dit, rendus à leurs familles et leurs maisons.
Le caractère clandestin de la migration promeut toutes les formes d’exploitation. Mais ces réseaux ont toujours existé. C’est seulement avec l’actuelle hyper-anxiété sur l’industrie du sexe que le côté entrepreneurial du franchissement des frontières est attaqué en masse, comme si une nouvelle course aux fléaux tentait de conquérir le monde civilisé.
Il ne devrait pas être si difficile de maintenir deux idées en même temps: certaines personnes préfèrent vendre des services sexuels à d’autres options, peu importe où elles sont nées, tandis que d’autres personnes trouvent cela insupportable. Certains migrants sont maltraités par les intermédiaires ou ne veulent pas migrer du tout, tandis que d’autres migrants reçoivent plus ou moins ce qu’ils veulent en payant des gens pour les aider. Le plus grand problème est la quasi-impossibilité d’obtenir les autorisations légales et des visas fondés sur l’emploi du secteur informel. Si ce problème été amélioré, ceux qui ne veulent pas vendre des services sexuels pourraient se diriger vers d’autres emplois, et ceux qui le veulent ne seraient pas préoccupés par la persécution de la police – ou, en effet, d’être secourus quand ils ne veulent pas l’être.
– Anna Simone (Università Suor Orsola Benincasa, Napoli): “Punire il sesso. Dal DDl Carfagna alle ordinanze anti-prostituzione”
– Pietro Saitta (Università di Messina): “Politiche del decoro e della moralità nella città neoliberista: traffico, lavoro sessuale e discorso pubblico”
– Laura Maria Agustín (the Naked Anthropologist): “Sex at the Margins: Cosa dicono le/i migranti che svolgono sex work sul proprio viaggio”
II sessione- ore 17 e 30
Intervengono:
– Thierry Schaffauser (sex worker, attivista, autore di “Fiere di essere puttane”: “Perché è importante sindacalizzarsi e come”
– Giulia Garofalo (attivista, ricercatrice su genere, minoranze sessuali e sex work): “Orgogliose/i di cosa? Capire chi parla di resistenza e sovversione nel sesso commerciale”
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. NoteLe 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 magnifiquetheme, 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.
Just to say that I am travelling in places where Internet access is scarce and have been unable to post. Back in a week. Thanks to everyone responding about the vd posters!
Il y avait des footnotes dans cet essai, mais pendant le processus de convertir en endnotes les numéros sont perdus. Les endnotes sans numéros se trouvent au bout de la page. Désolée.
Remettre en question la notion de ‘place’: Quitter son pays pour le sexe
D’abord publié dans Development, 45.1, printemps 2002, dans le cadre du projet dirigé par la Société de Développement International (Rome) sur ‘La Femme et les conséquences politiques de sa place’.
Dès que les gens migrent, ils ont tendance à songer à l’endroit où ils sont nés sentimentalement. Ils évoquent de chaleureuses images de leurs proches, des objets de la vie de tous les jours, de leurs rituels, des chansons, de la nourriture. Dans toutes les cultures, beaucoup de fêtes religieuses et nationales réifient certains concepts comme le ‘chez soi’ et la ‘famille’, habituellement par des images d’un passé folklorique. Dans ce contexte, la migration est perçue comme étant un ultime recours, un déplacement désespéré et les déplacés comme étant privés de l’endroit auquel ils ‘appartiennent’. Pourtant pour des millions d’individus tout autour de la Terre, il n’est ni réaliste, ni désirable d’entreprendre des projets plus adultes ou plus ambitieux au lieu de naissance; et changer de lieu de vie est une solution conventionnelle — pas traumatisante.
Comment cette décision de se déplacer se produit-elle? Les tremblements de terre, les conflits armés, les maladies ou le manque de nourriture contraignent certaines personnes, ne leur laissant pas beaucoup de choix ni de temps pour considérer leurs options: ces gens sont parfois appelés des réfugiés. Quand un homme célibataire décide de voyager, son geste est généralement vu comme une évolution entendue, le produit de son ambition ‘normale’ et masculine d’améliorer son lot par son travail: on l’appelle un migrant. Puis, il y a le cas de la femme qui tente d’en faire autant. Continue reading →
Le sexe dans «la traite sexuelle» Original: The Sex in Sex Trafficking, par Laura Agustín, 19 novembre 2008, American Sexuality. Traduction par Thierry Schaffauser. Le sexe...
Partout où je vais, où je vis, je rencontre toujours des gens avec un sens critique, original et des vues non-conformes, et la Suède ne fait pas exception. Le post spécial d’aujourd’hui vient de Louise Persson, dont le livre sur le féminisme ‘classique’ est sorti l’année dernière et qui a aussi tenu un blog sur Frihetspropaganda depuis Mars 2004. Son allégeance est au libertarianisme, et elle aime à se dire militante. Etant une critique de longue date de la loi suédoise pénalisant l’achat de services sexuels, Louise a écrit l’article ci-dessous au sujet du rapport sur l’évaluation gouvernementale de la loi, qui a été publié vendredi. Des liens vers de nombreux autres critiques suédoises de l’enquête et le rapport sont à la fin: de nombreux Suédois n’aiment pas la loi, mais, depuis que le gouvernement la traite comme un symbole de l’identité suédoise, ces voix sont rarement entendues dans les forums publics. Cela vous rappelle quelqu’un d’autres gouvernements que nous connaissons?
«Nous ne faisons pas de réduction des risques en Suède. Parce que ce n’est pas la façon dont la Suède voit ça. Nous voyons cela comme une interdiction de la prostitution: il ne faut pas qu’il y ait de prostitution “, a déclaré l’enquêteuse gouvernementale Anna Skarhed souriant à la journaliste participant à la conférence de presse sur la publication du rapport d’une enquête destinée à évaluer les effets de la loi contre l’achat de services sexuels, et non pas pour questionner la loi elle-même. Et plus tard: «La réduction des risques n’est pas le modèle suédois.”
Skarhed a poursuivi en disant que les prostituées – les femmes – ne sont pas marginalisées. Il y a certains qui prétendent que oui, mais «Nous ne voyons pas cela».
La déclaration sur la réduction des risques est très intéressante. Un cadre de réduction des risques est en opposition aux lois moralisatrices, mais Skarhed a refusé de reconnaître un caractère moral à la loi, la présentant comme une simple «interdiction» d’un comportement inacceptable. Il n’est pas vrai non plus, qu’il n’y a pas de réduction des risques ici. La Suède peut être restrictive et répressive contre les usagers de drogues illicites et les acheteurs de sexe, mais il y a quelques programmes pragmatiques – de réduction des risques – en Suède. On pourrait imaginer qu’une experte en matière de droit nommée par le gouvernement en tant que chercheur indépendant aurait une idée de la différence entre pragmatisme et idéologie. Vous ne pouvez pas évaluer les effets de la loi sans aucune compréhension de la réduction des risques, c’est comme tout évaluer, sauf les effets sur les personnes impliquées.
L’affirmation du rapport que les travailleurs du sexe ne sont pas marginalisés est d’une arrogance déconcertante, ignorant ce que les travailleurs du sexe sont nombreux à dire sur la façon dont la loi augmente la stigmatisation et donc leur marginalisation dans la société. Voir cette video avec Pye Jakobsson de Rose Alliance , à titre d’exemple.
En tant que critique de longue date de la loi, j’avais de faibles attentes, mais je ne m’attendais pas à ça: Une absence étonnante de principes directeurs impartiaux et objectifs, l’absence de preuves solides et une image méthodique confuse qui pourrait signifier une pure et simple devinette. Toutes les conclusions du rapport sont donc discutables. J’étais prête à mettre l’accent sur le fait que Skarhed n’était pas autorisée à critiquer librement la loi, mais le rapport lui-même est un problème encore plus grave. Des références maintenant familières d’auto-congratulation sur la plus grande valeur morale de la Suède par rapport à d’autres pays ne manquent pas: ici la loi est attribuée d’un pouvoir presque magique pour éradiquer la traite et le patriarcat, à la fois.
Les “Sources” sont mentionnées, mais absolument rien n’est expliqué sur la méthodologie. Les sources ne mentionnent ni les personnes ni les organisations auditionnées, notamment ECPAT (bien que l’aspect des enfants Continue reading →
Jag har en artikel i aprils Arena. Upplagans tema: Invandraren är tillbaka. Vilka är vi och dom? och min artikel heter Migranten som resenär. Troligen är det första gången en sån behandling av migration och sex publiceras på svenska (jag skrev inte den titel, som är lite lam).
For those who thought it was impossible, an article of mine in the magazine Arena, whose April theme is migration. My article is called The Migrant as traveller and is about migration, gender, sex, tourism, neocolonialism and trafficking. The title is weak, and I didn’t choose it, but my opinions were not modified for or by the publication.The cover shown at the right shows someone being stamped them, as in us and them.
Publications by and about Laura Agustín Books The Three-Headed Dog, 2017. I published it, readable on all devices. Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and...
I’m pleased to say that the editors of this textbook included a chapter on migrant sex work and trafficking, and I wrote it. Imagine: undergraduate students actually learning how complicated these issues are, and in a general sexuality text. Boggles the mind. My bit is near the end.
Table of ContentsPart 1: Sex as a Social Fact 1. Theoretical Perspectives by Steve Seidman 2. The Social Construction of Sexuality interview with Jeffrey Weeks 3. Surverying Sex interview with Edward Laumann Part 2: Sexual Meanings 4. Popular Culture Constructs Sexuality interview with Joshua Gamson 5. Sexual Pleasure by Kelly James 6. Purity and Pollution: Sex as Moral Discourse by Nancy Fischer 7. Sex and Power by Kristen Barber 8. Sexual Politics in Intimate Relationships: Sexual Coercion and Harassment by Lisa K. Waldner 9. Gay and Straight Rites of Passage by Chet Meeks Part 3: Sexual Bodies and Behaviours 10. Medicine and the Making of a Sexual Body by Celia Roberts 11. The Body, Disability and Sexuality by Thomas Gerschick 12. Sexualizing Asian Male Bodies by Travis S. K. Kong 13. Sex and the Senior Woman by Meika Loe 14. Polishing the Pearl: Discoveries of the Clitoris by Lisa Jean Moore 15. Orgasm by Juliet Richters 16. Anal Sex: Phallic and Other Meanings by Simon Hardy 17. Sexual Intercourse by Kerwin Kaye 18. Viagra and the Coital Imperative by Nicola Gavey Part 4: Gender and Sexuality 19. Unruly Bodies: Intersex Variations of Sex Development by Sharon E. Preves 20. Transgendering: Challenging the ‘Normal’ by Kimberly Tauches 21. Transsexual, Transgender, and Queer interview with Viviane Namaste 22. Gender and Heterosexism in Rock-n-roll interview with Mimi Schippers 23. Adolescent Girls’ Sexuality: The More it Changes, the More it Stays the Same by Deborah L. Tolman 24. Not ‘Straight’, but Still a ‘Man’: Negotiating Non-heterosexual masculinities in Beirut by Ghassan Moussawi 25. How Not to Talk to Muslim Women: Patriarchy, Islam and the Sexual Regulation of Pakistani Women by Saadia Toor 26. ‘Guys are just Homophobic’: Rethinking Adolescent Homophobia and Heterosexuality by CJ Pascoe 27. Mis-conceptions about Unintended Pregnancy: Considering Context in Sexual and Reproductive Decision-making by Jennifer A. Reich Part 5: Intimacies 28. Romantic Love interview with Eva Illouz 29. Gender and the Organization of Heterosexual Intimacy by Daniel Santore 30. Shopping for Love: On-line Dating and the Making of a Cyber Culture of Romance by Sophia DeMasi 31. Covenant Marriage: Reflexivity and Retrenchment in the Politics of Intimacy by Dwight Fee 32. Interracial Romance: The Logic of Acceptance and Domination by Kumiko Nemoto 33. Lesbian and Gay Parents by Yvette Taylor 34. Parners of Transgender People by Carey Jean Sojka Part 6: Sexual Identities 35. Straight Men by James Dean 36. Sexual Narratives of ‘Straight’ Women by Nicole LaMarre 37. Lesbians interview with Tamsin Wilton 38. The Disappearance of the Homosexual interview with Henning Beck 39. Gay Men and Lesbians in the Netherlands by Gert Hekma and Jan Willem Duyvendak 40. The Bisexual Menace Revisited: or, Shaking up Social Categories is Hard to do by Kristen Esterberg 41. Bisexualities in America interview with Paula Rodriguez Rust 42. Multiple Identities: Race, Class, and Gender in Lesbian and Gay Affirming Protestant Congregations by Krista McQueeny Part 7: Sexual Institutions and Sexual Commerce 43. One is Not Born a Bride: How Weddings Regulate Heterosexuality by Chrys Ingraham 44. Change and Continuity in American Marriage by Erica Hunter 45. The Political Economy of Sexual Labor interview with Elizabeth Bernstein 46. Sex Sells, but What Else Does it Do? The American Porn Industry by Chris Pappas 47. Sex Workers Interview with Wendy Chapkis 48. Conflicts at the Tubs: Bathhouses and Gay Culture and Politics in the United States by Jason Hendrickson 49. Queering the Family by Mary Burke and Kristine Olsen 50. Pleasure for Sale: Feminist Sex Stores by Alison Better Part 8: Sexual Cultures 51. Sexual Liberation and the Creative Class in Israel by Dana Kaplan 52. Internet Sex: The Seductive Freedom To by Dennis Waskul 53. The Time of the Sadomaschoist: Hunting with(in) the ‘Tribus’ by Darren Langdridge 54. Secret Sex and the Down-lo Brotherhood by Justin Luc Hoy 55. Wait… Hip Hop Sexualities by Thomas F. DeFrantz 56. Gay Men Dancing: Circuit Parties by Russell WesthaverPart 9: Sexual Regulation and Inequality 57. Sexuality, State and Nation by Jyoti Puri 58. Iran’s Sexual Revolution by Pardis Mahdavi 59. Christianity and the Regulation of Seuxality in the United States by Joshua Grove 60. The Marriage Contract by Mary Bernstein 61. Healing Disorderly Desire: Medical-therapeutic Regulation of Sexuality by P. J. McGann 62. Schools and the Social Control of Sexuality by Melinda Miceli 63. Law and the Regulation of the Obscene by Phoebe Christina Godfrey Part 10: Sexual Politics 64. Gay Marriage: Why Now? Why At All? by Reese Kelly 65. The US Supreme Court and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Rights by Gregory Maddox 66. The Politics of AIDS: Sexual Pleasure and Danger by Jennifer Gunsaullus 67. The Pro-family Movement by Tina Fetner 68. Politics of Sex Education Interview with Janice M. Irvine 69. Gender and Sexual Politics: American Gay Rights and Feminist Movement by Megan Murphy 70. Sexual Dissent: A Post-identity Culture of Sexual Resistance in the Case of Lebanese Nonheterosexuals by Steven Seidman 71. War and the Politics of Sexual Violence by Margarita Palacios & Silvia PosoccoPart 11: Global and Transnational Sexualities 72. Condoms in the Global Economy by Peter Chua 73. Sexual Tourism Interview with Julia O’Connell Davidson 74. Migrant Sex Work and Trafficking by Laura Agustín 75. The Public and Hidden Sexualities of Filipina Women in Lebanon by Hayeon Lee 76. Mexican Immigrants, Hetersexual Sex and Loving Relationships in the United States Interview with Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez 77. Gender, Sexuality, and the Lebanese Diaspora: Global Identities and Transnational Practices by Dalia Abdelhady
Before you can rescue victims of trafficking you have to find them. Everyone likes to talk about the cowboy raids in which police storm a brothel and arrest/rescue everyone. But less exciting procedures are necessary, as described below in an abbreviated version of guidelines included in a 2008 UN report, Identifying Cambodian Victims of Human Trafficking Among Deportees from Thailand.
Note the use of profiling, according to which looking like a prostitute gets you an interview. Lady Gaga, Madonna and many other women are said to look like prostitutes, on and off – it is a grand sexist tradition. Therefore I am not sure how far such stereotyping will get those trying to distinguish the real victims from the ordinary, everyday migrants. The profiling also names a type called women who act out. This psychotherapeutic (or psychobabble) term means something like
expressing unconscious feelings and fantasies in behaviour; reacting to present situations as if they were the original situation that gave rise to the feelings and fantasies.
Women who are not submissive, docile and quiet, then. Many readers of this blog, and its writer, are undoubtedly women who act out – at least I hope so.
Victim Identification Procedures
. . . It is clear from the research findings that . . . many victims of human trafficking and exploitation have been treated and identified as irregular migrants and deported.
. . . An interview at the Immigration Detention Center (IDC) in Suan Plu, Bangkok revealed that approximately 200-500 individuals arrive per day for deportation, from countries including Cambodia and Myanmar. After processing, which includes fingerprinting, photos, and general background information, approximately 10-20 of them are selected to be screened for human trafficking victim identification. Whether or not a person is selected to be screened is determined by certain profiling cues such as: women whose dress suggests that they were prostitutes, men with lashes on their back, women who act out, or children who do not look like their mothers or fathers, such as with different skin tone.
The IDC police officer on duty at the time of the survey reported that no one had ever self-identified as a trafficking victim. The IDC officer also believed that many deportees do not expose the full truth of their experiences or exploitation during these initial screenings. It was alleged that deportees fear that being identified as a trafficking victim would delay their trip home. This view has been echoed by the Cambodian NGOs who work with deportees.
The police who do the screening try to help bring out the truth by showing the deportees a video about human trafficking that was developed by IOM, with complete screenings including a second form used by NGOs and IDC officers. Changes in the trafficking law have resulted in both men and women being screened; detainees who are identified as victims are sent to a shelter, while those detainees who are not identified are deported within a two-day turnaround.
One of the unspoken requirements for writing a review is to find defects in the book, and these can be the most interesting comments. (I do chuckle sometimes at the fact that reviewers rarely criticise the same defects, however – there are always new and different things to complain about.) In this case, Lorraine asserts that I ‘lost my balance’ as researcher when I included my own reactions to situations where I was participant observer. To me, and I still think this, including my own reactions was a requirement for doing reflexive research: that is, I don’t believe any of us does research without having emotions, prejudices and other responses based on our own histories.
Reflexivity, broadly defined, means a turning back on oneself, a process of self-reference (Aull Davies 1999)
Referring to my own reactions was, to me, a requirement, and I am pretty sure my thesis adviser agreed. I said this to Lorraine in an email, and her reply was that I needed to make this all more explicit.
Maybe so. When I was editing the thesis to make it into a Zed Book, I had to cut the original, and great swathes of repetitive or tedious discussion (required for academic work) were done away with. Perhaps the original made my thinking on the researcher’s effect on her research more overt. Anyway, Lorraine ends by saying after reading this book the reader will not be able to think, hear, or talk about migrant sex work and trafficking the same way again. Thank you, Lorraine.
Laura Agustín’s book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and NGO workers who have ventured into the domain of working or researching “human trafficking.” By simplifying her language and omitting internal text references, the author aims to make this book accessible for experts, academics, and extension workers. Academically, its merits can be sung for the way she managed to debunk existing myths about migration and sex work; identifying the problems, gaps, and silences in contemporary theories and by doing so, unclosing the fuzzy nature of migration for sex work in its diversity. Agustín argues and illustrates that sex work is one of the different but limited alternatives available for illegal migrants in Europe. She analyzes sex work within the group of service activities such as domestic help and personal care—showing that all these activities share similarities in regard to their exploitive and insecure nature. She sustains that sex work must be analyzed within the broader frame of migration theory to understand its complexity. This is one of the objectives of the book. Despite the similarities shared by these different activities, the multitude of studies published on migration and “human trafficking” have isolated sex work from other migration options constructing a separate category of victims that lack agency and autonomy. Agustín wants to understand how and why this occurs. The search for the answer to these questions guides her throughout the book. Finally, a personal motivation led her to this study, namely, being a sex work researcher and activist and previously working in NGOs working with sex workers and migrants, she wants to understand why the life of people who sell sex has not improved, in spite of organizations’ efforts and the many studies dedicated to this goal.
The book opens with a short introduction presenting various vignettes that immediately contrasts sensationalist media representations of migrant sex workers with the actual motives for women choosing to migrate. These include economic motivations but places them side by side with migrants’ desires for other things such as adventure and travel. From that moment on, the reader becomes aware that migrant women’s motivations and experiences are diverse and cannot be represented homogenously. The second chapter initiates the development of Agustín’s theoretical argument. She defines a migrant as a traveler sharing a common process rather than identity with others. The chapter examines definitions such as labor migration and “feminization of migration,” to show, for example, that female migration is not a new phenomenon, criticizing studies that conceptualize the “feminization of migration” as a recent development. It zooms in on migrant sex workers and explains how “trafficking discourses” and the “rescue industry” define migrant sex workers as (trafficked) victims because of the way they leave their home countries and arrive to Europe, that is, through debt bonding. The chapter counteracts these theories of “trafficking” and highlights women’s agency. Using empirical quotes, a picture is painted that portrays migrant women generally to be aware of the consequences of debt bonding. A distinction is made between being aware of the consequences of debt bonding and finding oneself on arriving in Europe in exploitative and violent work conditions— this distinction is generally not recognized in the trafficking literature. In the third chapter, she follows the same road of analysis criticizing the use of concepts such as informal sector, the types of work that migrants do, and the position of sex work therein. She successfully analyzes sex work as a supply and demand relationship. Sex workers are depicted as individuals consciously offering services. The quotes used to illustrate clients’ motivations reveal that far from being deviant, clients perceive buying sex as a demand for a service.
Chapters 4 and 6 should be read together. By tracing in chapter 4 the historical development of “the “rise of the social” in the 19th century, Agustín attempts to understand how the development of the philanthropic discourse that targeted the poor and particularly prostitutes in need of help is reflected in contemporary discourses and initiatives of the “rescue industry.” The chapter illustrates that it was in this period that the “prostitute” as a stigmatized, victimized, morally weak identity was constructed. Chapter 6, based almost entirely on ethnographic fieldwork, dives into the world of governmental and nongovernmental organizations’ activities and documents and shows that even projects that distance themselves from antiquated labels such as the “prostitute,” replacing them with more neutral terms like sex work, do not escape from the 19th century notions of prostitution and help.
Critical analyses of the “rescue industry” are few and hard to find. Agustín should be applauded for her originality and her willingness to put herself in a vulnerable position as researcher and activist. Still it is here, where certain weaknesses can be found. While the link between the 19th-century socially invented object “the prostitute” and the contemporary category of the prostitute or sex worker is analytically strong, the same does not hold true in relation to the development of 19th-century philanthropy and its connection to the contemporary “rescue industry.” Agustín expects the reader to accept this assertion, but the analysis would benefit by illustrating this link more explicitly. Perhaps this can be partially attributed to the fact that in chapter 6 the author loses her balance between herself as a researcher and as an activist. Agustín’s report of her research findings expresses the irritation and annoyance she felt in the field while accompanying outreach workers. Although she rightfully concludes the chapter expressing the need for help organizations to be reflexive about their work, this conclusion is also applicable to the author. The researcher’s lack of reflexivity concerning her own reactions and position makes her theoretical claim concerning the relationship between 19th-century philanthropy and the contemporary situation less convincing. Nonetheless, after reading this book the reader will not be able to think, hear, or talk about migrant sex work and trafficking the same way again.
Lorraine Nencel, American Ethnologist, Volume 37, Number 3, pp 601-602.
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The faith in technology is touching. Not that they shouldn’t try, not that there are not bad people abusing the absence of technology. But without understanding why people want to get out of Nigeria, why they want to go abroad to work, and send money back, and see the world and be able to come back and then leave again, this technology will be a very partial solution. And that’s after they get it all working correctly; anyone stuck in a rich country’s border-control queue when a new machine fails knows about that. As quickly as the state installs clever new machinery for detecting fraud, fraudulent-document producers come up with a way around it. Which is what migrants look for in entrepreneurs (here called middlemen) who will smuggle them out of one country and into another.
However, let’s say these machines do present significant obstacles to people wanting to get on airplanes. In that case, arrangements to leave via the wide-open other borders will become more popular, getting rides to other places, other airports. To prevent that, Nigeria is going to build fences with check-points: just like in the olden days, just like on the US and Israeli and Melillan borders, where surveillance would have to be 100% efficient (and 100% non-corrupt) to prevent everyone who wants to make a hole in or dig under the fence or wall. Not to mention Nigeria’s sea border.
Abuja -The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has installed Document Fraud Readers, scanners and other passenger registration equipment at the various international airports to check human trafficking. NIS Comptroller-General, Mrs Rose Uzoma, on Sunday in Abuja, said that the equipment would also check movement of people in and out of the country.
At the international airports, we have taken necessary steps to install IT equipment, the Document Fraud Readers and the Scanners. We have installed the Passenger Registration Equipment that enables us take stock of whoever is leaving or coming into this country. I could tell when last and if you have ever travelled through our international airports in the recent times, I will tell you the time and hour and the immigration officer that cleared you. The facilities we have had enabled us to a very great extent to be able to ensure that people don’t travel with forged documents.
Uzoma said that the era when people used their relatives’ passports to travel was over as the immigration service had installed machines that could identify every individual and detect look-alike photographs on passports. She noted that officers had been trained and sensitised to be able to tackle the challenges of human trafficking to help to reduce the bad image it had given the country. Uzoma said that the service had been collaborating with the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) to tackle the menace of human trafficking. She said that the NIS had also established human trafficking units at its areas of operations in the states and at its headquarters in Abuja as a complement to the efforts of NAPTIP.
If anyone has travelled and sees the peril under which our sisters operate, nobody will wish it on his or her worst enemy. So our officers are living up to their responsibilities.
The immigration service boss said that the absence of notable physical structures on Nigeria’s borders in many places was a challenge as it was difficult to identify the border route in many instances.
If you have had the opportunity of travelling through any of the borders in the northern part of the country, you can see how extensive and expansive they are and many of them don’t even have what could pass as international border control structure.
Uzoma said that the service would soon put in place passport control plazas and necessary structures to enable officers to effectively patrol all the border areas. She added that trans-border criminality also remained an ongoing battle between the law enforcement agencies and criminals. She added also that the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has issued about three million electronic passports to Nigerians between 2007, when the new passport was introduced, and February 2011.
I know we have issued a little less than three million electronic passports from 2007 to date. As we speak we are also giving permits to foreigners. Recently we have started registration of Africans and ECOWAS nationals. We didn’t have their data, but they are also foreigners. We had to borrow the equipment from INEC that they used in the previous voter registration; re-programmed them and we gave them to all our local government area officers for them to take biometric data of all those Africans in our midst. At the last count we had about 400,000 non-Africans residing legally in Nigeria.
The NIS Comptroller-General said that one of the major challenges confronting the service was the attitude of some Nigerians as regards the processing of the passports. She said that the challenge derived from the fact that most Nigerians didn’t like to fill forms either for their passports, or for other necessary documents. Many prefer to use middlemen to do something as simple as filling a form and in a lot of cases the middlemen fill the forms incorrectly, missing out some details. Uzoma added that Nigerians also didn’t like to take responsibility for processing their travel documents and preferred to use middlemen, which often times, led to the problem of visa refusals at embassies. She advised that Nigerians should be sensitised to understand that they had to conform with international best practices, especially when they planned to be travel to other parts of the world.
Uzoma also said that the NIS had acquired the best technology to detect falsified age declaration and some other details, including the change of names when a dishonest applicant applied for a passport while claiming that he or she never took one in the past. She said that when the immigration service took fingerprints in its machines, the computer would bring out the name of the original owner of those fingerprints and when they matched those of the applicant, such person would be revealed as having once obtained a passport.
Sex Trafficking Fantasies in New Zealand Nightmare, by Nikolaj Abildgaard The other day I wrote about a protectionist clause in New Zealand’s Prostitution Reform Act that was...
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.
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. Continue reading →
The Disappearing of a Migration Category: Migrants Who Sell Sex is the article that broke the ice about women who travel and sell sex for a living. I submitted it to a journal I knew would be sympathetic in 2004, but it took them two and a half years to publish it – that’s how hard it was to find peer reviewers who would actually review the article rather than angrily dismiss it as wrong. The premise was obvious: Although migration had come to form a large interesting international field of study, with all sorts of subcategories and theories, migrants who sell sex were not mentioned anywhere. That was the topic of the article – the disappearing of a group, and ideas about why.
I am glad to say that the article opened the door for a generation of researchers who before that could find little or no academic work to refer to when trying to explain what their research was showing them: that many migrant women preferred selling sex to their other options, whatever those were and wherever they came from. Many younger researchers (such as phd students) were doing ethnographic research with migrants, which meant getting to know them sometimes quite well and hearing the details of their lives. Whether or not these researchers assumed beforehand that migrants who sell sex are all forced or trafficked into it, their research revealed that such an assumption is often wrong. Of course there were other researchers finding people who did feel forced and trafficked: the point is there was and is a lot of variation, but this was not acknowledged. The abstract of the article reads:
