Next week I will be in Montréal for several events: a book launch, an anthropology conference and a Sex Work Café. English details after the French.
L’Alliance féministe solidaire pour les droits des travailleuses(rs) du sexe et Stella vous convie au SEX WORK CAFÉ!
11 November 2011 – 1830-2030 chez Stella (l’adresse sera envoyée par courriel)
Nous accueillerons deux sommités du mouvement de défense de droits des travailleuses(rs) du sexe, de Malmö-Copenhague et de San Francisco! Joignez-vous à nous pour une discussion sur la question de la migration des femmes et l’anti-traffic.
Carol Leigh, travailleuse du sexe activiste et réalisatrice, nous présentera des extraits de son film Trafficking in The Media: Sex, Power and Representation (VO sous-titrée en français).
Le lieu est accessible aux fauteuils roulants par ascenseur.
Discussion bilingue mais les présentations de Carol et Laura seront faites en anglais avec traduction simultanée chuchotée – volontaires recherché-es.
Bienvenue aux enfants: il y a un coin de jouets et la surveillance peut être assurée par une rotation de responsabilité – RSVP.
Contact: alliancefeministesolidaire[at]gmail.com
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Friday 11 November 2011 – 1830-2030 at Stella (address sent by email)
The Feminist Alliance in Solidarity for Sex Workers Rights and Stella warmly invite you to the SEX WORK CAFÉ!
We will welcome two international stars from the sex workers rights movement, coming from Malmö-Copenhague and San Francisco. Join us for a Sex Work Cafe that aims to focus on the question of women’s migration and anti-trafficking.
Carol Leigh, sex worker activist and film maker, will present segments from her work-in-progress Trafficking in The Media : Sex, Power and Representation (VO sub. french).
Wheelchair-accessible by elevator.
Bilingual discussion with English presentation by Carol and Laura and whispered translation to French – we need volonteers.
Children welcome: there is a play area where surveillance will be assured by a rotation of responsibility – please contact us to let us know.
It is striking that in the year 2001 women should so overwhelmingly be seen as pushed, obligated, coerced or forced when they leave home for the same reason as men: to get ahead through work.
Sex trafficking and human trafficking were not words on everyone’s lips when I wrote the above ten years ago. I was trying to figure out what was special and problematic about migrants who sell sex, believing that migrants are migrants, no matter what jobs they end up getting (including prostitution or sex work). Nowadays, a lot of the social conflict is about statistics: how many are trafficked, how many are illegal migrants. But even more it is about definitions, world views, ideas about sex and money, the insistence that a particular cultural view should be everyone’s.
Most conversations about migrants who sell sex present black-and-white versions of something that is almost entirely grey. For moral crusaders who would rush to legislation or attempt to prove that one sort of law is better than others, my vision is not satisfying. I say Stop, slow down. Until you comprehend the myriad elements present amongst people who leave home to go to another country and sell sex, you shouldn’t be passing laws about them. Of any kind. This is not useless postmodern dithering but the position that until you understand the minimum about how people experience their own lives you cannot responsibly take actions to help them. If you don’t care what they say themselves then don’t talk about helping and admit that control is what you want: the power to make people stop doing what you don’t approve of and start doing something else, whether they want to or not.
Leaving Home for Sex is the first piece I published that defined what my work would be for the next few years. At the time it was unusual not to use the term prostitute, but I also didn’t just substitute the term sex worker. Instead, I tried to describe how selling sex can be an occupation that works out all right for migrant women without their taking on a definite identity based on it. You will see ‘Challenging place’ in the original title because the piece was written for a special journal issue on women and ‘place’, meaning the idea of place, local and global both. I suggested that migrant workers didn’t fit into that framework but could sometimes be viewed as cosmopolitan subjects: that neither poverty nor bad jobs nor lack of complete ‘choice’ over your life prevents you from also becoming cosmopolitan. There are some footnotes not hyperlinked but listed at the end of the text in full reproduced here. Click on the title to get the pdf.
Laura Mª Agustín, Development, 45.1, 110-117 (2002).
As soon as people migrate, there is a tendency to sentimentalise their home. Warm images are evoked of close families, simple household objects, rituals, songs, foods.[1] Many religious and national holidays, across cultures, reify such concepts of ‘home’ and ‘family’, usually through images of a folkoric past. In this context, migration is constructed as a last-ditch or desperate move and migrants as deprived of the place they ‘belong to’.Yet for millions of people all over the world, the birth and childhood place is not a feasible or desirable one in which to undertake more adult or ambitious projects, and moving to another place is a conventional—not traumatic—solution.
How does this decision to move take place? Earthquakes, armed conflict, disease, lack of food impel some people in situations that seem to involve little element of choice or any time to ‘process’ options: these people are sometimes called refugees. Single men’s decisions to travel are generally understood to evolve over time, the product of their ‘normal’ masculine ambition to get ahead through work: they are called migrants. Then there is the case of women who attempt to do the same.
Research in a marginal place: Geographies of exclusion
For some time I worked in educación popular in Latin America and the Caribbean and with latino migrants in North America and Europe, in programmes dedicated to literacy, AIDS prevention and health promotion, preparation for migration and concientización (whose exact translation does not exist in English but combines something about consciousness-raising with something about ‘empowerment’). My concern about the vast difference between what first-world social agents (governmental, NGO workers, activists) say about women migrants and what women migrants say about themselves led me to study and testify on these questions. I have deliberately located myself on the border of both groups: the migrants and the social, in Europe, where the only jobs generally available to migrant women are in the domestic, ‘caring’ and sex industries. My work examines both the social and the migrants, so I spend time in brothels, bars, houses, offices, ‘outreach’ vehicles and ‘the street’, in its many versions. Data on what migrant women say come from my own research and others’ in many countries of the European Union; women have also been interviewed before or after migrating in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. Data on what social agents say come from my own research with those who work on prostitution issues in those countries, including as evaluator of projects for the International Labour Office and the European Commission.
Although researchers and NGO personnel have been working with migrant prostitutes for nearly twenty years in Europe, publication of their findings remains outside mainstream press and journals. Most of the people who have met and talked with many migrant prostitutes are neither academics nor writers. ‘Outreach’ is conceptualised as distinct from ‘research’ and generally funded as HIV/AIDS prevention. This means that the published products of outreach research are generally limited to information on sexual health and practices; the other many kinds of information collected remain unpublished. Some of those who work in these projects have the chance to meet and exchange such information, but most do not. Recently, a new kind of researcher has entered the field, usually young academic women studying sociology or anthropology and working on migrations. These researchers want to do justice to the reality around them, which they recognise as consisting of as many migrant prostitutes as migrant domestic/‘caring’ workers. Most of these researchers do oral histories and some have begun to publish but it will be some time before such findings are recognised. Stigma works in all kinds of ways, among them the silencing of results that do not fit hegemonic discourses.[2] The mainstream complaint says ‘the data is not systematised’ or ‘there is no data.’ In my research, I seek out such ‘marginalised’ results.
Discourses of leaving home
It is striking that in the year 2001 women should so overwhelmingly be seen as pushed, obligated, coerced or forced when they leave home for the same reason as men: to get ahead through work. Continue reading →
På lyxiga semesterorter i Dominikanska republiken solar turister nära stränder där småbåtar frekvent ger sig ut mot Puerto Rico. Mona-kanalens förrädiska strömmar vimlar av hajar och många av båtarna kapsejsar. Men nästan alla dominikaner känner ändå någon som har lyckats klara resan. De som har tagit sig över gränsen måste sedan passera genom Puerto Ricos västra träskmarker, där den amerikanska gränspolisen väntar. De som tar sig förbi dem kan stanna på ön eller fortsätta till Miami, New York eller Europa. Presumtiva migranter försöker hitta erfaret sjöfolk med båtar starka nog att klara stormar och som inte överlastar båtarna med alltför många passagerare.
I boken The Suffering of the Immigrantbeskriver sociologen Abdelmalek Sayad hur länder som tar emot migranter uppfattar migration som ett irriterande socialt problem som måste ”hanteras”. Sayad ser de överväldigande hinder som nordafrikaner möter i Frankrike som en tydlig strukturell konsekvens av kolonisering, utan att för den skull offerförklara migranterna. I stället argumenterar han kraftfullt för att erkänna dem som handlande subjekt. Förmågan att se och erkänna den sortens agentskap – att även missgynnade migranter är huvudpersoner i sina egna liv – har sin grund i en förståelse för hur migrationer börjar.
När jag bodde i Dominikanska republiken, var ett av mina uppdrag att besöka samhällen där utflyttning var väletablerat. Jag mötte kvinnor som ville resa till Europa, där de två valmöjligheter som fanns att tillgå var att arbeta som inneboende hembiträde eller att sälja sex. De vägde riskerna och fördelarna mot varandra och diskuterade huruvida de skulle klara anpassningen. De flesta av dem hade inte någon längre formell utbildning, men de var varken naiva eller ointelligenta. Om de stannade hemma var deras bästa alternativ fortfarande hemhjälp eller att sälja sex, men till långt lägre löner och utan de nya horisonter en resa kan erbjuda.
Potentiella migranter drömmer också om att få se kända platser, träffa nya människor, bli självständiga, lära sig ett nytt yrke, få nya idéer – precis som människor i rika länder gör. Att resa är utvecklande för alla resenärer – inte bara för rika turister, och för många människor är dessa resor deras största chans att ta reda på mer om världen.
När jag reste runt på ön och in i Haiti, hörde jag dussintals människor prata om hur de skulle komma i väg. Européer tar för givet att deras resevisum beviljas av vilket land de än vill besöka. Medborgare i länder som Dominikanska republiken vet att deras ansökningar om turistvisa aldrig kommer att beviljas. Liksom när det gäller att få ett arbete och arbetstillstånd utomlands, utgör de statliga riktlinjerna en begränsning – arbetstillstånden omfattar bara ”kvalificerade” jobb, vilket gör att många migranter väljer att resa utanför det formella regelverket och tar ”okvalificerade” jobb i den svarta ekonomin.
För att få tillgång till de här arbetena kan resenärerna behöva nytt namn och pass, en falsk vigselring, flygbiljetter, pengar att visa upp för gränspoliser och råd om vad man ska säga till dem, någon som möter upp vid flygplatsen och någonstans att bo när de kommer fram. Jag träffade många människor som erbjuder de här tjänsterna till potentiella migranter, inklusive deras egna familjemedlemmar, gamla vänner, bekantskaper bland turister och frilansande entreprenörer. Eftersom den här resemarknaden inte är reglerad, finns det inget bra sätt att veta vem som gör ett bra jobb och vem som behandlar migranterna korrekt, förutom via ryktesvägen: berättelser från kunder som smugglats ut säkert.
Jag pratade med Lucía, en strippdansös som hade väntat på det rätta tillfället att ge sig av i flera månader. Hon ville åka till Paris, men hade inte hittat rätt erbjudande ännu. Miriam, med två års universitetsstudier och erfarenheter av arbete som tandläkarassistent, funderade på ifall statussänkningen att bli hembiträde skulle vägas upp av de pengar hon kunde tjäna i Italien, där hennes syster bodde. Båda kvinnorna visste vilka priser och villkor de önskade och besökte platser där smugglare samlas regelbundet för att höra vad som erbjöds.
En del såg mig som en möjlighet. En kypare började prata med mig efter att ha serverat kaffe, Continue reading →
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...
Here is another article that required persistence and patience to get through the academic journal review process and into publication. Migrants in the Mistress’s House: Other Voices in the ‘Trafficking’ Debate, published in 2005, used testimonies of women selling sex who do not consider themselves coerced, forced, trafficked or enslaved or who, even if they were coerced by economic circumstance, are not searching for Rescue. Click on the title for the pdf.
Whatever levels of knowledge and ‘consent’ are involved, however, women are never made aware of the extent to which they will be indebted, intimidated, exploited and controlled. They believe . . . that they can travel to a richer country and earn large amounts of money in a short space of time, which they can then use to move themselves and their families out of poverty and despair. In reality, they are told they owe a huge debt which must be repaid through providing sexual services, and they are able to exercise virtually no control at all over their hours of work, the number of customers they serve, and the kinds of sex they have to provide. (Kelly and Regan 2000, 5)
with migrant testimonies like this:
I arrived in Almería through a friend’s mediation. I began to work as a domestic, I was badly paid and mistreated. Sundays I came to the edge of the sea and cried. One Sunday a Moroccan man saw me crying, I explained my situation to him, he took me to his house. I was a virgin, he promised he was going to marry me . . . he got me a residence card. . . . He found me work in a restaurant and let me stay in his studio, he told me I had to pay rent. I began to sleep with some clients from the restaurant. . . . Now, I would like to go to France, I want to get married. . . . My sister who lives in Bézier says she’s going to find me a Frenchman, to get a residence card. (Moroccan woman; Lahbabi and Rodríguez 2000, 18)
or this:
Once I was talking with a friend and she asked if I wanted to go to Spain. I knew why, so I said: ‘Ah, do you want to?’ . . . and I don’t know where she met this guy, he got the papers for us . . . the money and we left. . . . This guy went to look for work, where are the best places to work, where there are men. . . . Because one place has a lot of men, another doesn’t. . . . I worked in Logroño a month or so . . . then back to Málaga . . . a month or two, then I came here. . . . He talked first with the boss of this place . . . said he was looking for work for us. (Ukrainian woman in Spain; Agustín 2001)
The men in both stories would be called pimps and traffickers by the cited feminists.
In 2005 this was still mainly a feminist quarrel, so those are the arguments I attempted to answer. I called it Migrants in the mistress’s house in reference to working-class servants in rich people’s homes, where they may become subversive members of the family, and, in the female case, have sexual relationships with some of them that may be coerced but may also be manipulative and self-serving. Full references in the paper itself.
For campaigners like Ashton Kutcher, sex slavery is an easy-to-recognise phenomenon with a single obvious cure, rescue: first by police and then by social workers. And despite rescuers’ avowed respect for personal stories, they never listen to voices that criticise this cure. The poster below was made by migrant sex workers (they call themselves that) in Chiang Mai, Thailand, at the EMPOWER centre. I have posted it before but so many people are still unaware of the problems associated with Rescue that I like to re-run it. See for yourself the reasons workers at Barn Su Funn Brothel gave for denouncing raids and rescue operations intended to liberate them, whether rescuers are police officers, ngo employees or even celebrities and then think twice about how you will Fix Their Lives so easily.
• We lose our savings and our belongings.
• We are locked up.
• We are interrogated by many people.
• They force us to be witnesses.
• We are held until the court case.
• We are held till deportation.
• We are forced re-training.
• We are not given compensation by anybody.
• Our family must borrow money to survive while we wait.
• Our family is in a panic.
• We are anxious for our family.
• Strangers visit our village telling people about us.
• The village and the soldiers cause our family problems.
• Our family has to pay ‘fines’ or bribes to the soldiers.
• We are sent home.
• Military abuses and no work continues at home.
• My family has a debt.
• We must find a way back to Thailand to start again.
The poster brings us close to a situation many people doubt: that poorer migrants selling sex often prefer to continue what they’re doing to being forcibly rescued by people on anti-trafficking crusades. This is not to cast doubt on many helpers’ good intentions or the genuine rescue of some individuals. But it shows how rescue agents haven’t consulted the prostitutes they want to save first, to find out whether they want to be helped and, if they do, what kind of help would actually be helpful. The poster makes it clear that cutting migrant women off from their source of income has drastic consequences for themselves and their families.
This does not mean that they or I deny the existence of abusive practices inflicted during smuggling and trafficking operations. It means that an ideological stance that claims all migrants doing sex work have been victims of such practices is wrong. Check the rescue tag to read more, including stories of sex workers resisting arrest and fleeing from rescuers.
During my years of researching this subject, I have met migrants of myriad nationalities, in many countries, in bars, brothels, shelters, ngo offices, streets, clubs and houses. Some had had bad experiences, some had not recovered from them yet, some were getting on with the next stage of their lives, some enjoyed doing sex work, many had adapted to it as the best option of the moment. For those who want to read more about it, my book Sex at the Marginshas lots of details. Here’s another view:
Unwanted Rescues: A poster from Thailand This poster comes from the EMPOWER centre in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where brothel workers gathered to discuss recent raids and...
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 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.
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...
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
Watch the good video from the Guardian below about precarious work and the precariat. In my talks about migrants who sell sex I always refer to Manuel Castells’s idea of flexible labour: changes in how business are run that mean bosses move businesses looking for cheaper ways to produce and workers travel to find jobs and switch fields, learning new skills, rather than try to maintain a single career path. Precarious labour refers to a wide gamut of working situations that lack security: freelance workers who live on earnings from more than one job, temporary workers, day labourers, subcontractors and so on. Precarity means you can be let go from your job with no notice, you receive no benefits, employers take no responsibility for keeping you safe or healthy, you move on when a job doesn’t work out. It means you don’t have a union or maybe even the right to organise.
Selling sex is often a variation of this, a way to make money that can be performed just about anywhere if the worker manages to figure out what the local customs are. Selling sex is a form of precarious labour when workers are not doing it legally and possibly not residing legally somewhere. All people who sell sex in unregulated situations, and many who sell in regulated situations, migrants and not, share precarious conditions and belong to what Guy Standing is calling the precariat (a word based on the old idea of the proletariat).
This is the way sex work is like other jobs. Whilst moral entrepreneurs rant and rail about the degradation of selling sex and how it can never be a proper job, the possibility of ever getting a proper job diminishes and recedes for vast numbers of people. In such a context, whether crusaders like it or not, many people are willing to give sex work a try and willing to adapt to its peculiar conditions. That doesn’t mean they all love it or feel like professionals; it doesn’t mean they don’t wish they could find something else to do. But it means their choices, completely logical in today’s labour markets, should be respected.
The following video isn’t about sex work; the workers interviewed are doing low-paying jobs. They might wish they could get better jobs, but they don’t want to lose the ones they have. For those who think people shouldn’t go into sex work, listen up and focus on all the other employment situations that are terrible, that barely allow people to get to the end of the month. If none of them get better, more people will go into sex work, that’s definite.
Sex-work money contributes to ‘Development’ The link between ‘development’ (a helping industry I really don’t like) and migration is now both recognised and fashionable. This piece...
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 →
Kein Mensch Ist Illegal: No One is Illegal reads the German pavement art. When I was doing research on migration in Spain, it was understood amongst NGOs and activists that undocumented migrants did indeed have the right to health care from publicly-funded institutions (public health clinics, notably). This right was not advertised anywhere, however, nor did any government spokesperson come out and say it in public. To know that you would be attended if you showed up at a public clinic, someone else had to tell you first – either another, more clued-in migrant or some person in solidarity with migrants.
I have doubts about the concept of rights in general, myself, and in particular that of human rights, but the academic author of an article denouncing Germany’s situation accepts them unquestioningly. The conundrum rests in the fact that migrants don’t legally exist in countries they have entered without documentation. Since they don’t have citizens’ (legal residents’) rights there, human rights to health are claimed, in tandem with arguments that in the country under discussion health care is considered a right.
Germany’s immigration policies focus mainly on combating illegal immigration, without any attention to the rights of undocumented migrants. In principle, there are certain minimal rights available to undocumented immigrants in Germany, including a reduced level of medical treatment. Several studies, however, have shown that in practice these migrants are hardly in a position to avail of their right to seeking medical care. The exclusion from full social benefits stems from the Government’s fear of creating any additional pull factors which might encourage further immigration. Undocumented migrants’ human rights are in no way sufficiently protected in Germany where the access to healthcare is governed by highly restrictive regulations. Medical assistance to this segment of the population is hampered as well as criminalised through the legal framework. Paragraphs 87 and 96 of the . . . Residence Act) . . . require public institutions to report illegal immigrants to the foreigners’ registration office. While hospitals and independent physicians are not obliged to do so, social welfare offices have to adhere to this law. This dismal situation is putting tremendous pressure on healthcare professionals and social workers who often work with limited resources to defend migrants’ fundamental rights to healthcare.
At the End HumanTrafficking event in Luxor, several people attempted to shut me up by claiming that, in their trafficking discussions, they are only talking about the worst, the authentic trafficking cases – not the smuggled migrants and not the voluntary sex workers. It would be nice if that were true, it would be great if anti-prostitution and anti-migration campaigners did not mix everyone up and muddle categories so readily – but they do. That is the point: that is why there is dissent, disagreement and resistance, because those who believe themselves to be in charge of this freedom-seeking social movement do over-generalise all the time so that simplistic labels obliterate the preferences of many people and, often, hide a project to abolish commercial sex. Note how, in this story, one term is substituted for another as though they were all synonyms. The UN Convention on Transnational Organised Crime of 2002 has separate protocols for smuggling and trafficking. I have never been a fan of the distinction these protocols try to make, but it is disappointing that an organisation interested in the issues pays no attention to the distinction and muddles categories up completely. One of the results is that the word trafficking gets used to refer to all sorts of undocumented migration, jobs in the underground economy, jobs held by people under 18, all sex jobs and so on. Everything considered bad becomes ‘trafficking’. Smuggling of migrants is usually construed as aiding undocumented people to cross borders – which does not make them victims according to the law. This is a mess.
1 January 2011, New World Human Security Observatory
Mexico City: Organised crime in Mexico has diversified its methods for smuggling people into the United States, a lucrative business that is growing, along with the number of victims.
Both national and foreign emigrants pay up to $7,000 to reach US territory, through the same underground tunnels the cartels for drug trafficking, La Jornada newspaper commented. The traders also transport immigrants in speedboats that take them to Imperial Beach during the night. Once there, US citizens smuggle them into the country, charging up to $8,000 per person.
The modern detection mechanisms used by US authorities along the border wall in the Tijuana-Otay area have forced human traffickers to deviate the course to other border areas.
The new method of setting up transit camps to offer shelter to the people waiting to cross the border has become a very lucrative business, with profits amounting to $3,000 per person, the paper reported on Friday.
According to UN statistics, 200 million people emigrated from their country of origin this decade, almost tripling the movement of immigrants reported in the 1960s. Of that figure, nearly 10% of emigrants use Mexico as a transit point.
Plus ça change: Smuggling migrants in 1949 I’m reading a lot of older noir fiction these days and noting references to informal migration, however it’s talked about....
I continue to point out that all statistics for victims of trafficking are not only estimates but often irresponsible guesses. Workers in informal-sector jobs, whether they are migrants or not, and no matter what job they do and whether sex is involved or not, have not officially registered their presence as residents or workers, meaning there are no files or databases, to consult. For more on statistical acrobatics, particularly on sex trafficking, check out these articles.
Methods for estimating undocumented migrants do exist (undocumented migrants being the framework in which trafficking victims should be located). In the following example, the Pew Hispanic Center (in Washington DC) publishes its new figure (11.1 million in March 2009), asserting that their method of calculation, the residual method, is reliable and widely accepted because based on ‘official government data’. They explain that:
Under this methodology, a demographic estimate of the legal foreign-born population—naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents, temporary legal residents and refugees—is subtracted from the total foreign-born population. The remainder, or residual, is the source of population estimates and characteristics of unauthorized immigrants. These Pew Hispanic Center estimates use data mainly from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of about 55,000 households conducted jointly by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. It is best known as the source for monthly unemployment statistics. Each March, the CPS sample size and questionnaire are expanded to produce additional data on the foreign-born population and other topics. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates make adjustments to the government data to compensate for undercounting of some groups, and therefore its population totals differ somewhat from the ones the government uses. Estimates for any given year are based on a March reference date. From U.S. Unauthorized Immigration Flows Are Down Sharply Since Mid-Decade
The Pew says they use the Current Population Survey. That is a census exercise, in which a form is sent to households to fill out. Undocumented migrants have abundant reasons for not filling in census forms correctly (and there are no penalties for filling them in incorrectly). So undercounting is likely. The Pew Center know that and make an adjustment, but the range of adjustment methods is also very wide:
All known users of this methodology correct the foreign born population (about 35–50 million) by 10–40% (3–12 million) to account for this undercount effect. Critics claim this correction is in error no matter which size correction is used. Wikipedia
About the Pew estimate, the Migration Information Center, also in Washington, warns this finding is inconclusive because of the margin of error in the estimates, which are based on data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey of 50,000 households each month. From a December 2010 report from the Migration Information Center (US migration).
In 2004, Time magazine claimed more dramatic numbers without feeling it necessary to explain how they were arrived at:
It’s fair to estimate, based on a Time investigation, that the number of illegal aliens flooding into the U.S. this year will total 3 million–enough to fill 22,000 Boeing 737-700 airliners, or 60 flights every day for a year. It will be the largest wave since 2001 and roughly triple the number of immigrants who will come to the U.S. by legal means. (No one knows how many illegals are living in the U.S., but estimates run as high as 15 million.)
I hope it’s clear that everyone’s guessing in one way or another!
I wonder if my stamina will hold out to the end of a very demanding schedule. Last week, talks on different subjects in Neuchatel and Fribourg, then a flight to London to participate in the Battle of Ideas, then a flight back and the next day a talk in the Swiss capital of Bern, followed by a 3-day intensive course for MA students called Migration and Globalisation: phew! Tomorrow is the last day of that and then I plan to remain prone all weekend before leaving Monday to give a talk in Lausanne followed by a talk in Basel on Wednesday! I feel like a wind-up toy lecturer at times and suddenly think: oh god, am I repeating myself? Have I already told this story?
Details of my schedule as Visiting Professor in Gender and Migration are at the Swiss Gender Website.
The 3-day workshop is terrific, by the way – combining ideas about globalisation with different theories and experiences of all sorts of migration and, especially, how the need for low-wage labour and informal-sector work is a positive element in everyone’s economic development. I’ll soon be selling it and not just to students.
Next week I will be in Montréal for several events: a book launch, an anthropology conference and a Sex Work Café. English details after the French.
Friday 11 November 2011 – 1830-2030 at Stella (address sent by email)
