Mobile Orientations

An Intimate Autoethnography of Migration, Sex Work, and Humanitarian Borders

Nicola Mai

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780226585000, 9780226584959
• eBook ISBN: 9780226585147
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

Despite continued public and legislative concern about sex trafficking across international borders, the actual lives of the individuals involved—and, more importantly, the decisions that led them to sex work—are too often overlooked. With Mobile Orientations, Nicola Mai shows that, far from being victims of a system beyond their control, many contemporary sex workers choose their profession as a means to forge a path toward fulfillment.

Using a bold blend of personal narrative and autoethnography, Mai provides intimate portrayals of sex workers from sites including the Balkans, the Maghreb, and West Africa who decided to sell sex as the means to achieve a better life. Mai explores the contrast between how migrants understand themselves and their work and how humanitarian and governmental agencies conceal their stories, often unwittingly, by addressing them all as helpless victims. The culmination of two decades of research, Mobile Orientations sheds new light on the desires and ambitions of migrant sex workers across the world.
 

Index

The research participants are at the heart of this book. To enable the reader to trace their trajectories through its pages, individuals are indexed by pseudonym under the heading “participants.”

abolitionism. See neo-abolitionism

actor network theory, 51

actors, 173–76, 181, 183

affect, 21–22, 93–94, 109–11, 196–98. See also humor; irony; love; sentimentality

agencing, 9–10, 48–52, 190–91

agency, ix–xv, 169–70

Ahmed, Sara, 9–10, 178, 195

Albania, viii–ix, 33–40, 143–56, 162–64

Albanian sex workers, 8, 33–34, 37–40, 44–45, 112–13

Albanian third-party agents, 142–56, 158–59, 162–64

Alexandru, Monica, 164

Algeria, 5–6, 10–11

Algerian sex workers, 5–6, 8–9, 177–81

Amnesty International, 194

Amsterdam, 74–79, 88–89

antiAtlas of Borders, 203n4

Athens, 73, 86

authoritarianism, 196–97

autoethnography, xv, 12–13, 22–24, 195

Ayelala, 184, 204n5

Bauman, Zygmunt, 51, 158

Berlant, Lauren, 4, 115, 189

Bernstein, Elizabeth, 99

bezness, 92–93, 202n1 (chap. 5)

biographical borders, xii–xiii, 1–2; trafficking, 116–23, 131–32, 140–41, 177, 185–87, 192; transgender, 5–6, 177–81

boditarianism, 80–81, 88, 191

Boris, Eileen, 104

bounded exploitation, xii, 99, 138–40, 186–87

brothel workers, 27–28, 106–7, 111–14, 118, 133–37

Brown, Wendy, 197

Bus de Femmes, 181–83

Canada, 203n2 (chap. 6)

children. See minors

Chouliaraki, Lilie, 115, 119

clients: as allies, 123; criminalization, ix, xii, 107–10, 201n2; female, 91–105; scripts, 23–24, 93–94, 104

consumption, 9, 51, 60–61, 94, 192. See als...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• introduction
• one / Intimate Autoethnography
• two / Engaging Albanian (and Romanian) Masculinities
• three / Selling Comidas Rapidas in Seville
• four / Boditarian Inscriptions
• five / Burning for (Mother) Europe
• six / The Trafficking of Migration
• seven / Love, Exploitation, and Trafficking
• eight / Interviewing Agents
• nine / Ethnofictional Counter-Representations
• conclusion / Challenging Sexual Humanitarianism
• Appendix: Research Projects and Filmography
• Notes
• References
• Index