rescue

For those who never saw this review of my book, a reprise, with the original picture. The use of ‘myth’ here is not my choice, by the way. That would imply that no abuses or problems exist in migration, which is a far cry from the truth.

The New Statesman       27 March 2008

The Myth of Trafficking 

Brendan O’Neill

Most migrant women, including those in the sex industry, have made a clear decision, says a new study, to leave home and take their chances abroad. They are not “passive victims” in need of “saving” or sending back by western campaigners.

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

Laura María Agustín Zed Books, 224pp, £16.99

It is always refreshing to read a book that turns an issue on its head. Laura María Agustín’s trenchant and controversial critique of the anti-trafficking crusade goes a step further: it lays out the matter - in this case, “human trafficking” - on the operating table, dissects it, unravels its innards, and shows the reader, in gory, sometimes eye-watering detail, why everything we think about it is Wrong with a capital W. It’s a jarring read; I imagine that those who make a living from campaigning against the scourge of human trafficking will throw it violently across the room, if not into an incinerator. Yet it may also be one of the most important books on migration published in recent years.

Most of us recognise the ideological under pinnings of old-style baiting of migrants. When newspaper hacks or populist politicians talk about evil Johnny Foreigners coming here and stealing our jobs or eating our swans, it does not take much effort to sniff out their xenophobic leanings. Agustín’s contention is that the new “discourse” on migrants (in which many of them, especially the women and children, are seen as “victims of trafficking” in need of rescue) is also built on ideological foundations. Like its demented cousin - tabloid hysteria about foreign scroungers - the trafficking scare is based on a deeply patronising view of migrants, rather than any hard statistical evidence that human trafficking is rife.

Agustín begins by challenging the idea that there is a “new slave trade” in which hundreds of thousands of women and children are sold like chattels across borders. The US state department claims that between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked for forced labour or sex worldwide every year; Unicef says a million children and young people are trafficked each year. Upmarket newspapers - which have embraced the seemingly PC “trafficking discourse” with the same fervour as the tabloid newspapers screech about fence-leaping job-stealers from Sangatte - tell us that “thousands” of women and children have been trafficked into Britain and “traded for tawdry sex”, and that some of them (the African ones) “live under fear of voodoo”.

Agustín says the numbers are “mostly fantasies”. She does not doubt that there are instances of forced migration, or that, in a world where freedom of movement is restricted by stiff laws and stringent border controls, many aspiring migrants have little choice but to seek assistance from dodgy middlemen. Yet, having researched trafficking and sex workers’ experiences for the past five years, both academically and through fieldwork in Latin America and Asia, she concludes that the figures are based on “sweeping generalisations” and frequently on “wild speculation”. “Most of the writing and activism [on trafficking] does not seem to be based on empirical research, even when produced by academics,” she notes. Many of the authors rely on “media reports” and “statistics published with little explanation of methodology or clarity about definitions”.

Agustín points out that some anti-trafficking activists depend on numbers produced by the CIA (not normally considered a reliable or neutral font of information when it comes to inter national issues), even though the CIA refuses to “divulge its research methods”. The reason why the “new slavery” statistics are so high is, in part, that the category of trafficking is promiscuously defined, sometimes disingenuously so. Some researchers automatically label migrant women who work as prostitutes “trafficked persons”, basing their rationale on the notion that no woman could seriously want to work in the sex industry. The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women argues that “all children and the majority of women in the sex trade” should be considered “victims of trafficking”. As Agustín says, such an approach “infantilises” migrant women, “eliminating any notion that women who sell sex can consent”. Ironically, it objectifies them, treating them as unthinking things that are moved around the world against their will.

The reality is very different, the author says. Most migrant women, including those who end up in the sex industry, have made a clear decision to leave home and take their chances overseas. They are not “passive victims” who must be “saved” by anti-trafficking campaigners and returned to their country of origin. Rather, frequently, they are headstrong and ambitious women who migrate in order to escape “small-town prejudices, dead-end jobs, dangerous streets and suffocating families”. Shocking as it might seem to the feminist social workers, caring police people and campaigning journalists who make up what Agustín refers to as the “rescue industry”, she has discovered that some poor migrant women “like the idea of being found beautiful or exotic abroad, exciting desire in others”. I told you it was controversial.

One of Agustín’s chief concerns is that the anti-trafficking crusade is restricting international freedom of movement. What presents itself as a campaign to protect migrants from harm is actually making their efforts to flee home, to find work, to make the most of their lives in often difficult and unforgiving circumstances, that much harder. She writes about the “rescue raids” carried out by police and non-governmental organisations, in which even women who vociferously deny having been trafficked may be arrested, imprisoned in detention centres and sent back home - for the benefit of their own mental stability, of course. It used to be called repatriation; now, dolled up in therapeutic lingo, it is called “rescue”.

For all its poisonous prejudices, the old racist view of migrants as portents of crime and social instability at least treated them as autonomous, sentient, albeit “morally depraved”, adults. By contrast, as the author illustrates, the anti-trafficking lobby robs migrants of agency and their individual differences, and views them as a helpless, swaying mass of thousands who must be saved by the more savvy and intelligent women of the west and by western authorities.

Agustín reserves her most cutting comments for the flourishing “rescue industry”, arguing convincingly that it is driven by a colonial-style, maternalistic attitude to foreign women. In its world, “victims become passive receptacles and mute sufferers who must be saved, and helpers become saviours - a colonialist operation”. Bitingly, she compares today’s anti-trafficking feminists with the “bourgeois women” of the 19th century who considered it a moral virtue to save poor prostitutes, who were “mistaken, misled, deviant”. Like them, anti-trafficking crusaders see women as weak, easily victimised, and in need of guidance from a caring chaperone.

In truth, poor women - and men and children - migrate for many different reasons and have many different experiences, some good, some bad, some tragic. Such migrants are wise and wily, says Agustín; they have gumption, ambition and hope; they are often cosmopolitan, too, working, mixing and having flings with migrants from the other side of the world whom they meet in some big city in Europe or the United States. And many of them have far more liberal attitudes to freedom of movement than the westerners who campaign on their behalf. She quotes a Kurdish migrant to the Netherlands who thinks borders should be abolished: “I don’t come from the sun or moon. I’m from earth just like everybody else and the earth belongs to all of us.” Now that’s an argument I can get behind.

Brendan O’Neill is the editor of Spiked

The new Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP) has once again been issued by the US government. I went back to a piece I wrote about this annual shameful phenomenon in 2007, when the Philadelphia Inquirer rang to solicit a piece on the subject. The only thing different now concerns the perceptions of US citizens outside the US: abysmal and worsening then, slightly better now with the election of Obama. It remains to be seen whether this new administration will be able to see and grapple with the imperialism inherent in the TIP, however. Everything else I said two years ago I stand by today. The paper didn’t change my text but did change the title badly (my original appears first below). 

What’s Wrong With the ‘Trafficking’ Crusade?
Well-meaning interference?

The Philadelphia Inquirer   Sunday 1 July 2007
Op-Ed page

Laura Agustín

It’s the season when the United States issues its annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP). Having named sexual slavery as a particular evil to be eradicated, the United States grades other countries on how they are doing.

On the one hand, it sounds like an obvious way to do good: Describe the ghastly conditions you as a rich outsider observe in poor countries. Focus on places where sex is sold. Say all women found were kidnapped virgins and are now enslaved; announce to the world that you will liberate them. Organize raids. Denounce anyone who objects - even if their objection is that you are intervening in their country’s internal affairs. Ignore victims who resist rescue. Use lurid language and talk continuously about the most sensational and terrible cases. Justify your actions as a manifestation of faith, as though it exists only for you. Mutter about “organized crime.”

This is also the season when tourists leave the United States en masse to visit the rest of the world, where their country is more disliked all the time. People who used to say: “It’s just the president [or the government], ordinary Americans are all right,” now say it less often. Ignorant, destructive interventions into other countries’ business have been going on too long.

Grading everyone else on moral grounds is highly offensive, particularly when such grades are accompanied by threats of punishment if the line isn’t toed. It’s distressing to witness the deterioration of what good will is left toward this country since the post-2001 wars were initiated and campaigns intensified that presume the United States Always Knows Best.

For crusading politicians and religious leaders, a rhetoric of moral indignation is effective in uniting constituents and diverting the collective gaze away from familiar problems at home. So the culprits, those who get bad grades in the TIP, live far away from U.S. culture, which is assumed to be better. Intransigent local troubles - prisons overflowing with African Americans, millions of children malnourished - are swept aside in the call to clean up other people’s countries.

This moral indignation emanates from people who live comfortably, who are not wondering where their next meal will come from or how to pay doctors’ bills. These moral entrepreneurs do not have to choose between being a live-in maid, with no privacy or free time and unable to save money because the pay is so bad, and selling sex, which pays so well that you have time to spend with your children or read a book, money to buy education or a phone.

It is easy to haul out sensationalistic language (sex slavery, child prostitution), but it is much harder to sort out the real victims from the more routinely disadvantaged and trying-to-get-ahead. Those who know intimately the problems of the poor in their own cultures rarely deny that they can decide to leave home and pay others to help them travel and find work, in sex or in any other trade.

“But sex for money is disgusting and degrading; no one should have to do it.” And should anyone have to clean toilets all day? Risk being maimed in unsafe fireworks factories? Should children have to spend their lives in lightless tunnels of mines, or women have to remain married to men who are cruel to them? The world is full of things we wish we could eradicate - but isn’t starvation the first of them? Why is there no equivalent moral furor over hideous poverty? Are we meant to believe that sex without love is worse than military violence? All over the world, selling sex pays better than most jobs readily available to women, and many do not believe it is the worst possible experience they can have.

What’s questionable about the TIP is not the defense of children or anyone else against true violence - it’s one government’s assumption that it has the right to judge everyone else and apply a draconian definition of exploitation that does not ask people whether and how they would like to change their lives. Questionable is the focus on the photogenic, cowboy moment of rushing in to rescue slaves, with no interest in what will follow.

Victims are “protected” rather than granted autonomy. At the Empower Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand, signs written by migrant women “rescued from” selling sex include: “We lose our savings and belongings”; We are locked up”; “We are held till deporation”; “We are interrogated by many people”; “Our family must borrow money to survive while we wait.”

From the standpoint of social science, the TIP is gravely faulty. It never explains how data were gathered and compared across so many languages and cultures, or who did it exactly under what circumstances. A raft of other research shows enormous diversity among people who sell sex, and a wide variety of experiences in the sex industry among both migrants and people who stay at home. Studies show that the worst kind of trafficking can happen to people doing other kinds of jobs - and to men. Women all over the world, including the poorest, repudiate being characterized as above all sexually vulnerable.

In assuming its creators’ moral values are or should be universal, the TIP ignores local cultures and the complexities of human desires and functions - yet another reason tourists from the United States will be less welcome everywhere this summer.

Nightmare, by Nikolaj Abildgaard

The other day I wrote about a protectionist clause in New Zealand’s Prostitution Reform Act that was tacked on at a late stage as part of a political deal. There had been little  discussion of migrants working in New Zealand’s sex industry beforehand, and there has been little enough since. The following story is really absurd, based completely on fantasies of what could happen. All the scary things. The story apparently exists at all because of the United States’ interference in judging (in the form of the TIP reports) the whole world’s efforts to get rid of trafficking. But given a complete absence of evidence, the reporter is forced to use every possible hedging device, including in the headline. I’ve highlighted all this evasive language in bold.

Note the fundamental fallacy being used to justify increased anti-trafficking efforts: ‘Two out of every five countries did not have a single conviction for human trafficking last year.’  One could imagine there isn’t much trafficking happening in those places, right? But no, a lack of convictions is ascribed to countries being ‘in denial’ or to inadequate policing. Well, it’s possible but is a very flimsy base on which to set up a Government Task Force.

I don’t mean to say there couldn’t be any coerced people working in New Zealand, or any bad guys who’ve managed to slip through immigration controls. But this story has more in common with the Nightmare painting above than with any real evidence. I’m interested in evidence, if you remember a post that got some people very upset indeed: Prostitution v. trafficking: Judging the Evidence.

Sex slaves may be working in NZ, officials say

The New Zealand Herald, 4 April 2009,  by Jared Savage

Fear of reprisals can stop victims from speaking up. Immigration officials admit that women could be working undetected as sex slaves in New Zealand, despite previous assurances that there is no evidence of a problem. The Cabinet will be asked to set up a taskforce involving seven Government departments to stop human trafficking in this country. The action plan follows criticism in United States intelligence reports, which name New Zealand as a destination for traffickers from Malaysia, Hong Kong, China and other Asian countries.

Police and advocates for change believe it is likely the trade exists here and has become harder to detect since the liberalisation of prostitution laws in 2003. Documents obtained under the Official Information Act show that advisers told Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman the critical comments about trafficking in New Zealand were “unsubstantiated”. The December 2008 briefing paper goes on to say there is no verified evidence to suggest trafficking is happening here, but New Zealand had the potential to be targeted.

“Similarly, there could potentially be cases of people trafficking in New Zealand that remain undetected,” the paper said. “People trafficking for sexual and labour exploitation is an evolving global phenomenon and New Zealand remains at risk.”

Dr Coleman told the Weekend Herald there was no verified evidence that New Zealand was a trafficking destination, but conceded that the Government does not “assume immunity” to being targeted now or in the future. He said the multi-agency action plan would increase training for enforcement officials to identify potential victims. Intelligence on trafficking would be more readily shared, Dr Coleman said, as well as enhanced risk profiling for potential victims both at the border and in visa applications.

A United Nations report into trafficking criticised any country that had not prosecuted any human trafficking offences. Two out of every five countries did not have a single conviction for human trafficking last year, according to the global study of 155 countries released last month.

“Many governments are still in denial,” said United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime executive director Antonio Maria Costa. “Either these countries are blind to the problem, or they are ill-equipped to deal with it, or both.” Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s post might appear to belong neither to migration nor sex-industry studies, but this search for a disappeared person can be called a case of human trafficking. With all the current ballyhoo about that subject, perhaps those looking for children ‘lost’ in Argentina in the 70s should make use of it.  I’m also posting this because the Internet offers possibilities unheard of in the past for seeking and finding people, and because I received this through complex affective labyrinths. And also because it shows an identity document that fastens a trafficked person to a particular piece of ground. I often question the efficacy of such documents, but this might be a good use of one. It’s a letter from a founder of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, Chicha Mariani, to a grand-daughter who disappeared when her mother was murdered in 1976 in La Plata, Argentina. More of her lifelong struggle here.

At the same time, since it’s possible that the person being looked for would rather not be found, I hesitated to post this. Given the tenuous identifiers for her, I trust she will be able to continue to evade detection if she wants to.

There seems to be some confusion about another book of mine, which was published in Spain at the end of 2004 by Gakoa, in the Basque Country. Its translated title is Working in the Sex Industry, and other clichés about migration and consists of a series of essays plus a report written for Colectivo Ioé in 2000. I did the Ioé field work in Pamplona, talking with migrants, sex workers, social workers, police and other government officials. Sex at the Margins is not a translation of the first book. Below I tell a bit about how the first one came to be. If you are interested in buying the first one write to hiruga01@sarenet.es.

Trabajar en la industria del sexo, y otros tópicos migratorios. Publicado en el Pais Vasco, España, en 2004 por Gakoa. Pedidos: hiruga01@sarenet.es

Gakoa es la editorial que publica la revista Mugak. Peio Aierbe se puso en contacto conmigo cuando querían sacar una edición sobre migrantes que trabajan en la industria del sexo, que salió en 2003.

El sitio de Gako dice sobre Mugak que ‘está concebida como una herramienta al servicio de los movimientos de solidaridad frente al racismo y la xenofobia. El camino recorrido desde su aparición, en 1997, nos permite afirmar que es una herramienta consolidada. Hemos podido comprobar que existe una amplia franja de personas que se acercan a estas cuestiones desde una postura solidaria. Sea desde la práctica militante o desde la inquietud intelectual, o incluso, desde quienes tienen que prestar un servicio en el ámbito de la Administración, la sintonía que hemos encontrado con todas nos hace ser optimistas de cara al futuro.

Esta sintonía es la que convierte a la revista Mugak en un actor de primer orden en la labor de construir redes por las que transite el debate, la solidaridad, el contraste, las propuestas y, en definitiva, parte del caudal solidario que existe en nuestra sociedad. Las oportunidades y los retos que plantean las migraciones afectan, de manera transversal, al conjunto de ámbitos en los que se desarrolla nuestra vida diaria. Esta complejidad exige una mirada detenida sobre cada uno de ellos y recurrir a muchos puntos de vista. Ése es el ámbito de trabajo de Mugak.’

Puedes leer sobre El Centro de Estudios y Documentación sobre Inmigración, Racismo y Xenofobia Mugak y sus ideas en euskara.

I’ve been writing about the idea of evidence of trafficking and questioning what people think constitutes evidence. In a discussion of a post of mine called Sex trafficking v Prostitution: Judging the evidence, someone said ‘when you bring up this contradiction, you are the equivalent of a holocaust denier in some people’s eyes’. So there was a certain amount of rough stuff in the comments after that post was taken up by Sociological Images.

Now the US government’s Justice Department has released figures on human trafficking cases in the US between January 2007 and October 2008. The Human Trafficking Reporting System (HTRS) looks like a sensible way to assess the TVPA (Trafficking Victims Protection Act). The press release is below, the whole report can be downloaded, and this is the key finding:

As of September 30, 2008, less than 10 percent of the 1,229 alleged incidents had been confirmed as human trafficking. To be confirmed in the HTRS, the case must have led to an arrest and been subsequently confirmed by law enforcement, or the victims must have received a special non-immigrant Visa classification, as provided under the 2000 TVPA.

I understand from reading the full report that we should not understand that the TVPA is useless or that trafficking isn’t a problem - and this post is not trying to say that. Here is the report’s disclaimer, which also makes sense.

Data in this report represent a snapshot of the investigations opened by 38 federally funded human trafficking task forces. Because these task forces were not selected to be statistically representative, the data do not represent all incidents of human trafficking nationwide. . . While attempts were made to collect complete data from all federal task forces, many task forces began collecting data only recently and were able to provide only partial counts of human trafficking cases for the specified period.

However I think we may take it as indicative of something weak in the programme that so few cases have managed to be proven. There could be many reasons for this, and possibly poor definitions and understandings of ‘trafficking’ are among them. It is extremely difficult to prove culpability when everyone’s afraid of getting in trouble, too, which is the salient characteristic of undocumented migrants.

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs,
US Department of Justice Press Release, 15 January 2009

More than 1,200 Alleged Incidents of Human Trafficking Reported in the U.S.

In the first 21 months of operation, the Human Trafficking Reporting System (HTRS) recorded information on more than 1,200 alleged incidents of human trafficking, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. The HTRS contains data collected by 38 federally funded human trafficking task forces on alleged incidents of human trafficking that occurred between January 1, 2007, and September 30, 2008. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s an uphill, possibly hopeless task to go against the massive tide of uninformed ideas about migration and the sex industry (called in blanket fashion sex trafficking and sex slavery), but a growing number of people are asking questions about images such as this one:

From the Salvation Army’s anti-trafficking programme

All too often even a mild analysis or questioning of the current shrill public discourse on this subject is attacked as monstrous and cruel. To the contrary, measured skepticism about such brouhaha is healthy. Nathalie Rothschild is commissioning editor of Spiked. Her reporting on immigration and migration issues include the following analysis of the UK Home Secretary’s proposal to criminalise clients of sex workers ‘controlled for another’s gain’. My own analysis of this legislation appeared in the Guardian as The Shadowy World of Sex Across Borders. 

Prostituting women’s solidarity

Spiked, 27 November 2008

The UK government’s call to British women to help combat ‘sex trafficking’ amounts to a crackdown on immigration.

Nathalie Rothschild

Women around Britain have been asked to unite to liberate their prostitute sisters from the shackles of modern-day slavery.

Last week, UK home secretary Jacqui Smith unveiled a proposal to protect women from exploitation by tackling the demand for prostitution – in other words, by punishing punters. Anyone who pays for sex with someone who is ‘controlled for another person’s gain’ could be fined and receive a criminal record. Under the proposal, ignorance of the circumstances would be no defence.

On Tuesday, Harriet Harman, the minister for women, followed up on Smith’s proposal by sending out a rallying call to members of the Women’s Institute (WI), the UK’s largest voluntary women’s organisation. She asked the ladies to help tackle the sex trade by complaining to editors of local papers that run ‘sleazy adverts’ for sexual services.

Harman believes this will help stamp out sex trafficking, which she has described as a ‘modern-day slave trade’. One WI member told the BBC that the ‘sleazy ads’ may be for services that the girls involved are not giving willingly. They may have been tricked and forced into prostitution, she said. Spokeswoman Ira Arundell said the WI’s aim is ‘to raise awareness and spread the message about what is happening with these girls’. Just how complaining to editors about newspaper ads will counteract exploitation of women or reveal what happens behind the doors of massage parlours, brothels and erotic DVD shops is not entirely clear.

The images broadcast this week of middle-aged and elderly British WI members, gathered around tables to scour local papers – scissors and marker pens at hand – and tut-tutting at ads for erotic services, were reminiscent of those old gatherings of women knitting sweaters and collecting toys for starving, black babies. In effect, Harman and the WI view the foreigners who they are so intent on rescuing as childlike, helpless victims; as easily cajoled and loose women in need of the watchful guard of respectable, morally superior British ladies.

This war against international prostitution may be well-intentioned, but it looks like a puritanical ‘white woman’s burden’ mission. Far from engaging in an act of solidarity, the WI members who heed Harman’s call will only help to reinforce the image of migrants as a danger to themselves and to British society.

The numerous charities, non-governmental organisations, official bodies and police that work to root out human trafficking form what some have termed a ‘rescue industry’, whose collective efforts reinforce a dehumanising view of migrants. As writer Laura María Agustín points out it in Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, migrants become reduced to ‘passive receptacles and mute sufferers who must be saved and helpers become saviours’. This, Agustín says, is ‘a colonialist operation’.

Besides, who says migrant workers employed in the sex industry (which includes everything from charging for sex to pole-dancing, providing attentive dinner company and selling erotic lingerie, literature or DVDs) want to be ‘rescued’ in the first place? Read the rest of this entry »

The author of a new review of my book for a Portugese journal, Lorenzo Bordonaro, wrote to me the other day to tell me about it. At the same time, he sent me a copy of a research report he co-authored with Filipa Alvim at CEAS (Centro de Estudos de Antropologia Social), in Lisbon, entitled Tráfico de Mulheres em Portugal: Análise da construção de um problema social (Women Trafficking in Portugal: Analysis of the construction of a social problem).  From the English summary:

Asking why recently we are so concerned with women’s trafficking in Portugal sounds like a dumb question. After all, we are daily informed, trafficking is one of the greatest criminal endeavours of our times, with millions of people trafficked and enslaved every year, and billions of dollars of profit. It is normal therefore that Portugal is eager to stand up against this ‘inhuman form of crime’. Things, we have learned in the research that led to this book, are not so simple.

Without denying the existence of some cases of prototypical ‘women trafficking’, and the actual and daily violence that is perpetrated against women migrating to Portugal, we have come to the conclusion that the contemporary crusade against (women) trafficking in Portugal and Europe is motivated less by the wish to protect migrant’s (women’s) right than by the moral and political concern about prostitution and undocumented migration.

You can see why I’d be glad to hear from Lorenzo, given the overwhelming victimisation of migrants dominating so many cultures nowadays (see my pre-Christmas post on Women Doing Things for an antidote!). Here’s his review of my book. It begins ‘We live in an age of helping victims…’ Please send the link to any readers of Portuguese among your acquaintances.

Análise Social, Vol XLIII, n 4 (2008)

Laura María Agustín, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, London, Zed Books, 2007, 248 páginas.

Vivemos na época da ajuda e das vítimas: quotidianamente são identificados novos “problemas” e patologias sociais e psicológicas, assim como as respectivas vítimas; são procurados novos trabalhadores sociais e criados novos programas e figuras profissionais. As populações de migrantes não europeus, especialmente, surgiram nas últimas duas décadas, na Europa, como o novo campo da “acção social”, da actividade humanitária e da investigação científica. Financiamentos consideráveis são, por isso, anualmente destinados a programas para estas “populações alvo”: para investigar e melhorar a sua saúde física e mental, pesquisar a sua vida religiosa, as “disfunções” das suas famílias, a sua sexualidade, o sucesso e insucesso escolar dos mais novos, o saneamento das suas casas, a protecção das suas crianças… Todas as formas de intervenção nas vidas e na moralidade destes “novos outros” são legitimadas em nome da ajuda, do seu bem-estar, saúde e segurança.

Quanto às ciências sociais, não deixa de ser inquietante a forma como, na maioria dos casos, têm assumido acriticamente o seu novo papel em relação às finalidades (agenda) sociais e políticas — ciências sociais e “filantropia” parecem estar num processo de simbiose, se não de identificação. Poucos questionaram até agora este desejo de ajudar e de salvar, bem como as evidentes implicações políticas destas acções humanitárias, sendo a sobreposição entre protecção e disciplina uma das dinâmicas fundamentais da intervenção social, como Foucault já tinha salientado.

Em Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, Laura María Agustín analisa este aparato de ajuda reservado aos migrantes, questionando a abordagem, as motivações e a eficácia das intervenções e das políticas, no caso específico das mulheres migrantes trabalhadoras do sexo. O interesse da autora pelo sector “social” deriva da sua experiência profissional, já que trabalhou inicialmente em vários projectos de educação para adultos (inclusive de trabalhadoras e trabalhadores do sexo) na América Latina e nas Caraíbas. Esta experiência despertou-lhe o interesse pela lógica dos financiadores e dos operadores, pelo que passou um ano em várias capitais europeias, falando com operadores de várias ONGs e com migrantes, e começou, depois, um trabalho de campo em Madrid sobre a relação entre projectos de ajuda e migrantes trabalhadores do sexo. Read the rest of this entry »

Cambodia is one of the countries the US has manipulated into passing anti-trafficking legislation.

I write about this because there is a mass blindness going on, like the phenomenon of the Emperor’s New Clothes, where everyone knew he was naked but no one said so. There is now enough evidence - maybe even acceptable in a court of law! - that anti-trafficking laws cause more violence and injustice than they prevent. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be this way, perhaps there could be good anti-trafficking laws that did not end up punishing loads of people who don’t want to be ‘helped’ or ‘rescued’ in the way the US and other mainstream government voices are now requiring.  Everyone wants to help real victims, that isn’t at issue.

At the moment, the USA publishes an annual ranking -a report card - for the Rest of the World, on how well they combat human trafficking. Why does the US government get to do this? Do they know more than anyone else? No. This is political manoeuvering and cultural crusading. The moralistic claim is that US efforts and money are needed in order to save the world from slavery. One important question is how do they know where their efforts and money are needed.

The Trafficking in Persons (known as TIP) reports do not explain what methods they use to evaluate the extent of trafficking in any given place. They use CIA estimates - that’s the Central Intelligence Agency, which is not well known for doing good research - and anecdotal evidence to decide whether a country should get a good grade or a bad one. Anecdotal evidence means whatever their local contacts said, when asked in a conversation or telephone call.

-Hello, CIA and US Embassy here. Is that the local police? It is? Good. Listen, we’re doing research on how much sex trafficking there is in your area. You know, sex trafficking, like when pimps force women and children into being prostitutes against their will.

-Hello, CIA and US Embassy. Of course we want to help you in any way we can. What do you want to know?

-How much sex trafficking have you got around there? Is it bad? Is it increasing? Are there children involved?

-Oh yes, it’s very bad, there are prostitutes everywhere. Lots of them are very young. They stand around in the streets wearing skimpy clothes, there are brothels everywhere, they are shameless.

-So it’s really bad, right? And getting worse?

-Definitely. We can’t keep track of it, it’s so bad. There are children everywhere. Just the other day my aunt told me she was seeing young people in her own street! Not only that, but they were boys dressing like girls!

-We’ll report this right now. There will be a new law, you’ll see, that makes it a very bad crime to traffic anyone. The police will be charged with ending this vile trade. That will fix the problem. Talk to you soon.

-Okay, boss, let us know when it’s ready.

-Right. Secretary, record that one as 100% more cases of trafficking this year than last year and numbers of small children being exploited up 50%. That’s us done, send it to Washington. 

Was that single conversation the only source of evidence? No. But what if there are several, or even numerous such conversations? Do we understand these to be ‘proof’ of anything? Come on, no!

High up on the factors that give countries a good grade is their anti-trafficking legislation: to get a good mark, countries must have a Strong Law.  Countries that don’t buckle under to US pressure face the possibility of receiving less US aid and support. Cambodia’s law is a mess: take a look at it and see if you can make sense of it. The result is mass police actions to round up people who sell sex (whether they call themselves sex workers or prostitutes) , in the name of rescuing them from exploitation.

This is not a struggle between Good and Evil, or about whether prostitution is good or bad. We all agree that people who are in horrible situations should be helped. The issue is how you help them, and you cannot do it without understanding what they themselves want. It’s hard to understand why this fundamental point should be so difficult to take in. Another recent case in Cambodia illustrates what happens when the police start shooing people to new areas.

Some people prefer selling sex to their other options, even if those options are limited and unappealing. Give folks a break, let them judge for themselves which option they would rather engage in at the moment! Here’s the latest news on the failure of the other approach, which can be called Unwanted Rescues. Don’t forget the poster migrants made about that in Thailand! It isn’t necessary to arrive at a single piece of legislation that applies to everyone: there could be two, or even three! Radical.

New Sex Law Brings Problems

The Straits Times, 26 December 2008

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Chantha said there was nothing else she could do in Cambodia but become a prostitute.

“If you don’t even have a dollar in your pocket to buy rice, how can you bear looking at your starving relatives?” she said.

“You do whatever to survive, until you start to realize the consequence of your deeds.”

Chanta, in her early twenties, was working in a small red-light district west of the capital Phnom Penh several months ago when she was arrested under Cambodia’s new sex-trafficking law. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a photo showing the full poster prepared in Chiang Mai, Thailand, by migrant sex workers, at the EMPOWER centre.

An earlier photo only showed half of the list of reasons workers at Barn Su Funn Brothel gave for opposing raids and rescue operations intended to liberate them. Now you can see for yourself the full list of reasons why these women do not wish to be rescued by police, ngo or charity workers:

• 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 might prefer to continue what they’re doing than be ‘rescued’ by people on anti-trafficking crusades. While the rescuers’ good intentions are important, they obviously haven’t consulted the prostitutes they want to save first, to find out whether they want to be helped and, if so, what kind of help would actually be helpful!  The poster makes it clear that cutting migrant women off from their source of income has terrible consequences both for themselves and their families.

Thanks once more to the Asia-Pacific Network of Sex Workers for sending this new photo.