This book argues that social helpers consistently deny the agency of large numbers of working-class migrants , in a range of theoretical and practical moves whose object is management and control: the exercise of governmentality. The journeys of women who work in the sex industry are treated as involuntary in a victimising discourse known as 'trafficking', while the experiences of men and trangenders who sell sex are ignored. The work of migrant women in Europe, not only in sex but in housework and caring, is mostly excluded from government regulation and accounts, leaving these workers social invisible. Migrants working in the informal sector are treated as passive subjects rather than as normal people looking for conventional opportunities, conditions and pleasures, who may prefer to sell sex to their other options. The victim identity imposed on so many in the name of helping them makes helpers themselves disturbingly important figures. Historical research demonstrates how this victimising and the concomitant assumption of importance by middle-class women, which began two centuries ago, was closely linked to their carving out of a new employment sphere for themselves through the naming of a project to rescue and control working-class women."
I want to add that reading Kempadoo's books on trafficking, which contain an abundance of actual research -- interviews with women, participatory action research, ethnography -- reveal that the stories of the women are so varied that it is, indeed, very wrong to impose on all of them the notion that they are passive victims. When Agustin writes, above, that they are "normal people looking for conventional opportunities, conditions, and pleasures, who may prefer to sell sex to their other options," people are often outraged. They might buy that this is the case among Western women, but that it could be the case in Thailand or among Guatamalan women who've migrated to Spain seems completely wrong to them. You see these in the sex worker wars in bloglandia. Christ, women who *are* sex workers, whether Western or not, will actually write about their own lives, intervening in these debates with their own experiences.
Without fail, every single one is ignored or, worse, silenced. They are said to be unique, privileged exceptions to the rule if anyone pays attention to them. Or, they are completely ignored. *crickets* Worse, they are often told they are dupes of the patriarchy and/or willingly colluding to maintain male privilege -- and will often be called men -- as in, male identified OR as sock puppets pretending to be prostitutes since their stories couldn't possibly be the stories told be a real woman.
I don't know if Dwayne ever followed the sex worker wars but if he did, then he knows exactly what I'm talking about. It was kind of astounding to watch as sex workers would show up at these debates, trying to speak their lives, only to be ignored, belittled, silenced or outright told they were liars.