Sverre Molland, The Perfect Business? Anti-trafficking and the Sex Trade along the Mekong. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012, vii + 276 pp. ISBN 9780824836535. Price: USD 26.00 (paperback) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Asian Studies Review, 2010
Over the last two decades, increasing attention has been given to trafficking in persons globally. Governments, international organisations and the media generally assume that trafficking is immensely profitable. This paper problematises this assumption in light of ethnographic research within the sex industry along the Thai-Lao border. It argues that the cross-border recruitment of Lao women into the Thai sex industry constitutes a mixture of capitalist logic and patron-client relationships. It is therefore not possible, as some anti- trafficking programs attempt to do, to read probabilities of trafficking out of mechanical models of profitability and unilateral maximisation of social actors.
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2011
Trafficking literature often mentions underage prostitution, where paedophilia and virginity sale are considered particularly appalling examples of sex trafficking. At the same time it is ubiquitously assumed that underage prostitution, epitomised by the sale of virgins as elite commodities within sex trafficking, results in considerable profits for traffickers and exploiters. I argue that such views reflect a tacit projection of classic economic theory onto migration and sex commerce. This confuses more than explains how virginity sale operates within a commercial sex market as well as how social actors within this market understand such social practices. Drawing on detailed ethnographic accounts of how the trade in virgins is taking place along the Thai-Lao border, I elucidate how recruitment, value and exchange are socially and culturally embedded practices.
The Australian Journal of Anthropology
For several years, aid programs in the Mekong region have taken an increasing interest in cross-border mobility and human trafficking and its relationship with development. More recently, there has been an increasing interest in the identification of trafficked victims and the investigation, arrest and prosecution of traffickers. Whereas anti-trafficking programs ubiquitously define themselves as being in a battle with traffickers, this article argues that although they are not homologous social actors, both engage in acts of bad faith. The article elaborates this argument by drawing attention to the recruitment process within the Lao sex industry as well as to the way in which aid programs attempt to identify trafficked victims. It concludes that imaginary aspects of development underpin a simultaneous disjuncture yet enable the social reproduction of the life worlds of ‘traffickers’ and ‘anti-traffickers’ alike.
Development and change, 2010
Over the past few years some governments and development organizations have increasingly articulated cross-border mobility as ‘trafficking in persons’. The notion of a market where traffickers prey on the ‘supply’ of migrants that flows across international borders to meet the ‘demand’ for labour has become a central trope among anti-trafficking development organizations. This article problematizes such economism by drawing attention to the oscillating cross- border migration of Lao sex workers within a border zone between Laos and Thailand. It illuminates the incongruity between the recruitment of women into the sex industry along the Lao–Thai border and the market models that are employed by the anti-trafficking sector. It discusses the ways in which these cross-border markets are conceived in a context where aid programming is taking on an increasingly important role in the politics of borders. The author concludes that allusions to ideal forms of knowledge (in the guise of classic economic theory) and an emphasis on borders become necessary for anti- trafficking programmes in order to make their object of intervention legible as well as providing post-hoc rationalizations for their continuing operation.
Bangkok, White Lotus & IRASEC (CNRS & French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), on behalf of the ANESVAD Foundation (Bilbao, Spain), preface by Prof Marco Scarpati, postface by Prof Thomas Steinfatt, 512 p.
“The Trade in Human Beings for Sex in Southeast Asia” brings together 28 senior scholars and experts hailing from all over the world in various disciplines: Ethnology and Social Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Political Science, Psychology, Psycho-Criminology, Police, Medicine, Law, Economics, History, as well as Humanitarian assistance to give a general statement on slavery, prostitution and trafficking in persons in this region. In recent years, prostitution and trafficking in women and children for the purpose of sexual exploitation have been steadily increasing at an alarmig rate. Underlying reasons are not only the ongoing process of globalization and the lagging behind of the concerned emerging economies, but also a number of cultural factors specific to this region. The problem’s background in given in Part 1: "A look at the past"; Part 2 provides the "data from field studies in human trafficking and prostitution"; Part 2 deals with "additional related problems and suggests possible responses". An indispensable work covering all aspects of this complex problem and proffering suggestions to deal with it
This paper sets out to explore the interrelations between safeguarding migration flows between Laos and Thailand and dual models of migrant brokers’ subjectivity. Within the anti-trafficking community in the Mekong region there is a tacit dual imagery of “insider” and “outsider” categories, where external brokers are associated with “risk,” whereas friends and personal networks within village communities constitute possible avenues for “safe migration.” The Thai and Lao governments have over the past years attempted to legalize migration flows. An important rationale for this—which is advocated by international organizations in the Mekong region and elsewhere—is the claim that legalization will “dry out” a market for dubious brokers, making labour migration safer. This paper suggests that what sustains this “legalization model” is an implicit utilitarian view of migration which projects ideal- type depictions of traffickers and brokers. In light of ethnographic data from the commercial sex industry along the Thai-Lao border, this paper suggests that migration networks do not replace brokers, as brokering services are embedded within these very same networks where legality is appropriated as a resource with mixed results. Yet, although legality is being manufactured through the migration process, both consensual and deceptive recruitment (i.e., “trafficking”) of young Lao women, is taking place within a context where sex workers themselves play a central role as dilettante-brokers within wider informal social networks. In other words, legality does not alter brokering services, but rather the reverse holds true. “Trafficking,” then, is taking place in the very same contexts that are deemed “safe” by anti-trafficking programs.