The Em- of Empowerment

Laura Agustín

Research for Sex Work, 2000, 3, 15-16.

The verb is transitive: someone gives power to another, or encourages them to take power or find power in themselves. It’s used among those who want to help others identified as oppressed. In Latin America, in educación popular, one of the great cradles of this kind of concept, the word itself didn’t exist until it was translated back from English. To many people, if they know it at all, the word empoderamiento sounds strange. It’s an NGO word, used by either volunteer or paid educators who view themselves as helpers of others or fighters for social justice, and is understood to represent the currently ‘politically correct’ way of thinking about ‘third world’, subaltern or marginalised people. But it remains a transitive verb, which places emphasis on the helper and her vision of her capacity to help, encourage and show the way. These good intentions, held also by 19th-century European missionaries, we know from experience do not ensure non-exploitation.

In the current version of these good intentions, ‘first world’ people and entities use their funds to help or empower those less privileged. They spend money to set up offices and pay salaries, many to people who remain in offices, often engaged in writing proposals that will allow them to ‘stay in business.’ These organisations have hierarchies, and those engaged in education or organisation at the ‘grassroots’ level often are the last to influence how funds will be used. Those closer to the top, who attend conferences, live in Europe or have career interests in the organisation, know how proposals must be written to compete in the crowded funding world. This condition of structural power should not be overlooked by those concerned with empowerment, who more often view themselves as embattled, as non-government, as crusaders situated ‘against’ conservative policies. Yet, when a concept like empowerment comes from above in this way, we needn’t be surprised at the kind of contradictions that result—literacy programmes that don’t keep people interested in reading, AIDS education that doesn’t stop people’s refusing to use condoms.

To empower me as a sex worker you assume the role of acting on me and you assume that I see myself as an individual engaged in sex work. If I don’t see myself this way, then I am disqualified from the empowerment project, despite your best intentions. The ‘identity’ issue here is crucial; funders and activists alike are currently interested in valorising cultural and individual difference.While it is a great advance to recognise and ‘give voice to’ human subjects who were before marginalised or disappeared, the problem remains that if you want to inject pride in me that I am a worker and supporter of my family and I don’t recognise or want to think of myself that way, the advance won’t occur, in my case.

But, you say, those are the real conditions, we live in a world of funders and partial successes. We’re doing the best we can, and we acknowledge that these empowerment projects often fail. Since it’s to no one’s benefit that successes be quite so partial, let’s consider whether there is any way which this empowerment concept might be conceived differently, forgetting for the moment the funder and his funds.

In educación popular, in programmes sometimes called capacitación [capacity-building], people get together to talk, sometimes with the encouragement of a person from ‘outside’. This person might be called an animadora or an educator, her job to facilitate conditions where subjects might realise they have a problem in common which, if they acted together, they might be able to move toward solving. I’m describing a very fundamental, ‘pure’ version, perhaps, now complicated in many places in many ways by different histories, international contacts, hybrid forms. Still, it’s worth considering what the most basic idea always has been.

Here, the most the outsider does is provide the suggestion of a time and place, with perhaps a very basic reason for getting together, perhaps just ‘meeting neighbours’. Who finds out about this meeting? Everyone who lives there, if it’s a village or small barrio and people talk to each other fairly freely. Letting people know can be an important task of the outsider. Sometimes, in larger places, an ‘identity’ is targeted, but it can be a very general identity, such as everyone concerned to improve conditions in the community.

The educator/animator might suggest the group talk about a topic such as how to get running water, bus service or rubbish collection—topics of concern to everyone, including sex workers. Or she might present a question—such as why everyone is talking about migrating to work somewhere else—and hope people will respond. But if they don’t, and if nothing seems to happen, her job is to resist the temptation to push the conversation. The hope is rather that if people feel free to talk, they will, eventually, if only to see if others share their feelings. This process can be extremely slow and even invisible, and no money or materials from outside are required. The profound assumption is rather that people themselves already know a lot—what they want, what they need. If they agree after some time that a technical fact or help is needed that none of them possess, then they might feel ‘empowered’ to search for that fact on the outside.

Does the ‘outsider’actually need to be there during this process? The answer depends on the person, on how quietly encouraging she is, on how patient and undisappointed if the group doesn’t ‘take off’, agree on anything or agrees to a programme the opposite of what the funders want.

Can this vision be applied when funders seem concerned solely with the sex organs of people assumed to ‘identify’ themselves as sex workers? If educators must ‘target’ prostitutes as those who come to a meeting? Perhaps, if the same kind of mostly undirected sharing of experiences is encouraged. Many times sex workers will then be heard to discuss not sex, clients and condoms—the topics always brought up by funders—but all the other aspects of their lives, which are not peculiar to them as prostitutes. They might talk about a new song, a new dress, a new club—or a new idea for getting together to protect and help each other.

The word development is in scare quotes because too often rich countries impose endless economic and cultural rubbish on poorer ones in the name of ‘developing’ them, - supposedly bringing them up to the level of the rich ones but often messing things up more than anything else. If you’re interested in that idea, see some references at the end of this post.

According to mainstream ‘development’ values, prostitution is always something to be ashamed of and sorry about and to get rid of. Migrants who leave home and end up selling sex abroad may send back lots more money than they would if they were maids or farm workers but are not recognised as making a contribution. Read the original of my own article in English if you don’t read Chinese. If you know people who do read Chinese, please send this link on to them!

Contributing to ‘Development’: Money Made Selling Sex
對 「 發 展 」 的 貢 獻 ： 金 錢 促 使 性 交 易

Laura María Agustín

今年年初我在 Ecuador（厄瓜多爾）與比較貧窮的從事性交易的婦女聊天，她們談到也許會考慮旅行到另外一個國家賣淫。富國政客們每每批評到「經濟移民」，就彷彿她們去掙錢的欲望是件壞事。而且，在很多富國中，這類移民如果聲稱他們是受害者（難民、尋求政治庇護者、「被賣的婦女」 ，往往比那些剛剛到達、且甘願做任何工作的移民，更容易獲得停留核准。

這種針對經濟移民的偏見真是可笑，因為我們生活的世界，不就是鼓勵個人賺錢，而且賺大錢更代表個人的成功。不僅如此，當移民在這個國家中從事所謂「正式」的經濟生產時，也就是經過政府認可（並管理、收稅、檢查等等）的行業，就算這些行業薪水很差、工作環境不良、又沒有合理的工作權利，但是，這些移民的經濟追求動機完全不是問題。只有歸類在「非正式」經濟的工作，才無法被接受，儘管事實是現在「非正式」的工作也許比正式的工作來得多。注意：沒有人知道準確的數字，因為根本無法統 計各地沒有註冊登記的職業和從業人員。

非正式經濟或行業這個詞是在1970年代早期創造的，用來描述貧窮國家裏不受勞動法規保護卻有經濟收入的活動。

那時候人們認為非正式行業只是短暫的現象，與低度經濟發展相關，只要經濟發展後就會消失。然而，這種假設已被證實錯誤。前所未有的一大群人從事「正式」經濟之外的職業，並且投入各式各樣的職業和場所 (ILO 2002：v)。

但是現在，較富裕的國家也逐漸接受以非正式行業和正式行業來描述各種產業。所謂正式的行業，僅僅由官僚們所認可，所以就被認為是「真正的」、「有生產力的」和正常的。而非正式行業卻被認為灰色的、黑暗的、隱誨的、地下的，且往往被視為壞的、令人不快的、暫時的、不正經八百嚴肅的或毫無生產力。然而，對幹活的人來說，行業高低對他或許沒有什麼關係，因為無論行業有無執照，秘書或工人的工作任務大同小異。

非正式性質造成不公平的工作條件，虐待工人也相當猖獗。可是，至少非移民身份的工人或多或少還能享受公民身份的基本權利、保護和利益。但是移民／工的人身安全，卻取決於他們與雇主，經理及其 他員工所能發展的個人關係。如果出了意外，這些工人不能向政府機關求助，或者尋求司法途徑。為什麼？因為他們會被老闆隨意開除，也因為他們是移 民／工，更容易被騷擾或者遣送回國。然而，也越來 越多有公民身份的工人受僱於臨時、非正式的合同，面對惡劣的工作條件 (Precarias 2000: 6)。

所以，聽起來我們應該避免從事非正式工作，對吧？但是沒有正式許可從事正式行業的移民，卻很樂於接受這些非正式工作。未經正式認可和取得許可的公司雇傭那些沒有正式許可的人來幹活，這就解釋了有大量的移民在不會發給他們簽證和工作許可的國家中工作。餐飲、建築、家務、工廠、農業、照護和性工作者一樣都是偷偷摸摸地暗中工作。沒有工作許可證，移民們不能使他們的身份合法化，成為有證的居民或享有一般的權利，但是，他們能夠掙錢。「非正式」這個詞使得這些職業聽起來很微小、短暫、不穩定、甚至非良善的，是由街邊商販和流浪漢組成。但事實遠非如此，這些行業高度發展且市場非常龐大，之所以被稱為「非正式」，僅僅是因為它們（還）未被正式認可。性產業，存在於許可和不許可的行業之中，許多還是以非色情的許可形式下經營著(像是酒吧)，在全世界帶來數十億美元的收入，並使用先進的、高科技的設備和經營策略。非正式的性質使得商人們可以不受政府規範約束，卻仍然可以有機會獲取巨大的利潤，也使得從業人員可以比任何其他的方式賺更多的錢，只要他們願意使用性交易的手段。這適用於合法公民和無證移民，不管他們有無接受過正規教育，也不管他們是男、是女、或是跨性別。

相較那些遵循傳統的職業路徑、或者一生都從事同一職業的人來說，「彈性從業人員」是指根據市場 的需求與個人網絡的資訊來更換職業。彈性從業人員哪裡有工哪裡去，而且如果他們想要成功，他們就需要能適應新環境。性工作者就是最好的例子，對工作地點和工作內容的適應性都很強。雖然當中有些人在道德上並不反對出售性服務，但ㄧ些原本反對的人也在道德上變得靈活些，認為為了賺錢並不反對出售性服務。這適用於大多數移民，他們優先考慮的事情是盡可能快、盡可能多地賺錢，有時為了盡快還債得以往下一個地方賺錢，有時為了能夠繼續旅行，有時為了把錢寄回家或者帶回家裏。

移民寄回家的錢叫外匯。在某些國家，外匯是他們的主要收入來源。透過像西聯國際銀行(Western Union)的匯款服務記錄，我們可以知道匯款來自哪個國家，但這些記錄並沒有告訴我們匯款來自什麼樣的工作。但是，因為性工作的工資比其他絕大多數工作的工資高許多，所以很明顯地，大部份的外匯肯定來自性工作。

很多人都以為外匯只是用來買一些基本生存和消費用品(食品、冰箱、首飾、DVD)，但是最近的研究顯示，移民寄回來的錢，是重要的社會建設計畫，也就是所謂「發展」計畫的資金來源 (O’Neill 2004；Sorensen 2004)。這些錢來自採草莓、運送建材、給嬰兒洗澡和提供性交易等。不管這些錢是硬幣、支票或信用卡，不管這些錢怎麼來的，錢都一樣不會少一毛。這些錢被用來資助家庭、社區和整個地區的建設計畫、小生意和農業合作社。此外之外，購買像火爐的消耗品，即意味著能夠煮沸不潔淨的水，改變人的生命和健康，然後擁有健康的人就能為更大的經濟計畫工作。

在 Ecuador（厄瓜多爾），到國外從事性交易的婦女飽受批評。人們告訴我，這些女人「迫使」她們丈夫去找其他的性伴侶，她們不給子女應得的母愛，她們毀壞傳統的家庭生活。社會工作者便談到，當這些移民回到家鄉時，她們是個問題，而這彷彿她們在外習得的新知識一文不值，彷彿她們人已經變得奇怪和「特別」。除了石油以外，Ecuador（厄瓜多爾）最大的收入來源便是移民外匯款，也因此，上述的想法非常令人困惑，因為言下之意是他們可以接受賺錢，但無法接受提供錢的人。所以，移民成為「發展」經濟的金錢來源，但卻沒有人感謝她們，或者讓她們也能夠享受到發展的好處。她們變成只是一個被自己國家邊緣化和汙名化的社會群體。也難怪她們當中許多人，一旦離家一段時間後就不想再回來。

長久以來，「發展」經濟計畫一直受到極大的批評，因為富裕國家一直在貧困國家強加施行「援助」與「進展」計畫 (Harrell-Bond 1986；Escobar 1995)。然而，大多數文化都有其發展的願景，而移民寄錢回 家有助於實現這些願景，當中當然包括數百萬從事性交易的移民。

允許性產業繁榮發展的社會，可以將性產業納入政府會計裏。這一決定將把性產業納入常規的政府管制：一、經營許可所需的規範（如工作場所安全規定、合適的區域劃分規定）；二、工作場所需符合衛生和安全標準；三、標準的員工勞動保護，包括無論她們是否是移民，都須把她們列入國家社會保障體系。對這項性產業的規範，與傳統商業性性交易的規範不同，因為過去商業性性交易只考慮「賣淫」，工作條件與場所也只方便老闆、管理者和顧客，而從不考慮性工作者的需要。我同意國際勞工組織的說法，唯有政府認可性產業從業人員的存在，才能夠保護他們的權利 (Lim 1998)。

這篇文章圍繞著這一期的主題「金錢」，因此許多常見的相關議題並沒有納入討論：性工作是否是「有尊嚴」的勞動？還是性工作有各式各樣壓榨工作者的花樣？如果對商業性性交易的研究始終還是回到道德的層面上，就算這些道德觀有多麼重要，這些研究就顯得狹隘、簡化和嘮叨。在其他文章中，我的研究顯示買賣性行為的意義並不一定相同，而是取決於複雜的社會文化背景 (Agustin 2005；2007)。錢不只是實質的物品，也是一種文化，它的用途和好處為我們提供另類的道德觀。

資料來源
Agustín, Laura. 2005. ‘The Cultural Study of Commercial Sex.’ Sexualities, 8, 5, 621-34.

Agustín, Laura. 2007. ‘Fast Money in the Margins: Migrants in the Sex Industry’, in Livelihoods at the Margins: Surviving the streets, J. Staples, ed., Left Coast Press.

Escobar, Arturo. 1995. Encountering Development. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Harrell-Bond, Barbara. 1986. Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

ILO, ed. 2002. ‘Unprotected labour:What role for unions in the informal economy?’ Labour Education 2002/2 No. 127.

Lim, Lin, ed. 1998 The Sex Sector: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia, Geneva: International Labour Organisation.

O’Neil, Kevin. 2004. ‘Discussion on Migration and Development: Using Remittances and Circular Migration as Drivers for Development’. Washington: Migration Policy Institute.

Precarias a la deriva. 2000-2006. http://www.sindominio.net/karakola/precarias.htm

Sorensen, Ninna Nyberg. 2004.‘The Development Dimension of Migrant Transfers’. Copenhaguen: Danish Institute for International Studies.

Translation Credits

Translators: 姚剛 Gun Yao (freelancer, P.R.C), 鄭亘良 Keng-Liang (Ted) CHENG (volunteer of COSWAS, Taiwan)
Copyeditor: 張榮哲 Jung-Che CHANG (consultant of international affairs of COSWAS, Taiwan)
Art editor: 李雅伶 Ya-Lin Lee (art editor of COSWAS, Taiwan)

They Speak, But Who Listens?

Laura María Agustín

In Women@Internet: Creating Cultures in Cyberspace, ed. W. Harcourt. London: Zed Books, 1999, pp 149-161.

A Parable of Connexion

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. According to this theory, everyone must become literate in the same ways that Western societies have come to take for granted. The use of alphabets to store knowledge is said to constitute humankind’s most significant step up on the ladder of Progress, the step that distinguishes people from animals and cultures that ‘succeed’ from those who don’t. Yet alphabet technology is comparatively recent and has not taken hold with all the world’s people. In recent years this Eurocentrism has been widely criticised for extinguishing ‘indigenous knowledges’, but this has not affected assumptions that even indigenous people need to get alphabetised. According to this way of thinking, if poorly educated domestic and sex workers are to participate in new technologies, they must first attend literacy classes in their own languages, then get some basic education, computer instruction and perhaps English, after which they can finally learn about the Internet. Even were access not a question, the proposition would be absurd.

In the classic literacy myth, the center of everyone’s desire is to enter the Golden World of Books. And the way it is now, the Internet mimics books, whose contents are scanned whole onto web ‘pages’. But even among those who know how to read, relatively few routinely read more than headlines, cartoon stories, romance novels, product labels, street signs and horoscopes, and many never write at all. When those who hold reading and writing sacred deplore these ‘low’ uses of literacy, others feel inadequate and ashamed about the ways they know and learn about the world.

Those using the Internet are avid readers and, more important, are oriented to ‘getting information’. This concept–that ‘information’ is something to ‘get’–is also being discussed currently as a right, but, again, assumes acceptance and agreement about crucial values–how to work, how to know things, how to ask questions, where to look for answers and from whom and how to judge information as ‘correct’ or ‘true’. Most of the world doesn’t belong yet to such an ‘information culture’, and these values ought not to be imposed, even by evangelists who are sure people will be saved or uplifted by them.

Right for whom and for what?

The question shouldn’t be whether we can provide egalitarian access points to the Internet for all the world’s people. If we construct the conversation on ‘rights to access’, ‘freedom of speech’ and visions of Progress and Development (who has the electricity and telephone infrastructure, who has the money for a computer, who can go to school to learn about technology, who sees information as a ‘consumer’ item and a right) then we reproduce the same conversation we found oppressive in the first place.

Some of those now excluded from much of mainstream societies want to include themselves in this new technology, whatever it turns out to be. They see themselves as protagonists of the revolution. But what about those who are excluded and who see nothing (so far) about this new technology to attract them or who don’t know it exists? Should they be forced to be included, if being included could ‘help’ them (get useful information, tell their stories, educate others)?

In the United Kingdom, travellers (the old word gypsies is not preferred) have lived deliberately on the social margins for centuries, and have consistently been viewed as either perverse or pathetically disadvantaged, to be hounded out of decent places or forced to adopt a ‘normal’ way of life. Finally accepting gypsies’ desire to live in mobile houses, planners build them ‘sites’ with connexions to water and electricity. But the sites organise their vans into straight rows at measured distances and ignore travellers’ needs, such as space to work with scrap metal.

Many conversations about outsiders like travellers and sex workers revolve around questions of free choice. But even people willing to believe that gypsies want to move around will not believe that prostitutes might. Instead, they change the subject to what’s wrong with prostitution. If the subject always changes to how to abolish prostitution or how to find work alternatives for all current prostitutes (in their many millions) or how to change men so they don’t desire prostitutes, we will never address the realities of sex work that lead to exclusions from services and policies that might benefit them. This is why many activists are focussing on getting occupational health and safety regulations applied to sex work.

The acceptable face of ‘difference’

To understand policies that consistently exclude people, we need to recognise a contradiction: that societies which not only tolerate but desire ‘difference’ in its proper place will demonise and harry it when out of place. Circus sideshow performers, transgender artists, beggars who stand at church doors and children who break-dance in the street, when found in a ‘nice’ residential neighbourhood, will be quickly moved along. When the outsiders are sex workers, they will be moved to very particular locations. So while governments currently discuss ‘trafficking’ and immigration law as though their only concern were the well-being of ‘victimised’ women, they continue to facilitate the business of commercial sex in all the most obvious ways and punish only the women involved when someone must be punished. Migrant prostitutes’ access–or their perception of access–to even the most basic services is still widely in question, even in Europe. Moreover, many services are provided without understanding how migrants live and what they want. It’s essential not to assume that all migrant prostitution is forced and all brothel workers are slaves. It’s imperative not to project our own desires and assumptions onto others. The only way we can know what others want is to give them room to tell us.

Which brings us to the centre of this essay: How do ‘we’ know what ‘they’ want?

How to offer opportunities?

How can we provide possibilities to use new information and communication technologies to marginalised and migrant women? If we believe that the chance to tell their stories could be liberating, enlightening or useful to them, how can that opportunity be offered? The specific case I address is that of women from the Third World–and particularly from Latin America–who have migrated to Western Europe to work as domestic and/or sex workers. These women in their many thousands are found from one end of Europe to another, and very commonly continue migrating as opportunities close and open. Those who offer information on new opportunities, those who facilitate journeys and those who take advantage of migrants know how to communicate with them.

Currently, the world of interested and ‘helping’ agencies, largely ensconced in comfortable offices, bemoans the manipulation of migrant women by criminal networks and wonders where women have gone when they suddenly disappear. The solution to this is evident: get out of those offices. Supporters need to stop producing and giving out ever more excellent written materials and do more following and listening. They should learn from the ‘criminals’ and start knowing not only where the women are but where they are going next. The information available to women comes from those who go to them. To influence the empowerment of a migrant sex worker means accepting her reality and going to meet her there.

Visions of a postmodern scribe

So imagine an educator who carries her wares with her. To visit domestic workers isolated in big suburban houses and not allowed visitors, she goes to a local plaza (or laundromat) on Sunday afternoon. There she offers to help with problems, find people, even predict the future. Instead of a crystal ball, she carries a small computer notebook and a cellular phone. From her bag she may also vend envelopes, stamps, postcards and paper. She may carry a telephone book, the latest edition of the classified advertisements and various small dictionaries. Perhaps she gives impromptu lessons in the local language. She might have a recording Walkman and some music tapes. She is a kind of postmodern scribe, also a cultural worker, or maybe a travelling saleswoman.

She will be able to contact some sex workers in nail and hair salons but she will soon feel frustrated by the vast numbers not reached. In possession of a large van, however, and a driver, she can cover a wide territory. Parking near sex-trade zones, she lets workers know when she’s arrived and offers them now a wider range of services, from bed, toilet, shower, food, condoms, blood test to fax/telephone and Internet connexions. Some women might want to know the weather in a city they’re considering going to, others to send e-mail to alert other workers about trends in police harassment, dangerous clients or new wrinkles in immigration law. The scribe can look for and print from the Internet AIDS information in the women’s own language; if they don’t read she can tell them what’s most important to know. The technology, the education, the services are mobile, like the workers. A fleet of such vans in different parts of Europe would form a true network, which women could enter and leave at different points.

Such an approach–technology not isolated in offices, not connected to formal education, not touted as a new religion, not pushed as a ‘right’, but instead associated with coffee, sandwiches and chat–would not appeal to everyone. Some women might not be able to take seriously a computer in a van, or not have time for it. Others might learn to type and send their own e-mail or look for their own information on the web. The vans themselves would be a communications technology connecting travelling women who rarely avail themselves of services located in inhospitable buildings and neighbourhoods.

Does cyberspace have margins? Can gypsies find vestigial spaces to park in? Will those who get bored reading or don’t understand ‘clicking’ find ways to communicate through images and sound? Could the Internet become softer, like holograms, and find itself on walls, be projected on curtains and heard in the shower? Will there be ways to wrench it out of its current place in hard plastic boxes and give it a ‘virtual’ reality? How would it be to carry an Internet connexion on a wristwatch? Alternatively, what if huge screens were set up in marginalised neighbourhoods and websites beamed onto them with the kind of big sensuous sound found in popular movies and discotheques?

The concept of information needs to be reconceived to include not only ‘indigenous knowledge’ but also ‘street smarts’. Just as Western scholarship overlooked Mayan writing and Inca quipus for so long because they didn’t come in the form of books, so current thinking continues to exclude ceremonies, spontaneous ‘happenings’, oral and musical events, a group of women spending the evening together watching a telenovela, conversations on the assembly line and creativity by teenagers on the dance floor. Those who wish to honour the value of non-written traditions need to accept that the word Literacy can extend to include ‘reading and writing’ other things besides letters–the forest, the street, the television screen. Instead of condemning the easy access criminals and entrepreneurs have to migrant prostitutes, we need to mimic that access–find out how they do it, what works best, where and when. Let’s go out to those in the margins and listen to them. For, with all the rhetoric about the need to liberate ‘unheard voices’, we miss an essential point: those voices have been talking all along. The question is who is listening.

Today’s example of failed helping comes from Thailand. Empower, whose anti-rescue poster I published a while back, has written to say that they refused to participate in the development of a ‘training package’ aimed at UN employees dealing with sex workers. They were asked to reconsider their decision. Refusing a second time, they sent the following letter to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Nossal Institute of Global Health at Melbourne University, which got the UNFPA contract to develop the material.

Dear Brigitte,

Empower had a second long joint discussion about the proposed training. Empower has decided to be faithful to our original position and not take part in the training in Bangkok. We would like to explain this position to your team as well as UNFPA.

We understand the point of the training is to decrease stigma and break down sterotypes. However, we see the very process of the development and implementation of this training reflects the prejudices held by UNFPA programmers. It is simply not acceptable to hire a team of non-sex workers to create a training module about working with sex workers. The fact that your team at Nossal contacted sex woker groups to participate in the development is perhaps to your credit, but it does not address the original insult. There are many very capable, very credible, sex worker organizations that UNFPA could have and should have hired directly to create and implement the training module. How would it be if a sex worker organization was hired to develop and implement a training module on Nossal Institute…it would be senseless, yes? Why should it make any more sense in the reverse? We know we were certainly not the only sex worker organization to refuse to take part. We also felt our expertise was being undervalued by the small token payment you were able to offer under your funding guidelines. The project is 27 months long, obviously funded at UN rates, yet from memory you could only afford to pay Empower around $AUS800 to act as advisers. We are sure the UNFPA would not accept such small payments for their staff.

However, the money is a small part of the issue. The greater concern is that UNFPA thinks this is an appropriate process! It says to Empower that the UNFPA does not believe that sex workers are intelligent, capable, valuable partners in the fight against HIV. It says to Empower that UNFPA still sees sex workers as people who are only capable of providing colour…telling some stories and acting as sex tour guides on training field trips. It says to Empower that UNFPA still does not understand concepts like “community participation” or “best practice”. For example you said [name] was helping with your project. She came to us as a young intern to learn FROM us…we are the ones who tried to teach her how to be a part of a commuity organization and now she is better placed than us to design this training!?

When will UNFPA and others see us as educators, trainers not just targets, tools or fools?

All this leaves us wondering what kind of impact can a training that is not owned by sex workers have on the attitudes of individual UN agency staff especially while the stigma and prejudice about sex workers is so obvioulsy entrenched in much of the UN system. We note that the UNFPA and other UN agencies,as late as March 2008, are still using offensive terms like “commercial sex worker” and “high risk group” in some publications despite promises made. That such a small detail as this has proven too hard for the UN to address does not bode well for the outcome of the trainings, does it?

We acknowledge that Can Do Bar is public property so we cannot decide for you whether you include whatever the video is that you made or not. You asked us to approve the script but we cannot. We have no idea where the quotes you have came from but they are not accurate. For example we never use words like “girls” Pornpit is a sex worker too and does not use terms like “they and them” - it’s “us and we”! There are about 50,000 Thai sex workers who have been involved with Empower over 20 years. We have had a handful of westerners over the same period in minor support roles. If you quote Liz instead of us, the Thai sex workers of Can Do and Empower, it encourages people to continue to believe we are stupid and can only do something if a foreigner helps us. It also just doesn’t sound like us or Can Do Bar!

Our position is not meant to reflect in any way on those groups who chose to help you… or any other group’s involvement.

Regards
Empower

Translated by Liz Hilton : On a personal note I was horrified to see my name in the acknowledgements in the Handbook. I have not knowingly or willingly contributed to your process in any way at all. Please take my name off all and any materials associated with this project. Thanks.

I might add that the whole idea of material intended to ‘train’ helpers in how to treat sex workers - or anyone else - is patronising, as though they were not human beings or needed some special psychology or sensitivity. Feh! This contract also illustrates the problem with proposing to do research about people you think are fundamentally different from yourself, often just because they live in a poorer country. This is the idea behind ‘Development’, which I won’t get started on today.  I discussed the contradictions of research in The (Crying) Need for Different Kinds of Research and Alternate Ethics. Of course, when the research subjects are sex workers, attitudes can be even more egregious.

Contributing to ‘Development’: Money Made Selling Sex

Laura Agustín

(2006) Research for Sex Work, 9, 8-11.

Earlier this year I was in Ecuador talking with poorer women who sell sex and who might consider travelling to another country to do it. Politicians in wealthier countries talk about ‘economic migrants’ as though their desire to make money were a bad thing, and in many such countries migrants have a better chance of being allowed to stay if they present themselves as victims (refugees, asylum-seekers, ‘trafficked women’) than as people who have just arrived and are willing to do whatever work is on offer.

This prejudice against economic motives is ridiculous, since we live in a world where individuals are not only expected to make money but where success in life is judged on how much money they make. And economic motives are entirely acceptable when migrants find jobs in the so-called ‘formal’ sector of the economy, which refers to businesses that governments have decided to recognise (and regulate, tax, inspect and so on), even if these businesses pay workers miserably and provide neither decent working conditions nor fair workers’ rights. Only jobs said to be in the ‘informal’ economy are considered unacceptable, despite the fact that nowadays there are probably more jobs available ‘informally’ than formally. Note: No one knows the numbers here, since businesses and people that are not registered anywhere cannot be counted.

The term informal economy or sector was invented in the early 1970s to describe income-generating activities not protected by labour legislation in poorer countries. At the time it was presumed that the informal sector was a transitory phenomenon associated with lower levels of economic development, something that would disappear as development occurred. This presumption has however been proven incorrect. A greater number of workers than ever before are now working outside the ‘formal’ economy and they are engaged in an increasingly diverse range of activities and situations (ILO 2002: v).

Now, however, the categories informal and formal are increasingly accepted as descriptions of economies in wealthier countries, too. Businesses said to be formal, simply by being recognised by bureaucracies, are said to be ‘real’, ‘productive’ and normal. Informal economies are called grey, black, submerged, underground and often thought of as bad, undesirable, temporary, not serious or not productive. To workers, however, the technical status of a business may not matter, a secretarial or factory job pretty much consisting of the same tasks in both licensed and unlicensed businesses.

Informality produces unjust working conditions and rampant opportunities for mistreatment of all workers, but at least non-migrant workers may fall back on the basic rights, protections and benefits that citizenship provides. Migrant employees’ safe standing, on the other hand, depends on the personal relationships they are able to develop with owners, managers and other employees. If something goes wrong, these workers cannot appeal to government authorities or ask for help in criminal-justice systems. Why? Because they can be dismissed at bosses’ will and, if they are migrants, easily harassed or deported back to their home countries. Workers who enjoy citizens’ rights are, however, increasingly subjected to temporary and informal contracts and poor working conditions (Precarias 2000-6).

So, informal jobs sound like something to be avoided, right? But migrants without official permission to work in formal-sector businesses are glad to get them. Companies that are not officially recognised and licensed employ people without official permission to work, which explains the vast number of migrants working in countries that will not issue them visas and work permits. Restaurant, construction, domestic, factory, agricultural, caring and sex workers alike share this ‘clandestine’ situation. Without work permits, migrants cannot regularise their status, become documented residents or enjoy normal rights, but they can make money. The word informal makes these businesses sound small, temporary, unstable or even benign, composed of street traders and vagabonds, but this is far from the truth. Industries that are highly evolved and very large are called informal only because they are not (yet) formally recognised. The sex industry, which takes in both licensed and unlicensed businesses and many operating under non-sex licences (like bars), generates billions of dollars worldwide and uses sophisticated, high-technology equipment and business methods. Informality provides opportunities for businesspeople to operate outside government rules and make large profits, and for workers to accumulate more money than they could any other way, if they are willing to use sex. This applies to legal citizens and undocumented migrants, whether they have a lot or little formal education and whether they are women, men or transgender.

‘Flexible workers’ is a term referring to those who, rather than following a classical career-path or staying within a set profession their whole lives, change jobs according to the demands of markets and the information they receive from personal networks. Flexible workers go where the jobs are, and, if they are to succeed, they need to be adaptable. Sex workers are prime examples, flexible in where they work and what they do. And although some people have no moral objections to selling sex, others do but become morally flexible, suspending their objections in order to make money. This applies to most migrants, whose priority is on making as much as possible as fast as possible—sometimes to pay off debts contracted in order to travel, sometimes to be able to continue travelling and sometimes to send or take home.

Money that migrants send home is called remittances, and in some countries they are a major source of income. Records of these payments, through banks and services like Western Union, show which country the remittances come from but not what kind of work produced them. Given the enormous difference between wages for selling sex and most other jobs, it’s obvious that a large proportion of remittances must come from sex work.

A lot of people have thought that remittance money goes to buy only basic survival and consumer items (food, refrigerators, jewelry, DVDs), but recent studies reveal how money sent home by migrants finances important social and structural projects known as ‘development’ (O’Neil 2004; Sørensen 2004). This goes for money made picking strawberries, carrying building materials, giving babies baths and selling sex. It doesn’t matter whether this money comes in the form of coins, bills or credit lines, the amounts mean the same no matter how they were earned, and they are used to finance construction projects, small businesses and cooperative agriculture for families, communities and whole regions. Besides, the buying of a consumer item like a stove, which means the ability to boil bad water, can make the difference between unhealthful and healthful lives for people who then are able to work on larger projects.

In Ecuador, a lot of negative comments were made about women who sell sex abroad. I was told they ‘force’ husbands to find other sexual partners, that they withhold mother love from children and that they ruin traditional family life. Social workers talk about migrants as a problem when they return home, as though their new knowledge were worthless and as if they had become strange and ‘different’. Since remittances from migrants represent the largest source of income outside of petroleum in Ecuador, these ways of thinking are extremely disturbing, implying that money is acceptable but the people who provide it are not. Migrant workers become sources of ‘development’ while not being either thanked or included in its benefits, just another socially marginalised and stigmatised group in their own countries. No wonder many of them don’t want to return once they’ve been away for a while.

‘Development’ itself has been the object of enormous criticism for some time, as richer countries continue to impose ‘aid’ and ‘progress’ on poorer ones (Harrell-Bond 1986; Escobar 1995). Nevertheless, most cultures do have their own visions of developing, and migrants who send money home contribute to the realisation of those visions, including the millions who sell sex.

Societies that allow sex businesses to flourish and proliferate could include them in government accounting. This decision would subject businesses to conventional government controls: a) norms for permits to operate (eg, safe construction, proper compliance with zoning); b) requirements that health and safety standards be met in the workplace; and c) normal labour protections for employees, including inclusion in the states’ social-security systems whether they are migrants or not. Recognition of this economic sector is not identical to traditional notions of ‘regulation’ associated with commercial sex, which consider only ‘prostitution’ and arrange workplaces for the convenience of business owners, management and clientele – never workers. I agree with the ILO that the only way to protect those employed in sex businesses is for governments to recognise their existence (Lim 1998).

This article is centred on the theme of this edition, money, and therefore does not expand into the many related themes conventionally addressed: whether sex work can be considered ‘dignified’ labour and the myriad ways that workers can be mistreated. By always returning to moralising issues, however important they may be, research on commercial sex has become narrow, reductionist and repetitive. Elsewhere I have written about how research reveals that the meaning of buying and selling sex is not always the same but rather depends on complex socio-cultural contexts (Agustín 2005; 2006). Money is a cultural as well as material object and alternative moralities exist in considering money’s uses and benefits.

Works cited

Agustín, Laura. 2005. ‘The Cultural Study of Commercial Sex.’ Sexualities, 8, 5, 621-34.

Agustín, Laura. 2007. ‘Fast Money in the Margins: Migrants in the Sex Industry’, in Livelihoods at the Margins: Surviving the streets, J. Staples, ed., Left Coast Press.

Escobar, Arturo. 1995. Encountering Development. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Harrell-Bond, Barbara. 1986. Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

ILO, ed. 2002. ‘Unprotected labour: What role for unions in the informal economy?’ Labour Education 2002/2 No. 127.

Lim, Lin, ed. 1998. The Sex Sector: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia, Geneva: International Labour Organisation.

O’Neil, Kevin. 2004. ‘Discussion on Migration and Development: Using Remittances and Circular Migration as Drivers for Development’. Washington: Migration Policy Institute.

Precarias a la deriva. 2000-2006. http://www.sindominio.net/karakola/precarias.htm.

Sørensen, Ninna Nyberg. 2004. ‘The Development Dimension of Migrant Transfers’. Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies.