Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry

by Laura María Agustín

  Pleasure and desire for travel enter into the migration project:

  Sometimes I enjoy working, I can travel and see beautiful places. I can go to nice restaurants. I enjoy that the Turkish men view us as desirable. (Ukrainian woman in Turkey)51

  When you work a lot in one place then you ... get tired of the clients ... Even though it will be the same, you imagine another place with other people, and then you come to life inside ... I go to another country, another city. Lately I live between Mallorca and Barcelona ... In summer I always go to Mallorca to spend a little time with my son. (Latin American woman in Spain)52

  Women are widely considered the least demanding workforce

  for all the stereotypical reasons: lower labor costs; manual dexterity; greater tolerance of and better performance in repetitive and monotonous tasks; reliability; patience; low expectations and lack of employment alternatives; a willingness to put up with dead-end jobs; higher voluntary quitting rates; and so on.53

  So the fact that women predominate overwhelmingly in poorly paid or unprotected labour is usually treated as unremarkable.

  What we see at work here is a series of processes that valorize and over-valorize certain types of outputs, workers, firms and sectors, and devalorize others. Does the fact of gendering, for example, the devaluing of female-typed jobs, facilitate these processes of devalorization? We cannot take devalorization as a given: devalor-ization is a produced outcome.54

  Mirjana Morokvasíc considers that the general lack of surprise at women’s undemanding ways and concentration in unprestigious sectors comes about because no one considers their paid employment their primary role – neither themselves nor their employers; their wages are considered complementary.55 Although more and more information exists on female migrants as protagonists of their own lives and family heads, policy and discourse are mostly stuck in the past, perpetuating the dichotomy of ‘males producing and females reproducing’.56

  Within migration studies, therefore, a specialisation has arisen concerned with examining issues of gender: not only to pay attention to women but to compare women with men and to investigate why ideas about their travels to work do not enter mainstream discourse. Of course, we know that women do not form a homogeneous group: their experiences are mediated by class, colour, nationality, age and so on, and what happens to a migrant in one place might not happen to her or him in another. Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo writes that feminist concerns with gender used to focus on the domestic arena, while a more integrated gender perspective looks at everything from ‘ethnic enclave businesses’ to ‘hometown associations’.57 Maintaining that gender is still not given its due in mainstream migration circles, Sarah Mahler and Patricia Pessar propose a framework called ‘gendered geographies of power’, to study gendered identities and relations across borders, along ‘multiple axes of difference’ and across ‘sociospatial scales – from the body to the globe’.58 Nicola Piper suggests that the gender-and-migration concept needs to be ‘integrated into a larger socio-economic and cultural context of men– women relations and women-to-women.’59 This is a field in flux.

  Ways of Leaving and Arriving

  Until recently, there was little concern with how individuals migrate. Now, however, as wealthy countries increasingly aim to tighten border controls and keep out irregular travellers, research is proliferating. This material reveals the abundant, creative methods that migrants and intermediaries use to evade official checks; it does not validate stereotypes of large-scale gangs as major actors in the ‘smuggling’ of humans (defined as helping people get into countries illegally). Many of these studies have centred on women who sell sex, but they demonstrate that all informal migrations share basic characteristics; researchers mostly view people who facilitate these travels as service providers.60

  To come to Europe, people have two basic choices: to enter as a tourist or temporary traveller, with an appropriate visa, or to enter with a job offer and official working papers in hand. The latter being difficult, many people get in with a tourist visa whose term they are prepared to violate by simply staying on. However, even obtaining a tourist visa can be next to impossible for citizens of many countries, or may require years of waiting. Or the potential tourist-migrant may be able to get a visa but not have the money to buy tickets and survive while looking for work. So would-be travellers commonly seek help from intermediaries (known as travel agents, coyotes, snakeheads, prestamistas) who sell information, services and documents. When travellers cannot afford to buy these outright, they go into debt. Those who sell these services are often family members, old friends, tourist acquaintances, independent entrepreneurs or any combination of these, and they may play a minimal part or offer a whole travel package linking them closely to the migrant at every step of the way. Marriage may be part of the deal.

  Services offered for money include the provision of passports, visas, changes of identity and work permits, as well as advice on how to look and act in interviews with immigration officials, police and other authorities (at the border, at airports, on trains and buses, in the street), the loan of money to show upon entry to a country as a tourist, pick-up services at airports, transportation to other countries or to prearranged lodgings and contact with potential employers. These services are not difficult to find in countries where out-travel has become normal; in many countries, formal-sector travel agents offer these informal services.

  In Trujillo there are international travel agencies, and some of the people who work there know the ways out of Perú ... he says ‘Look, I’ll take you to Spain in a roundabout way’ ... then you give him the money ... but if you can’t get in, and the police deport you, you can’t get your money back ... Then you go to an EU country, you take a tour, then they pass you to some smugglers who bring you by land to Spain. (Peruvian domestic worker in Spain)61

  They lent me for the ticket ... My mother signed, and if I don’t pay they’ll take things from her house, the television, the refrigerator. There are people who live by lending money, people leave their car, motorcycle as collateral. (Colombian domestic worker in Spain)62

  Hari-prar arranged my illegal documents. It took him months, many trips to Chandigarh and Delhi, and cost me everything Prakash had saved. My passport name, officially, was Jyoti Vijh. My date of birth made me safely nineteen years old. ‘Otherwise, problems.’ Said the travel advisers. All over Punjab ‘travel agents’ are willing to advise. The longest line between two points is the least detected. (Indian nanny in New York)63

  Our research indicates that the market for human smuggling services is in most cases not dominated by overarching mafia-like criminal structures that have monopolised all smuggling activities from the source to the destination country. Rather, in many regions there exists a complex market for highly differentiated smuggling services offered by a multitude of providers from which potential migrants can choose.64

  Travellers need these services before, during and after their journeys; to get a safe job with decent pay and without severe labour abuses, workers need advice, names, addresses, transport, translations, technical and cultural information, medical references and so on. Being involved in selling sex does not change this process.

  Once I was talking with a friend and she asked if I wanted to go to Spain. I knew why, so I said: ‘Ah, do you want to?’ ... and I don’t know where she met this guy, he got the papers for us, ... the money and we left ... This guy went to look for work, where are the best places to work, where there are men ... Because one place has a lot of men, another doesn’t ... I worked in Logroño a month or so, ... then back to Málaga ... then I came here ... He talked first with the boss of this place, ... said he was looking for work for us. (Ukrainian woman in Spain)65

  Far from being the most desperate poor, migrants need social capital – networks and reliable information, as well as the ability to judge character, to compare offers and to bargain.

  My brother lives in Germany. I had to negotiate quite some time with t
he smugglers until I knew about the safest route to get there. The safest route proved to be the most expensive one. But for me arriving safely was the only thing that really counted. (Turkish migrant in Germany)66

  Travellers in countries that many are trying to leave often find themselves being sized up. Once, in a Caribbean town near beaches full of holidaymakers, a young waiter asked me if I could help him travel to Europe, in exchange for any kind of services I liked. My sympathy could have led me to help with money, ideas or contacts, so becoming a link in the chain of informal networks assisting migrations. Help may come in many forms and unexpectedly:

  In the train, one of us had to sleep with the conductor. He had collected all our passports together – we all came illegally via Paris. There were five of us and we’d had no border inspections. But then the next morning one of us slept with the conductor ... and that’s how we came to be here. (Latin American woman in Germany)67

  The entry of intermediaries into migration networks can be thought of as a way to redress the imbalance between the number of people seeking entry and the limited visas available:

  This imbalance, and the barriers that core countries erect to keep people out, create a lucrative economic niche for entrepreneurs and institutions dedicated to promoting international movement for profit, yielding a black market in migration. As this underground market creates conditions conducive to exploitation and victimization, voluntary humanitarian organizations also arise in developed countries to enforce the rights and improve the treatment of legal and undocumented migrants.68

  Considering all outsiders who insert themselves into migration networks downplays the significance of profit-making versus charitable intentions and the possibility that some participants may have criminal intentions. These networks have always existed, but only with heightened anxiety about the sex industry has the entrepreneurial side been attacked en masse. According to the myth, travel to sell sex is different from all other travel.

  Trips to Work in the Sex Industry

  In Europe, as in the rest of the world, itinerancy has long been associated with selling sex. A myriad of vendors accompanied pilgrims and campaigning soldiers,69 and people have always sold or bartered sex when moving from the countryside to cities or from richer countries to poorer (including Europeans who travelled to Argentina in the nineteenth century and contemporary young Japanese women known as ‘yellow cabs’ who travel with foreigners).70 In recent times, migrants selling sex are found travelling in every possible direction to, from and within Europe, and networks have arisen all over the world to facilitate finding jobs. Newcomers need to meet insiders with connections to the sex industry, whether they charge money for information and services or not.

  Research shows that most migrants who work in the sex industry knew from early on that their work in Europe would have a sexual component.71 But ‘knowing beforehand’ is a poor measure of exploitation and unhappiness, since no one can know what working conditions will feel like in any future occupation. The sex jobs migrants might have done or seen at home may be unlike some in Europe, such as standing nude in a window or performing blowjobs day after day with no other social contact with clients. Furthermore, assertions like ‘the majority of female migrant workers finding themselves in sex-related work migrated for work of a different nature’72 fail to understand that interviewees may not reply truthfully to questions that require them to admit ‘immorality’. Besides, an honest reply can disqualify them from the ‘victim’ status that receives help from social agents and police; as one research team says,

  The apprehended smuggled migrants that we interview usually have a vested interest in describing themselves as hapless naïve people who have been betrayed and cheated by powerful gangsters.73

  Some intermediaries deceive migrants egregiously, as when the package includes signing a contract whose language and foreign currencies they cannot comprehend. Some overeager travellers do not investigate what they are promised, and some permit false documents to be prepared which render them vulnerable in ways they cannot imagine.

  A friend proposed that I come, she knew a girl who could bring me ...You sign a note for seven million pesos [= 4,207] and they tell you that you can pay it back working for a month. You know what you’re going to be doing. Anyone who says she didn’t know, it’s a lie – a married lady with children, how can she not know what she’s going to be doing here? When you arrive, you crash, because the work is bad and it’s a lie that the debt can be paid in a month. You talk with the other girls and see that the debt is more than it cost the girl to bring you. [But] I want to pay her, because she takes a risk, too, to bring you over ... (Colombian woman selling sex in Spain)74

  Many people say that you go to Spain, you earn a thousand dollars, you pay back your debt in one year – and finally you get here, and it’s not like that. It takes you six months to find work, your debt is increasing because of interest. You don’t earn a thousand dollars ... and you spend rent, food and all this and your stay, which was going to be one year, becomes two, three, and you are still here. (Dominican domestic worker in Spain)75

  Often we work for a month or longer and don’t see any money. I had worked for a month, then the woman there said to me: ‘You are illegal. I don’t pay you.’And me, with the fear of deportation ... and her: ‘I’ll call the police this instant.’ (Latin American woman in Germany)76

  Some entrepreneurs take tremendous advantage of these situations, withhold personal documents and threaten migrants and their families at home. Others rely on the dependency that recently arrived and disoriented travellers inevitably feel or simply follow a policy of secrecy. Migrants from any context and working in any kind of job may encounter these abuses.

  To come to Spain, my brother-in-law lent me the money. My cousin encouraged me to come, saying that I could work as a waitress in the bar her husband had opened. When I arrived in Pamplona, I found that he wanted me to work in the bar, but without getting paid; he said the bar didn’t make enough to be able to pay me. (Colombian woman in Spain)77

  [He] told me what would happen three days before departure. He was going to get a passport and he would hold the passport and the ticket, I should remain behind him and follow. But he did not tell me where I was going. (Ethiopian asylum seeker in the UK)78

  In some cases, deceit is total: a traveller who never thought of doing anything sexual when accepting a trip to Europe is forced into selling sex.

  As soon as I was brought to Turin I understood that I had ended up in a blind alley: I found myself with a ‘madam’ who ordered me onto the sidewalk and wanted 50 million [lire] [C= 25,800]. It was a real nightmare ... (Nigerian woman in Italy)79

  I was deceived. On arriving I began to rebel and the problems began. The first few days they made me come down and I sat there in a chair and wanted to throw stones at the drunks that came near me. Then the guy told me: look, things can’t go on like this, you owe me 300,000 pesetas [C= 1,800] that you have to pay me with your work here. Everyone owes me that money and all work to pay me it. When you pay me, you can leave. (Colombian woman in Spain)80

  Some commentators hold that all these travellers were forced, but the concept of force must also be dismantled. Some people feel forced who could physically escape; others start out doing other work but feel obligated to sell sex because they will make so much more money if they do. Women in Nairobi who were asked if they realised that sex jobs could be dangerous, answered that they were not selling sex in order to live safely but to earn money and be independent.81 Migrants widely understand that any migratory project carries with it risks and dangers; leaving home represents a momentous life change.

  To return to the provinces and to live as poorly as your parents would be like dying. So there is no choice! You have to pay for your right to live in the capital, to have a good job and a flat with what you have got. With your body ... today thousands of girls are calmly and calculatedly selling themselves. The stupider ones do it just for money, those w
ith more brains and bigger plans do it for a prestigious job and a place to live. (Russian commentator on ‘sugar daddies’ in Moscow)82

  In the beginning you have no money, nothing to eat, so you have to do things, make some money here and there ... There was a café on the Martelaarsgracht where all the illegals came. You could always make some money there, hustling, dealing. (Algerian in the Netherlands)83

  Obviously, an infinite array of relationships is possible between migrant and entrepreneur, boyfriend, sugar daddy and madam, and there is no doubt that some of these figures talk in disagreeable ways. ‘The cargo changes every 10–15 days’ demonstrates how people-movers may commodify their clients.84 This kind of talk is not, however, evidence that the speakers behave violently or exploitatively. Many researchers approach this field with the preconceived (and sorrowful) notion that migrants have been abused, which can cause interviewees to tell them what they expect to hear:‘sad stories’.85 The opportunism and willingness of some migrants to steal, cheat and manipulate others is usually ignored.

  Many assume that women who live inside sex establishments have lost all freedom, but sometimes workers prefer less free situations, for a variety of reasons:

  When you live in the club it’s cheaper, because it’s a daily rate that you pay for food and lodging, while if you live outside you have to pay the expenses of flat, food, transport ... Most of the time you’re in the bar, you save more. My sister and I finished working, went to bed and slept as much of the day as we could to avoid expenses and to feel that the time was passing faster. (Colombian woman in Spain)86

  No one mistreats you, except if you leave to go outside and something could happen to you, but inside nothing can happen ... you end up feeling protected. (Ecuadorian woman in Spain)87