trafficking

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

What I hate most about the annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP) is the very idea: that one country should presume to judge all others vis-a-vis some topic and then publish a report card with simplistic, childish rankings (all the world fits into 4 classes). Then, not content with simply judging Rest-of-World, the USA threatens to cut off aid and social programming to countries that do not toe its line. It’s the worst kind of cultural arrogance, and it would be if any other country presumed to do it, too.

However, let’s imagine that such a report could be of great use to many people. In that case, I want to know how the data was gathered, which sources were consulted, who was allowed to give information, whose estimates were deemed authoritative and how data were confirmed. I want to know precisely how researchers handled the considerable international muddle over definitions, since the fact that people mean different things when they say the word trafficking is a notorious source of conflict and confusion, not to mention that a lot of the English keywords cannot be reliably translated into all other languages (for example, abuse, exploitation, force, coercion). Yet every year since the beginning the Report has fudged explaining how it’s compiled. Instead of concrete information on methodology we get the vaguest of statements, really worthy of a Cold War spy operation. This is what the 2009 document says about this contemporary Crusade:

Methodology

The Department of State prepared this report using information from U.S. embassies, foreign government officials, nongovernmental and international organizations, published reports, research trips to every region, and information submitted to [an email address]. This email address allows NGOs and individuals to share information on government progress in addressing trafficking. U.S. diplomatic posts reported on the trafficking situation and governmental action based on thorough research that included meetings with a wide variety of government officials, local and international NGO representatives, officials of international organizations, journalists, academics, and survivors.

No, a list of nameless institutions and groups does not qualify. The vaguer and longer the list, the more impressive it appears, but we have no way to know how the particular people were chosen and who was not consulted. Research studies can never be completely objective but they can and must address their own biases, and one of these concerns Gatekeepers: Who is chosen to tell researchers whom they should talk to and believe.

To compile this year’s report, the Department reviewed credible information sources on every country and assessed each government’s antitrafficking efforts. In prior years a “significant number” (defined to be 100 or more) of trafficking victims had to be documented for a country to be ranked in the TIP Report. The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA of 2008) eliminated this requirement, thereby expanding the scope of countries included in this year’s report.

Let readers judge the credibility of sources: Who were they, exactly? Some local informants don’t want their names revealed, fine; list everyone else. Local readers can then judge which political groups informants belonged to, which officials were consulted, which NGOs. This is called Transparency. Again, if it’s judged better not to name all names, name as many as possible, and if not of individuals then of groups.

Some countries have held conferences and established task forces or national action plans to create goals for anti-trafficking efforts. While such activities are useful and can serve as a catalyst toward concrete law enforcement, protection, and prevention activities in the future, these conferences, plans, and task forces alone are not weighed heavily in assessing country efforts. Rather, the report focuses on governments’ concrete actions to fight trafficking, especially prosecutions, convictions, and prison sentences for traffickers as well as victim protection measures and prevention efforts.

So the evaluation is completely focussed on criminal-justice actions: that’s clear, anyway. It’s not as though a lot of proclamations condemning slavery ought to qualify as real efforts, but everything mentioned here is about criminals and victims except the extremely vague and silly term ‘prevention efforts’.

Although critical to increasing anti-trafficking efforts, the Report does not give great weight to laws in draft form or laws that have not yet been enacted. In general, the Report does not focus on governmental efforts that have indirect implications for trafficking, such as general efforts to keep children in school or general economic development programs, though the Report is making a stronger effort to identify trafficking vulnerabilities and measures taken by governments to prevent trafficking that may result from such vulnerabilities. Similarly, this report attempts to identify systemic contributing factors to particular forms of human trafficking. These include particular policies or practices, such as labor recruiters’ charging of excessive fees to prospective migrants and governmental policies allowing employers to confiscate passports of foreign workers—factors that have been shown to contribute to forced labor.

Well, honestly. So they’ve got no interest in underlying causes but are probably paying a bunch of US civil servants to compile a list of them and another list of how smuggling works, which everyone already knows. It’s egregious, self-benefiting, colonialist interference, on top of which they can’t accept research that’s already been done but have to pay themselves to do it. Humbug.

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.

This is another story of how attempts to get rid of prostitution result in changes, not eradication, as people adapt to the new conditions. Baina, a tradtional red-light district in Goa’s port city of Vasco, was flattened by city authorities five years ago, and now what was contained in a small area seems to Goans to be everywhere! Excerpts from The Times of India and highlights by me.

The expanding red light district 

The Times of India
10 Jun 2009

. . . Baina’s dingy rooms have given way to fancy cubicles in massage parlours and air-conditioned rooms in starred hotels. Taxi drivers and motorcycle pilots as contact points have made way for waiters, chai boys and beach hawkers. The modus operandi too has adapted to the needs of the solicitors and the solicited.

With the contact point shifting from the cramped lanes in Baina to just about everywhere: beaches, parlours, hotels, lodges, bars, restaurants, streets, markets, even fishing trawlers, the modus operandi nowadays is to pre-arrange a meeting point for the customer and the girl. Alternatively, women are also sent to certain areas to directly solicit, finds a study by Baina-based NGO, Arz.

The 2007-08 study, whose findings will be released soon, focused on Goa’s prostitution phenomenon after the demolition of Baina and the closure of dance bars in Mumbai. Information was collected by talking to sex workers, pimps, legislators, government authorities, hoteliers etc. The study reports that nowadays, it is not uncommon to find girls, including foreigners, soliciting on beaches, bars, restaurants, shacks and even at tourist bazaars.

Another common meeting point are night clubs where couple entry is the rule. Some girls solicit around major crossroads, traffic circles, junctions, gardens and bus stands. . .

. . . “After the demolition in Baina, prostitution has spread all over the state,” says Dr Pramod Salgaonkar, chairperson, Goa State Commission for Women. “While middle-budget prostitution is flourishing in the tourist belt in the form of massage parlours, prostitution along highways, hotels and houses is also on the increase,” she adds. Arun Pandey of Arz, says, “The Baina demolition has led to an escalation in highway prostitution, prostitution in isolated places like jungles and prostitution in vehicles (private four wheelers).”

“There is an increased vulnerability of women and children in prostitution to forced sex acts and rapes. Clients would not be able to film prostituted women and children or have group sex in a brothel. Now this is possible,” he adds.

Goa police’s public information officer SP AV Deshpande calls it “old wine in a new bottle”. “The business is the same. But girls are now better educated and pimps are using the latest technology to operate and attract high paying clients. The business has become more sophisticated.”

* Information from study: Trafficking for Commercial Sexual Exploitation in Goa, by Baina-based NGO, Arz

The following comments reveal some of the contradictions experienced while trying to work within the framework of ‘trafficked children’. The study was funded by the US National Institute of Justice ‘to examine the experiences of children, mostly girls, trafficked to the United States for sexual and labor exploitation and analyze their prospects for reintegration.’ I make many of the same comments in my book Sex at the Margins and am glad to see that numerous other researchers are now writing about cultural differences that mean that campaigns to save young people from doing paid work often oppress and make them unhappy. These are just a few excerpts from the article, so if you’ve got questions go to the original. I’ve highlighted some points in bold, and made sure to leave in concepts not often mentioned in debates (child fostering and child circulation).

Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 81/4, pp. 903–923, (2008)

On Challenges, Dilemmas, and Opportunities in Studying Trafficked Children

Elzbieta M. Goździak, Institute for the Study on International Migration, Georgetown University

In the United States the system of care for trafficked children has been developed within a framework based on middle-class Western ideals about childhood as a time of dependency and innocence during which children are socialized by adults and become competent social actors. Economic and social responsibilities are generally mediated by adults so that the children can grow up free from pressures of responsibilities such as work and child care. Children who are not raised in this way are considered “victims” who have had their childhood stolen from them. This framework views universal concern for children as transcending political and social divides; assumes a universally applicable model of childhood development; presupposes a consensus on what policies should be in place to realize the best interest of the child; assumes that child victims have universal needs (such as a need for rehabilitation); and promotes a therapeutic model of service provision. . .

. . . we understood that “disagreements over [child trafficking]’s magnitude are underpinned by different understandings of the term ‘child’ and ‘trafficking’” and that “this is a conceptual and political problem that cannot be resolved by more data alone” (Manzo 2005: 394).

. . . many of the children did not consider themselves trafficked victims, but thought of their experiences as migration in search of better opportunities that turned into exploitation. Many also did not think of their traffickers as perpetrators of crime and villains; after all in some instances the traffickers were parents or close relatives.

. . . Almost all of the children were highly motivated to migrate to the US in the hope of earning money. Many of them had compelling reasons to send money home and had to repay smuggling fees. Typically, the children’s desire to earn money did not change once they were rescued. [State programs] reflect US laws requiring children to attend school, defining the age of employment and number of hours a minor child is allowed to work. . .  These restrictions may run counter to many children’s goals and lead to a struggle as they adjust to their new lives. These issues have longterm consequences for the children’s commitment to education and affect their desire to remain in care. The children’s reluctance to see themselves as victims stood in sharp contrast to the perceptions of service providers who referred to the children as victims, often because the law conceptualizes them as victims.

. . . Middle-class Eurocentric ideals often assume that, apart from exceptional cases, children live in nuclear families, experience childhood together with their siblings and have access to resources provided by both biological parents. Research contradicts this assumption and documents a wide range of living arrangements experienced by children in resource-poor countries (Lloyd and Desai 1992).

. . .  child fostering or child circulation is a long-standing cultural practice in many regions. . .  including West Africa, . . . Latin America . . .  and the Pacific. According to Demographic and Health Surveys, covering 10 African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal), the percentage of foster children ranges between 10 and 20 percent in the six to nine age bracket, and between 13 and 25 percent in the 10 to 14 age group. In the overwhelming majority of cases, both parents are alive but do not live with their children (Pilon 2003). . .

. . .  In West Africa, fostering is an important technique rooted in kinship structures and traditions. Children are not sent out only in the event of crisis; sending of children is practiced by both stable and unstable families, married and single mothers (Isiugo-Abaniche 1985, 1991).

. . . According to the British Agencies for Adoptions and Fostering, 10,000 children, mostly from West Africa, were living with families other than their own in the United Kingdom in 2001 (Economist 2003). . .

. . . In Latin America, “child circulation” is a principal way in which Peruvian rural-to-urban migrants move children between houses as part of a common survival and betterment strategy in the context of social and economic inequality (Leinaweaver 2007). Poverty and vulnerability shape Peruvian practices of kinship formation through child circulation. For the receiving family, child circulation represents strategic labor recruitment; for the sending household, it spells relief from the economic burdens of child rearing and constitutes a source of highly desirable remittances. A considerable proportion of children in Mexico and Colombia were found to spend some time during childhood without a father. When births outside a union are included, one-fifth of Mexican children and one-third of Colombian children were affected. An additional five percent of Mexican children and nine percent of Colombian children do not live with their mothers (Richter 1988).

. . . For the societies involved, child circulation is a characteristic of family systems, fitting in with patterns of family solidarity and the system of rights and obligations. Fostering is a component of family structure and dynamics (Pilon 2003). Indeed, the majority of the children in our study lived with other family members or friends prior to being trafficked and most were sent to live with family members or friends in the United States and ended up being trafficked.

I am in Budapest. Good Sex, Bad Sex: Sex Law, Crime and Ethics is the first conference I’ve been interested in attending in a long time. I swore off the whole conference genre for a while, but the description of this one caught my eye, so I got in touch with two very interesting minds and we proposed a panel. It’s a small event, 35 or so people, and no competing sessions, so you can actually relax and reflect on everything you hear. Our session is:

Monday 4th May 2009, 1600

Session 2: Breathing New Life into Old Fears: Cultural Studies of Prostitution, Pornography and Bad Sex

This panel will explore continuing impulses to criminalise and prohibit forms of ‘bad’ sexual practice. The three papers examine continuities and transformations in recent regulatory impulses to ‘protect’ the ‘innocent’ and the public from individual instances of bad sexual conduct. We ask whether fixed ethical frameworks, with concomitant laws, are appropriate in an age where diversity, autonomy and agency are prime values.

The Evil is in Paying: Sex with ‘Trafficked Women’
Laura Agustin

Prominent politicians and feminists have come to maintain that paying for sex with a ‘victim of trafficking’ is a heinous crime equivalent to violent rape. All migrant workers in the sex industry are considered subject to ‘serial rape’ and ‘sexual slavery’. The movement purposely conflates all prostitution with ‘trafficking’ and attacks those who disagree as pimps and anti-feminists. The justification is Gender Equality, a utopic vision that defines good sex as symmetrical, mutual, personally close, loving and equitable. Resulting laws criminalise the buying of sex on the grounds that introducing money creates a power relationship antithetical to the right kind of sex. This paper posits a different ethical vision in which money is not granted defining status in sexual acts.

Going to Extremes: Understanding New Online Pornographies
Feona Attwood

Online pornographies increasingly provide a focus for debates about permissible and impermissible sexual practices and about good and bad representations of sex. They have also become the focus of broader concerns with ‘extreme’ images of the body, for example in the horror subgenre which has been dubbed ‘torture porn’, in images of real violence and conflict (sometimes referred to as ‘warporn’ or ‘atrocity porn’), and in the wider set of ‘shock’ images which proliferate online. This paper considers the significance of contemporary concerns about extreme online pornographies in a cultural context where norms of sexuality and notions of obscenity are fiercely contested and where the circulation of sexual imagery is more prevalent than ever before.

Five Dominatrices and a Thrashing: the Classifications of Sadomasochism
Clarissa Smith

During 2008 two of the UK’s most august institutions resounded to discussion of activities involving pain and sexual pleasure: the House of Lords debated the rights of British citizens to possess images of ‘extreme’ sexual practices and the High Court was regaled with tales of supposed Nazi orgies starring Max Mosley (Formula 1 President and son of British wartime fascist Sir Oswald Mosley) and five women he had paid to beat him. The rights and wrongs of sadomasochism, consensual violence and the commodification and commercialisation of sexual desire were thoroughly aired across the media. This paper will consider the multiple meanings of sadomasochism and other ‘extreme’ sexual practices in public discourse and the continuing failures of the legislature to understand such practices as anything other than evidence of deviant or irrational impulses.

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 »

In conversations about legal models for dealing with the sex industry, New Zealand’s Prostitution Reform Act of 2003 is often held up as the best. The law’s main thrust regulates how brothels may operate, by the way also making it legal for one to four people to work alone or together without having to participate in regulation (registering, getting permissions or being subject to inspections). This is obviously positive for more independent workers, unless they prefer to work from the street, in which case there is no benefit.

Many rights activists who back this legal model are not aware of a protectionist clause enshrined in the legislation: only New Zealand citizens and some, not all, migrants with permanent residency may work in its sex industry. This means no work permits are available for people who might want to go to New Zealand to work in a brothel or other sex business, or independently. Spokespeople for the law claim this clause prevents sex trafficking.

For those interested in sex work rights and theory, this is not coherent. New Zealand’s law can be called both decriminalisation, a policy that says sex work is socially acceptable, and regulation, which says sex work can be made safe and rational. Therefore, if jobs are available, it is logical to allow people from outside to come do them. If the jobs have not been made subject to quotas because there are not enough openings to satisfy all the ‘natives’ that want them, but ‘foreigners’ are still prohibited, something odd is going on.

I talked with several scholars and the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective about how this contradictory combination of liberalisation and protectionism came about. All agree that the clause limiting workers coming from outside New Zealand was inserted at a late stage, without meaningful analysis or discussion, because of one parliamentarian’s insistent noise about trafficking. From the New Zealand First party, he agreed to vote for the decriminalisation bill in exchange for a clause that would limit immigration. His position reflected anxiety, racism and xenophobia in New Zealand about increased immigration from Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific, as well as refugees from Africa. 

The disallowal of migrants helps keep the industry racially and culturally homogeneous. It is true that New Zealand’s population includes indigenous Maori as well as a large number of Pacific Islanders and is becoming multicultural. But the PRA focusses on brothel employment rather than on street-based prostitution where Maoris and Pacific Islanders have traditionally worked.

The PRA also favours middle-class cultural norms, promoting discreet prostitution contained inside brothels conceived to be as inoffensive as possible. There seems to have been a fear that New Zealand’s sex industry might change as a result of the law: get bigger and bolder, possibly promote practices the Act eventually outlawed, such as selling of sex without condoms (as if to say no New Zealander had ever done this).

Some observers interpret the law’s failure to address street workers as seeking to push them into brothels, where they may benefit from the Act’s provisions - and where, by the way, they must be available for state inspections. Thus the New Zealand legislation has the effect of reducing diversity amongst sex workers and sex businesses.

This more complicated history and analysis needs to emerge in discussions of the New Zealand law. Would the situation change in New Zealand if the clause prohibiting foreigners were to go away? Or, put differently, if another country attempted to use the New Zealand model but not add the prohibition, would it work, in a worldwide context of migration and sexworking?

The Act also says nothing about other kinds of commercial sex and sex businesses. Workers there, like those on the street, receive no benefit from this legislation.

Thanks to Jo Richdale, Amanda McVitty, Lynzi Armstrong, Dan Healey and the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective for helping me think this through and providing links.

New Zealand Prostitutes Collective summary of the PRA

Frequently Asked Questions about the PRA

A 2008 review of the PRA that includes a literature review from 2005

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.

This Korean newspaper report might be the first I’ve ever seen that explicitly treats men and trans as victims of sex trafficking. I’ve seen them added in as an afterthought but never the main characters in the story. I guess it’s a sort of gender equality, but, as usual, while exploitative practices seem to be present, the sex workers involved want to travel (to Japan, see last paragraph). Also note that the fact of someone’s paying facilitators of travel or employment does not by itself signify anything sinister: research with undocumented migrants the world over demonstrates their willingness to pay to get where they want to go (apart from academic research, see media reports here, here and here). Neither does the involvement of organised crime signify that the activity being described is by definition specially exploitative. We’d need more information to know what’s actually going on here.

Thanks to Roger Tatoud for bringing this to my attention, and note that his own blog discusses women as clients today.

Joong Ang Daily, Seoul

Gay sex worker traffickers arrested  

By Jang Joo-young and Kim Mi-ju, 10 March 2009

Police yesterday arrested a group of traffickers who allegedly recruited Korean men and transgenders and illegally transported them to Japan to work in the sex industry there.

After discovering that the suspects have maintained close ties with the Japanese Mafia - the Yakuza - in running their business, police asked Japanese law enforcement to join in a joint investigation. Police are also looking for the remaining suspects in connection with the case.

The two arrested traffickers, identified as Park and Lim, are being questioned along with 14 male and transgender sex workers, according to investigators in charge of the case at Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency. Park has been detained for questioning as of yesterday. Lim and the recruited sex workers are being questioned without detention.

Investigators have found that Park and Lim had sent over 30 male and transgender sex workers to Japan to work in brothels in Yokohama’s red light district since January 2007, charging them fees ranging from 10 million won ($6,443) to 15 million won.

Police said Park has amassed a total of 500 million won for offering such jobs. Some of the people he transported to Japan told police they were sometimes forced to have sex with Park, despite the fact that he knows he is HIV-positive, police said.

Those brought to work in the Japanese port city worked at Yakuza-operated brothels and were forced to pay an extra 80,000 yen ($811) per month to the Yakuza in “protection fees.” They received between 15,000 yen and 20,000 yen for having sex with clients.

An investigator in charge of the case said most of those booked for participating in the sex trade told police they went Japan to “earn a large amount of money in a short period of time to get a sex change operation.”