Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered

New Perspectives on Migration, Sex Work, and Human Rights

Kamala Kempadoo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351538770
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Sociology

Trafficking and prostitution are widely believed to be synonymous, and to be leading international crimes. This collection argues against such sensationalism and advances carefully considered and grounded alternatives for understanding transnational migrations, forced labor, sex work, and livelihood strategies under new forms of globalization. From their long-term engagements as anti-trafficking advocates, the authors unpack the contemporary international debate on trafficking. They maintain that rather than a new 'white slave trade, ' we are witnessing today, more broadly, an increase in the violation of the rights of freedom of movement, decent employment, and social and economic security. Critical examinations of state anti-trafficking interventions, including the U.S.- led War on Trafficking, also reveal links to a broader attack on undocumented migrants; tribal and aboriginal peoples; poor women, men, and children; and sex workers. The book sheds new light on everyday circumstances, popular discourses, and strategies for survival under twenty-first century economic and political conditions, with a focus on Asia, but with lessons globally. Contributors: Natasha Ahmad, Vachararutai Boontinand, Lin Chew, Melissa Ditmore, John Frederick, Matthew S. Friedman, Josephine Ho, Jagori, Ratna Kapur, Phil Marshall, Jyoti Sanghera, Susu Thatun.

PART I

SHIFTING PARADIGMS

Globalization, Labor Migration, and Human Rights

1

Unpacking the Trafficking Discourse

Jyoti Sanghera

Trafficking is a subject open to fierce debate, yet it also lends itself to critical reflection and honest conversation. In the following I offer an overview and analysis of the dominant discourse on trafficking by reflecting on the assumptions, interventions, and approaches followed by its practitioners. This essay is written in the spirit of an invitation for a collective reflection on the mainstream anti-trafficking paradigm with its package of interventions developed over the past decade or more, particularly in Asia. It is also a plea to think beyond and outside of the box, for this box has incarcerated and inhibited creative thinking and practice for far too many years. I draw confidence for my candor— which might seem to some audacious arrogance, but in all honesty is nothing more than a brutal reflection on our collective anti-trafficking practice—from the unwavering commitment of groups and allies to foreground the rights of those women whose struggle for a life of dignity they purport to support. In their commitment, these mindful practitioners have not shied away from abdicating their own strategies of engagement when these were found to be detrimental or lacking. It is no secret that the anti-trafficking arena is a beleaguered one. It has been made murkier by the melding together of complicated categories, constructs, and players. Issues of migration, trafficking, and sex work are peppered with constructs of sexuality, gender, and vulnerability, threaded through with categories of victim and agent, consent and coercion, and stirred together in a cauldron by cooks, who are far too many in number, much too disparate in their culinary skills, and have at their disposal a budget which is far too lavish for a mere broth. These “too many cooks” have not only managed to spoil the broth, but some of them have also ended up bonking each other with their spatulas. I locate myself squarely within the company of these cooks and after several years of engagement and serious reflection, humbly offer some suggestions for improving the recipe.

Central to this reflection process is calling a spade a spade, and not a snake. In the context of anti-trafficking work, this merely means eschewing the moral panics and jettisoning the practice of categorizing social reality under mutually exclusive dichotomies. That trafficking in persons is a critical issue is not the contestable point in this discussion. What is under question is the manner in which the trafficking discourse has been constructed and the assumptions and myths that have underscored this construction. The trafficking debate has rendered itself too quickly to a simplistic association with the prostitution debate, the reasons for which will be discussed later. However, the outcome of this conflation has resulted in the ideological burdens of the prostitution and sex wars transmigrating into the anti-trafficking arena. It has also resulted in a dead-end scenario with a pro- and anti-prostitution position. Critical thinking and reflection, and hence hope, emerge from a growing and disparate range of players located in the middle, who consciously seek to complicate their analyses in commensuration with the layered reality of trafficking. At present, their plea for questioning, challenging, and complicating may simply be dismissed as a pro-prostitution position. However, it is from this forum of reflective practitioners that the praxis of embodying rights for women in the arenas of sexuality and labor will emerge.

MYTHOLOGIES OF TRAFFICKING: STATING THE PROBLEM

My thoughts are based upon the premise that there is a problem with the manner in which the “problem of trafficking,” especially within the Asia-Pacific region, has been addressed by a majority of players over the past decade or so. This problem is connected to the construction of the discourse of trafficking or the manner in which the trafficking story is being told within the Asian region (Frederick 1998). The dominant anti-trafficking discourse, and consequently understanding, is not evidence-based but grounded in the construction of a particular mythology of trafficking. As a result, the interventions and programs flowing from this understanding have rarely led to the desired or expected results, i.e., the reduction of trafficking. Hence, despite the spate of heightened activity within the last decade on the part of a plethora of actors to curb the trafficking of women, and the investment of huge amounts of funds on the part of a host of donors, the common refrain among the same community of donors and grantees is that trafficking is “rapidly increasing,” and acquiring “monstrous dimensions.”¹ This begs the logical question: If all the energies and monies deployed to curb trafficking are not resulting in its reduction but, on the contrary, leading to an increase of it, then where are we going wrong?

The dominant discourse of trafficking is based upon a set of assumptions. These, in a large measure, merely flow from unexamined hypotheses, shoddy research, anecdotal information, or strong moralistic positions. The issue is not whether they are true or false, but simply one of pushing conclusions that are not supported by rigorous empirical research and a sound evidence base. This faulty methodology of disseminating a flow of information and data whose origins are questionable contributes to the construction of both the dominant paradigm or discourse of trafficking, as well as the mythologies of trafficking.

Some of the dominant assumptions that inform the mainstream trafficking discourse are:

1. Trafficking of children and women is an ever-growing phe-nomenon;

2. Increasing numbers of victims of trafficking are younger girls;

3. Most trafficking happens for the purpose of prostitution;

4. Poverty is the sole or principal cause of trafficking;

5. Trafficking within the Asian subcontinent and the region is controlled and perpetrated by organized crime gangs;

6. All entry of women into the sex industry is forced and the notion of “consent” in prostitution is based upon false consciousness or falsehood;

7. Based on the assumption that most women in prostitution are coerced and trafficked, it is then assumed that they would be only too happy to be rescued and reintegrated with their families, or rehabilitated;

8. Rehabilitation into families and communities is viewed as an unproblematic strategy for it is assumed to provide adequate protection and safety to the victims of trafficking;

9. Brothel-based prostitution is the sole or major form through which sex trade in the region is conducted;

10. Police-facilitated raids and rescue operations in brothels will reduce the number of victims of trafficking in the prostitution industry;

11. Absence of stringent border surveillance and border control is the principal reason for facilitation of transborder trafficking;

12. Anti-migration strategies based upon awareness-raising campaigns which alert communities to the dangers of trafficking by instilling fear of strangers, and fear of big metropoles and cities, will curb migration and hence trafficking;

13. Strategies which club women and children together will be equally beneficial to both in extending protection against trafficking and redress after being trafficked;

14. All persons under 18 years of age constitute a homogenous category—children, devoid equally of sexual identity and sexual activity, bereft equally of the ability to exercise agency, and hence in need of identical protective measures;

15. Law enforcement is a neutral and unproblematic category and all it needs is sensitization and training on issues of trafficking in order to intervene effectively to curb the problem of trafficking.

These fifteen assumptions are the major founding blocks of the dominant discourse on trafficking. In challenging the dominant discourse of trafficking, my intention is not to deny the existence of trafficking as a problem in Asia—far from it. There is no denying the fact that with growing insecurity of food and livelihoods and shrinking avenues for regular migration, several harms, including that of trafficking, may be on the rise. Rather, my intention is to unravel the puzzle of why the trafficking story is shrouded in mystery; to unpack the elements of the trafficking discourse; to comprehend why a spade is not called a spade; and to examine some persistent maladies of the paradigm in order to generate deeper analysis, understanding, and, consequently, action.

A critical tool that enables a spade to be called a spade is the lens through which it is viewed. This, in effect, holds true of any social phenomenon. Here the trafficking discourse is analyzed through the lens of a rights-based approach, which incorporates within its core both a gender and development perspective as well.

THE CONTEXT OF TRAFFICKING

Trafficking in women and girls is acknowledged by the international community as a global problem today. Reportedly, millions of children and women are said to be trafficked across borders and within countries, and the profits accruing from this trade are alleged to be phenomenal, exceeding, according to some estimates, the clandestine gains made from the underground trade in arms and narcotics.² There is general consensus that trafficking in women and children has become a significant facet of transnational organized crime, and the growth of such activities has been referred to as the “dark side of globalization.”³

We learn, through an endless cycle of stories, how trafficked women are separated from their families, and sexually exploited by means of coercion, violence, or abuse of authority. Their ability to seek help is severely constrained, especially if they are minors (UNICEF-EASRO 2001; Estes and Weiner 2001). In addition, trafficked women and minors are often further disadvantaged if they are undocumented migrants or immigrants; refugees or displaced; or if they belong to a marginalized ethnic, cultural, or religious social group. Poverty and lack of sustainable livelihood are common conditions of those who become victims of trafficking. These trafficked persons are often uneducated, unskilled, and debt-ridden.

Women are trafficked for a variety of reasons, including for the purposes of prostitution, domestic work, marriage, industrial and agricultural work, and trade in human organs. All victims of trafficking are not necessarily subjected to commercial sexual exploitation. Some of the purposes for which trafficking occurs, such as prostitution, pornography, sex tourism, and the marriage market, are by their very nature marked by commercial sexual exploitation. However, other sites into which trafficking feeds might result in other types of exploitation, forced labor, and abuse. It has been reported that even when women and minors are not ostensibly trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation, their trafficked status renders them highly vulnerable to sexual exploitation and sexual abuse (UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre 2003).

The growth of trafficking in persons has been attributed to many causes, including poverty, lack of sustainable livelihoods, structural inequities in society, gender discrimination, war and armed conflict, and other forms of natural or constructed disasters. However, it is critical to understand that these factors are not in themselves the causes of trafficking; they merely exacerbate the vulnerability of marginalized and disadvantaged groups and render them increasingly more susceptible to a variety of harms. Factors such as lack of livelihood options, conflict, and structural inequities create conditions for the displacement and mobility of populations and, hence, contribute to the “freeing up” of marginal and vulnerable groups, thereby creating a potential supply of migrants and livelihood-seekers. The sites of work that draw this supply of migrant livelihood-seekers are contingent upon demand from particular sectors of the economy for certain types of labor that would enable maximization of profit. Trafficking for commercial sexual purposes is tied to the expansion and diversification of the sex entertainment industry as well as to the expansion of marketable, intimate services and arrangements, including marriage.

The drive for maximizing profit under a competitive economic regime fields a demand for workers who are the most vulnerable and therefore the most exploitable and controllable. Children, followed by women, fit this description perfectly. It must be remembered that trafficking of persons is, most importantly, a demand-driven phenomenon. And yet the majority of anti-trafficking interventions in the arenas of rescue, repatriation, rehabilitation, and even prevention are targeted only toward the supply of trafficking or the victims. This is a serious gap in the sphere of interventions.

THE NEXUS OF VULNERABILITY AND ILLEGALITY

A close examination shows that the recent impetus for transborder trafficking, as well as smuggling or other clandestine forms of labor recruitment, is connected to striking imbalances between the increasing supply of unskilled, indigent jobseekers on the one hand and the availability of legal and sustainable work in places where the jobseekers have legal rights to residence or citizenship on the other. A recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) study supports this view and maintains that “labor trafficking should not, in theory, take place if the jobseeker has freedom of geographical movement and freedom of access to employment” (ILO 2001, 53). Lack of legal rights to mobility and to legally accepted forms of livelihood compel marginal and vulnerable groups to lead underground lives, enhancing manifold their vulnerability to harms such as trafficking, bondage, slavery-like working and living conditions, and HIV/AIDS. This is the “quintessential knot” in the nexus of vulnerability where prevailing vulnerabilities of age, gender, and socio-economic status forge a complex relationship with newer vulnerabilities, such as widespread and unprecedented insecurity of food and livelihood.

This nexus of vulnerability is increasingly cemented by the “illegality factor,” where practically everything about the victim of trafficking is covered by a shroud of illegality. It may seem that the discussions on legality of work and freedom of movement are irrelevant for minors because, in principle, they should not be migrating as jobseekers. However, the reality is that minors, perhaps more than anyone else, are marked most by the illegality factor because they too are an integral part of the vast pool of mobile jobseekers. Their inherent vulnerability as minors is often exacerbated several-fold by the formal and informal sanctions against child labor. As far as women are concerned, we do have enough statistics to show that, especially in Asia, a majority of the migrants today are women, moving not as part of a family unit but in their independent capacity (Asis 2003; Sanghera 2003).

The illegality factor taints almost every aspect of the trafficked person’s life. Hence, the work done by this trafficked person is often considered “illegal” in the informal sector—her age may be below the legally stipulated age of employment; her status within the country of residence may be undocumented; the conditions of work under which she labors may be illegal or not up to legal standards; the hovels, slums, or brothels in which she resides may be unlicensed or exist on squatted land; and several of her partners in business or life may be defined as “illegal,” such as agents, pimps, madams, other sex workers, children, and siblings. (While both females and males are victims of trafficking, the term “her” is used here to foreground a gender approach, as well as to underscore the specific vulnerability of girls and women.) In being compelled to lead “illegal” lives, victims of trafficking are simultaneously converted into criminals. Their illegalization keeps them from accessing most of the freedoms and rights that are extended to all as human beings. These trafficked persons invariably live hidden and invisible lives. Much of their energy is spent upon averting either state agents such as law enforcement officers from apprehending them, or non-state agents such as their emp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction From Moral Panic to Global Justice: Changing Perspectives on Trafficking
• Part I Shifting Paradigms: Globalization, Labor Migration, and Human Rights
• Part II The “Problem” of Prostitution
• Part III Reports from the Field: Participation, Research and Action
• Index
• About the Editor and Contributors