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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist