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Abstract
Trafficking in human beings is currently one of the most debated topics in international media and human rights discourses on human mobility and migration. In this paper, the political controversy of trafficking and forced prostitution is analyzed by means of Brazilian sex workers’ narratives, which are drawn from ethnographic research in the field of sex tourism in Rio de Janeiro. The social implication of international mobility as a “problem” or “danger” constructed by Brazilian media representations on trafficking has a strong impact on the interviewees. The violent stories circulating in the field of sex tourism lead some of the women to constrain their desire for mobility for fear of similar experiences. In contrast, most of the women with migration experiences distance themselves from media representations and repudiate the concept of victimhood. The analysis of interviews with Brazilian sex workers reveals that the focus on exploitation and violence does not consider the agency of the women and the complexity of their migration experiences. Furthermore, the construction of the victim subject obscures the structural limitations of labor migration in sex work, such as restrictive migration regimes, the political regulation of the European sex market, and the social stigmatization of prostitution.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Kapur’s analysis draws on political campaigns against human trafficking, which were realized by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Eastern Europe.
2. Due to Globo’s primacy in the Brazilian media landscape, the media complex has a strong impact on the national agenda and pursues a discourse that – despite the partial opening for alternative perspectives in recent years – still follows a politically conservative tradition. This tradition can be traced back to the dictatorship (1964–1985) in which Globo as the first nationwide television station served as a mouthpiece of the authoritarian regime and as an instrument of national integration. Since the democratic transition the media group is independent, but continues to be an important political actor (Porto, Citation2012).
3. The locations in Copacabana where foreign tourists and Brazilian sex workers meet are open venues in which the women are independent workers, engaging in prostitution without the intermediation of third parties such as club owners or pimps.
4. Most of the women refer to the experience of unemployment or of employment in the low wage sector as the main reason for entering prostitution, in which earnings were estimated as higher and working conditions as more flexible. The interviewees frequently legitimize their sex work by describing it as a temporary occupation and strategy of social advancement (Neuhauser, Citation2013; see also: Blanchette & Silva, Citation2011b).
5. Critics refer to this sector of NGOs which often hold an abolitionist point of view towards prostitution as the “rescue industry” (Agustín, Citation2007, p. 115), which in Brazil is not only shaped by public spending, but also by the expanding investment of private-sector companies and the influence of evangelical missionary groups (Amar, Citation2009, p. 518).
6. Preparing Rio de Janeiro to receive masses of foreign tourists during the global sport events – the World Cup in 2014 and the upcoming Olympic Games – does not only require the construction of infrastructure such as stadiums, hotels, and highways, but also the reconfiguration of the way in which the city and its inhabitants imagine themselves and are imagined around the world. In the past, sexualization has been a key component of this imagination. This is particularly visible in the figure of the “hot mulatta” as a symbol for Brazil. Subsequently, the repression of sex tourism in the run-up to the games is related to the repudiation of the eroticized representation of the city of Rio de Janeiro and the Brazilian nation.
7. Whereas in other Latin American countries the notion gringo is only used for Americans or for light-skinned foreigners and has a pejorative character, in Brazil the term can be used for any foreigner and does not necessarily imply devaluation.
8. The importance attributed to the concept of fraud is related to the legal definition of trafficking in the Palermo Protocol of the United Nations, which is frequently cited in Brazilian media coverage. In the Protocol trafficking is understood as “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability […] for the purpose of exploitation” (UNODC, Citation2001).