The Politics of Sex Trafficking

A Moral Geography

E. O'Brien, S. Hayes, B. Carpenter

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137318701
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book offers a unique insight into the moral politics behind human trafficking policy in Australia and the USA, including rare interviews with key political actors, and a critical account of Congressional and Parliamentary hearings.

1

The Politics of Sex Trafficking

At the turn of the twenty-first century, interest in human trafficking exploded, with activists, scholars and policy makers rushing to understand the causes of and solutions to this problem, broadly characterised as a ‘modern form of slavery’. Such concerns centre primarily on the fear that vulnerable women from developing countries are being lured to developed countries with false promises of a better income and a better life; where the use of deceptive and coercive methods is dominant; and where women are recruited, transported and exploited for their labour. Growing panic about women and children being traded as commodities in sexual slavery has challenged the international community to act.

Sex trafficking is just one form of trafficking for forced labour. Other industries where workers are trafficked include the domestic, garment, manufacturing and agricultural sectors (GAATW 2010), but it is the trafficking of women and girls for sex that has most captured the public attention and dominated political debate in recent decades. The resulting ‘moral panic’ about a flourishing sex slave trade has sparked renewed interest in the relationship between prostitution and trafficking. In such a climate, a familiar pattern has emerged to influence political action, policy and legislation, with many activists arguing that in order to prevent trafficking prostitution must be abolished. They position the harm of sex trafficking as a direct consequence of legalised, decriminalised or tolerated prostitution and typically characterise the relationship between prostitution and sex trafficking as one of cause and effect, arguing that legalised prostitution creates the conditions for sex trafficking to flourish. As Janice Raymond, leading abolitionist activist and founder of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), has declared, ‘when prostitution is accepted by society, sex trafficking and sex tourism inevitably follow’ (Raymond 1995, 2). A key assumption here is that legalised prostitution involves a social ‘acceptance’ of prostitution that inevitably leads to an increase in the trafficking of women into the sex industry. At the heart of this argument, which has much purchase particularly in the United States and Australia, is a much older debate about the moral harm of sex work and the legitimacy of the sex industry. This speaks to the social construction of a dualism of sexual behaviour, of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sex, where good sex is intimate, private, romantic, and bad sex is commercial, promiscuous, transitory.

Trafficking debates in the nineteenth century

Concern about the trafficking of women for sex first began to emerge in the late nineteenth century. Characterised as a ‘new’ slavery (Musto 2009, 284), or ‘white slavery’ (Harrington 2010, 47), the discovery of sex trafficking in the nineteenth century was positioned as quite distinct from traditional slavery in which marginalised racial groups were the focus of exploitation. In this ‘new’ form of slavery, young white (innocent and virginal) women were the new victims (Berkovitch 1999, 38), and the concern that white, Western women were being seduced, abducted and exploited by ‘South American, African or “Oriental” (non-white) men’ thus subverted rather than challenged the racialised understanding of slavery (Doezema in Segrave et al. 2009, 1). Evidence also suggests that this concern was misplaced, with very few cases uncovered of either white or non-white women being abducted and exploited during this period (Jeffreys 1997, 8).

Thus, this increased concern was not a response to a preponderance of cases of trafficking, but was more likely a reflection of social concerns linked to society’s changing sexual mores and the desire for social control (Weeks 1981, 89). Weeks argues that the ‘panic’ surrounding sex trafficking was transference of concern around perceived threats to sexual morality posed by the increasing visibility of sexuality and promiscuity. The sex industry, as the most visible indicator of a liberalising sexuality and increasing ‘permissiveness’, became the focus of moral outrage (Weeks 1981, 88). The moral panic about trafficking may also have been a symptom of concern surrounding increased migration, with the globalisation of labour in the early twentieth century resulting in the movement of many women across borders. Kempadoo (2005) argues that the desire of women to migrate for work fuelled panic around the potential entrapment and exploitation of women from Western Europe and North America. Such a concern also speaks to a deeper assumption about the passivity and vulnerability of women and their natural opposition to adventure and freedom of movement. This is especially the case when women are involved in migrating to work in the sex industry, as (hetero)sexual behaviour speaks most closely to traditional masculine and feminine scripts of activity and passivity, seducer and seduced, experience and innocence (Hayes et al. 2012).

Despite evidence that the women travelling for prostitution in the early 1900s were aware that they would be working in the sex industry (Jeffreys 1997, 8), public concerns were based on the belief that there was a large trade in women who had been kidnapped or deceived. Chapkis (2003) argues that the public’s willingness to ‘panic’ about young women being ‘lured’ or ‘kidnapped’ was consistent with a history of imposing increased ‘state scrutiny and control’ on poor women involved in prostitution (Chapkis 2003, 923).

When social purity campaigners, for example, began to focus their efforts on this ‘new slavery’, their target was not only the crime of trafficking, but also a wide range of sexual behaviour. The campaigns encompassed concerns about the age of consent, the abolition of prostitution, pornography and the gendered double standard for sexual behaviour (Weeks 1981). Under the banner of activism against sex trafficking, social campaigners heavily criticised the existing sex industry, calling for its abolition. Jeffreys argues that ‘For feminists, campaigning against the White Slave Traffic was a way of gaining ground in their struggle against prostitution in general’ (Jeffreys 1997, 8). Their antitrafficking efforts included lobbying for the closure of brothels and the establishment of ‘rescue’ missions to take women out of prostitution. Campaigners also opposed the legalisation or state regulation of brothels (Outshoorn 2005, 142), and called for the abolition of all prostitution.

These anti-trafficking campaigns ultimately led to the development of international agreements aimed at preventing the traffic in women (Harrington 2010, 33). The first major international discussions on trafficking were held in London in the late nineteenth century, followed by international conferences in 1902 and 1910. This led to the creation of two separate international conventions, with international interest in preventing sex trafficking peaking in the mid-twentieth century, with the establishment of the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of Prostitution of Others (hereafter referred to as the 1949 Trafficking Convention). The Convention adopted a clear anti-prostitution position, viewing domestic sex industries as directly linked to the promotion of sex trafficking. Jeffreys argues that the Convention, ‘provided for the punishment of anyone who kept or managed a brothel or in any way exploited the prostitution of another, and thus sounded the death-knell for licensed brothels’ (Jeffreys 1997, 14).

Widespread international support for the Convention was not forthcoming, as many nations, including Australia and the United States, chose neither to sign nor to ratify it. There is no commonly agreed explanation as to why countries were reluctant to sign, though Outshoorn suggests trafficking had ‘simply faded from the public eye’ by 1949 (Outshoorn 2005, 142). Jeffreys argues that ‘changes in sexual morality’ during the 1950s and 1960s ‘created a less sympathetic climate’ for a focus on sex trafficking (Jeffreys 1997, 14).

Trafficking debates in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

Towards the end of the twentieth century, interest in sex trafficking began to build again, with many radical feminists who were engaged in campaigns against pornography beginning to also campaign against trafficking. These activists brought to the debate a distinctly anti-prostitution agenda, asserting a direct link between the sexual exploitation of women in prostitution and in trafficking (Walkowitz 1980, 123). Once again, the increased movement of women across international borders was partly responsible for increased international attention on trafficking. The collapse of the Soviet Union (Kara 2009, 24; Musto 2009, 282) along with increasing economic development and globalisation (Jeffreys 1997, 307) generated an increased supply of low-wage labour. Increasing numbers of women fleeing poverty in ‘source’ countries were now seeking employment opportunities in ‘destination countries’ (Brysk 2009, 9). Concern about increased international migration and tourism converged with the further ‘liberalisation of sexual mores’ (Outshoorn 2005, 142) and an increasingly legitimised sex industry, which sparked renewed political debate on prostitution and its relationship to the newly identified crime of sex trafficking.

Anxiety surrounding the growing AIDS epidemic (Outshoorn 2005, 143) and sex tourism, as well as re-energised efforts by anti-prostitution advocates to renew the 1949 Trafficking Convention, added to the increasing international focus on the trafficking ‘problem’ (Murray 1998, 51). In 1993, an anti-prostitution non-government organisation (NGO), the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), organised a conference to ‘heighten awareness of the sex trade and to stem the sale of humans into bondage’ (Asia Watch 1993, 149). CATW also lobbied consistently for a new international forum to address trafficking. Awareness was certainly fuelled by growing media interest in sex trafficking and the proliferation of films and documentaries portraying the plight of victims coerced into the sex industry (Brysk 2009, 11). Amid this resurgence of international interest in sex trafficking, Asia Watch produced a new report, A Modern Form of Slavery (Asia Watch 1993). The report and subsequent speaking tour in Australia about the trafficking of Burmese women and girls into the sex industry in Thailand provoked further debate in Australia and Southeast Asia about sex trafficking.

In the late nineteenth century, the moral panic surrounding trafficking had focused on white women as victims. The emerging panic in the late twentieth century was also extremely racialised, with victims depicted as primarily Asian, African or Eastern European. This shift in the focus of anti-trafficking campaigners from a white ‘Western’ woman to a non-white woman from developing countries is notable, and centres around the privileging of developed over undeveloped and developing nation states, and the pervasiveness of a Western dominance in law, economics and culture. Nevertheless, the underlying assumption that certain women are unable to protect themselves from harm remains. Interestingly, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, women in developed nations are assumed to be less vulnerable, and certainly not in need of rescue from the harm of exploitation. Western women from developed countries cross borders to work without undue attention from the law or the public. In contrast, when women from developing countries cross borders for work they are positioned as powerless, vulnerable and in need of protection. The reasons for this are complex and include the non-recognition of qualifications between developing and developed nations; a lack of access to appropriate visas for women from source countries who seek to travel to destination countries (for example, women from Thailand cannot get access to student working visas into Australia while women from Canada and the United Kingdom can); and limits on foreign workers in developed countries. These factors combine to force many into the illegal informal economy (Agustin 2007; Murray 1998). They also enable a moral boundary to be established between different groups of women, thereby legitimating divergent legislative and policy decisions based on their country of origin rather than their status.

This was evident in international efforts to develop a new convention against human trafficking, which began in 1995 at the United Nations Beijing Women’s Conference. An attempt by CATW to establish a new convention against sexual exploitation at this conference failed (Sullivan 2003, 71); nevertheless, momentum was building for the development of a new international agreement on trafficking, with the hope that it would receive the widespread support that was absent from earlier conventions.

Between 1995 and 1999, the United Nations adopted several resolutions focused on human trafficking and violence against women (Ollus 2002, 4), indicating a greater interest in efforts to combat trafficking. The United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention adopted a resolution on Combating the Organised Smuggling of Illegal Migrants in 1995, a resolution on Trafficking in Children in 1996, resolutions on Violence Against Women in 1996 and 1997 and a draft resolution on Illegal Migrants and Trafficking in Persons in 1998 (Ollus 2002, 4). In December 1998, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a Resolution on Transnational Organised Crime, establishing an ad hoc committee with the responsibility of drafting a new treaty on human trafficking (Schloenhardt 2009a, 2). Between January 1999 and October 2000, the committee held a series of 11 meetings at the UN International Crime Prevention Centre in Vienna, where country delegations and NGOs negotiated over the development of a new international agreement (Raymond 2002, 491; Ditmore and Wijers 2003, 79).

During the negotiations, CATW pushed for the Convention to include a requirement for states to dismantle sex industries and oppose legalisation of prostitution. However, despite fears from many that disputes over the legitimacy of prostitution would prevent the creation of a new convention, the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children was adopted in 2000 in Palermo, Italy. The Protocol established a definition of trafficking in international law and recommended the introduction of domestic laws to combat trafficking. Under the 2000 Protocol, trafficking in persons is defined as

the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring 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 or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation.

(Trafficking Protocol 2000)

The term ‘exploitation of the prostitution of others’ is undefined within the 2000 Protocol and is considered to be a compromise definition as a result of extensive disagreement over whether or not sex trafficking should encompass only forced prostitution or all prostitution (Chuang 2010).

This dispute has characterised international and domestic debate over the last 20 years. At the Beijing Women’s Conference, CATW clashed with the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (GAATW) on the adoption of the CATW-proposed Convention Against Sexual Exploitation (Sullivan 2003, 73). GAATW argued that the proposed convention took an anti-prostitution stance and criticised it for undermining the rights of sex workers. Negotiations between January 1999 and October 2000 leading to the development of the United Nations Protocol also reflected this dispute over the asserted harm of prostitution and its relationship to trafficking. Questions of consent and coercion were key to the debate (Segrave et al. 2009, 16), with disputes over the legitimacy of prostitution threatening to prevent the creation of a Trafficking Protocol with widespread international support.

To date, 117 member states have signed the Protocol and 154 are parties to it (United Nations 2012). This suggests the Protocol has been widely accepted in the international community. It has also, however, perpetuated debate over the relationship between prostitution and trafficking, in large part due to the ambiguity of the definition of trafficking.

In addition to the establishment of the Protocol, an increased focus on security and migration in the early twenty-first century helped put the issue of human trafficking on national agendas. Following the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001, resources were swiftly channelled towards counterterrorism efforts as well as border control and increased scrutiny on migration issues (DeStefano 2007, 139). In an environment of rising security concerns related to migration, governments have increased their focus on irregular migration, human smuggling and human trafficking as a key political issue (Lee 2007, 2). This increased focus on border control has not been limited to the United States (Hudson 2007, 212; Kempadoo 2007, 82), with considerable convergence in a number of countries towards trafficking prevention and migration control (Milivojevic and Pickering 2008, 37).

As a result of this increased focus on border control, trafficking discourse became part of a wider and highly controversial debate about migration. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) suggests that trafficking should be viewed as part of a continuum of irregular migration, which may also incorporate human smuggling and asylum seeking (IOM 2003, 9). Responses to irregular migration have been vested in an environment of significant anti-migration sentiment in both Australia and the United States, where many of those who attempt to migrate are characterised as ‘illegal’ or ‘illegitimate’ (Weber and Bowling 2008; Grewcock 2009). The great divide between those people who are deemed ‘deserving’ of our protection versus those deemed ‘undeserving’ is largely based on perceptions of harm. ‘Illegal’ migrants are characterised as undesirable and potentially harmful, while victims of trafficking are viewed as innocent victims of harmful experiences. At the very top of this emerging hierarchy are victims of sex trafficking (O’Brien 2013). In the continuum of irregular migration, the assumption is that it is not just the victim of trafficking, but quite specifically the victim of ‘sex’ trafficking who is the most harmed. This victimhood owes much of its status to assumptions about the moral harm of sex work and a persistent focus on the relationship between prostitution and trafficking.

Thus, a dispute over the harm implicit in the exchange of sex for money is at the heart of this debate, and while this book is primarily concerned with the politics of sex trafficking rather than prostitution, it is the perceived extreme harm of sex trafficking that serves to focus the public debate on commercial sex. As we have already alluded to and will discuss in more detail in later chapters, commercial sex is constructed as inherently bad sex because it sits outside our idealised understanding of love, relationships and family. While there are some suggestions that our sexual ethic is moving from a relational to a recreational model (Bernstein 2007), this has yet to substantially infiltrate public discussions over the harm of sex trafficking. In the public psyche, and in policy, politics and legislation, as we will discuss throughout this book, women who cross national borders to work as sex workers have little option to access any identity beyond that of vulnerable, exploited and harmed.

Moral harm and sex trafficking policy

Debate about the harm of sex work is a persistent feature of the trafficking debate, but the increased focus on sex trafficking has also resulted in changes in political debates on sex work. Janelle Fawkes, Chief Executive Officer of the Scarlet Alliance – Australia’s peak sex workers’ organisation – has argued that it is now virtually impossible to have a discussion on the sex industry without the issue of trafficking being raised as a linked issue. When interviewed for this research, she declared that:

We never enter into a sex industry law or policy discussion without this issue now being a core element of the discussion … sex industry law reform discussion is no longer about the occupational health and safety of sex workers. It’s no longer about incentives to comply. It’s no longer about increasing safety or looking at the real issues for sex workers. It’s now about this perceived set of issues. And one of them, a core one, is trafficking.

(Fawkes interview 2008)

The linking of the issue of sex work and trafficking in policy debate has occurred in several nation states including Australia, the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden and New Zealand (West 2000; Swanstrom 2004; Outshoorn 2005). In the process, many of the assumptions about the perceived harm of sex work have influenced political understandings of the nature of human trafficking, and specifically the causes of and solutions to this human rights challenge.

The underlying assumptions about good and bad sex, the differing moral status of women who cross borders to work and the implicit attributes attached to men and women in heterosexual encounters, all come into play when we engage with the deep social divide over the morality of exchanging sex for money. This was most evident in public debates around the development of legislation in Australia and the United States following the establishment of the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children.

The United States of America

The United States signed the Trafficking Protocol on 13 December 2000 and ratified it on 3 November 2005. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (hereafter referred to as the TVPA 2000) and Reauthorizations of that Act in 2003 (TVPRA 2003), 2005 (TVPRA 2005) and 2008 (TVPRA 2008) form the bulk of the United States’ legal efforts to combat trafficking and are the result of numerous Congressional committee hearings investigating the crime of trafficking.

Much of the debate surrounding the initial US legislation focused on the distinction between ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary’ prostitution, with the resulting TVPA 2000 establishing a two-tier definition of trafficking. Forced prostitution was defined as ‘severe trafficking’, punishable under law, while transportation for the purposes of consensual prostitution was defined as ‘trafficking’, with no criminal sanctions attached. However, this approach came under significant criticism in ensuing years, with the assertion that legali...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. The Politics of Sex Trafficking
• 2. Perspectives and Players
• 3. Stories of Trafficking
• 4. Measuring Trafficking
• 5. Defining Trafficking
• 6. Causes of Trafficking
• 7. Silencing Dissent
• 8. A Moral Geography
• References
• Index