Embodied cosmopolitanisms: the subjective mobility of migrants working in the global sex industry

Abstract

Anti-trafficking rhetoric and policies emphasise the extent of exploitation and coercion of female migrant sex workers and obfuscate the shared ambivalences and contradictions experienced by migrant female sex workers and their male agents and partners. By engaging in the global sex industry, both young men and women negotiate their aspiration to cosmopolitan late modern lifestyles against the prevalence of essentialist patriarchal gender values and sexual mores at home. In the process, established gender normativities, legitimising women's subjection to men, are both reproduced and challenged. The evidence informing this article shows that a minority of women are coerced into the sex industry. There is a direct link between the adherence to essentialist gender/sexual roles and the recourse to violence and exploitation, because migrants' prolonged involvement in the sex industry coincides with the adherence to more cosmopolitan gender/sexual roles, translating into less authoritarian and violent discourses and practices. Hegemonic understandings of migrants' involvement in the global sex industry in terms of ‘trafficking’ erase these important dynamics and dimensions, which underpin intricate feelings and experiences of advantage, disadvantage and exploitation. By failing to engage with the meanings that migrants working in the sex industry ascribe to their working and personal lives, the (anti)trafficking logic of ‘humanitarian intervention’ enforces forms of solidarity and support that appeal to the minority and harm the majority of the people they are supposed to ‘rescue’.

Las políticas y la retórica antitráfico enfatizan el grado de explotación y la coerción de las mujeres inmigrantes trabajadoras sexuales y confunden las ambivalencias y contradicciones compartidas experimentadas por las mujeres inmigrantes trabajadoras sexuales y sus agentes y parejas varones. Al involucrarse en la industria global del sexo, tanto los hombres como las mujeres jóvenes negocian su aspiración a los estilos de vida de la cosmopolita modernidad tardía contra la prevalencia de los valores patriarcales esencialistas del género y las prácticas sexuales en el hogar. En el proceso, son desafiadas y reproducidas las normatividades de género establecidas que legitiman el sometimiento de las mujeres a los hombres. La evidencia en la que se basa este artículo muestra que una pequeña minoría de las mujeres es forzada a entrar en la industria del sexo. Existe una conexión directa entre el apego a los roles esencialistas de género/sexo y el uso de la violencia y la explotación, porque la prolongada participación de los y las inmigrantes en la industria del sexo coincide con el apego a roles más cosmopolitas de género/sexo, resultando en discursos y prácticas menos autoritarios y violentos. Las concepciones hegemónicas de la participación de los y las inmigrantes en la industria del sexo global en términos del ‘tráfico’ borran estas importantes dinámicas y dimensiones, las cuales sustentan intrincados sentimientos y experiencias de ventaja, desventaja y explotación. Al no ocuparse de los significados que los y las inmigrantes que trabajan en la industria del sexo otorgan a sus vidas personales y laborales, la lógica del (anti)tráfico de la ‘intervención humanitaria’ impone formas de solidaridad y apoyo que apelan a la minoría y dañan a la mayoría de la población a la que se supone deben ‘rescatar’.

Keywords:

• global sex industry
• trafficking
• migration
• queerness
• cosmopolitism
• essentialism

Keywords:

• industria global del sexo
• tráfico
• migración
• queerness
• cosmopolitismo
• esencialismo

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council and to the International Organization for Migration, which funded, respectively, the ‘Migrant Workers in the Sex Industry’ (Award RES-062-23-137) research project and the research project on Albanian and Romanian ‘traffickers’ informing this article. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this article and the editors of Gender, Place and Culture for their inspiring and thorough comments.

Notes

1. For a full transcript of the parliamentary debate on 1 July 2009, see http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldhansrd/text/907010007.htm#09070174000134 for a synthesis of and references to the following passages of the Policing and crime bill, see www.parliament.uk/briefingpapers/commons/lib/research/.../snha-05219.pdf.

2. I refer to men managing sex work as ‘agents’ and to their work as ‘management’, rather than using the stigmatising term ‘pimp’ or verbs such as ‘to control’, in order for the diversity of professional and interpersonal relations developing between men and women working in the global sex industry to emerge in its full complexity. By using less morally charged terms, I do not mean to underestimate that these dynamics can be exploitative and abusive, but I aim at setting a more ‘neutral’ discursive space within which important nuances can become visible.

3. Manichaeism, a religion originating in ancient Persia, is based on a cosmology that is organised around the polarised struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness.

4. For a fuller discussion of the methodological approach and ethical implications of the two researches, see Mai 2009 and 2010, respectively.

5. Only pseudonyms are used in this article, to guarantee the anonymity of interviewees.

6. The term ‘girl’ is an emic term indicating women working in the sex industry or young women more in general and does not indicate a person who is considered to be a minor.