Understanding the policy field: migration, prostitution, trafficking and exploitation

Chapter Five proceeds from to the transnational character of prostitution and situates it in an analysis of labour migration and labour exploitation. Instead of projecting on the migrant sex worker the collective images that are driven by radical feminist and anti-immigrant ideology, we argue that is it more effective to take seriously what the sex workers told us over and over again: that the migrant sex worker’s self-understanding of prostitution is work, a discerning occupational choice in a situation in which thousands of female migrants find themselves worldwide. This reframing of prostitution as a legitimate occupation draws attention to the continuity of the situation of sex workers with that of other migrant groups, to the exploitative labour arrangements these new migrants encounter in the arrival country, to the third parties they mobilise to find housing and a work place and navigate immigration law, and to the negative effects – usually a breach of the human rights of (migrant) sex workers-of the very laws and regulations that are intended to support them. The authors explore six positive effects on prostitution policy by adopting a labour exploitation framework.