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Invisible: Britain's Migrant Sex Workers
Ming and Beata share neither the same language nor cultural background, yet their stories are remarkably similar. Both are single mothers in their thirties and both came to Britain in search of a new life: Ming from China and Beata from Poland. Neither imagined that their journey would end in a British brothel.
In this chilling exposé, investigative journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai works undercover as a housekeeper in a brothel and unveils the terrible reality of the British sex trade. Many workers are trapped, some are controlled – the lack of freedoms this invisible strait of society suffers is both shocking and scandalous and at odds with the idea of a modern Britain in the twenty-first century.
Adapted into the Channel 4 documentary ‘Sex: My British Job’ by Nick Broomfield.
Hsiao-Hung Pai is an acclaimed Taiwanese-born writer and journalist. She is the author of Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2009, and Scattered Sand: The Story of China's Rural Migrants. Pai’s report on the Morecambe Bay tragedy for the Guardian was adapted into Nick Broomfield’s film Ghosts. She lives in London.
In this chilling exposé, investigative journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai works undercover as a housekeeper in a brothel and unveils the terrible reality of the British sex trade. Many workers are trapped, some are controlled – the lack of freedoms this invisible strait of society suffers is both shocking and scandalous and at odds with the idea of a modern Britain in the twenty-first century.
Adapted into the Channel 4 documentary ‘Sex: My British Job’ by Nick Broomfield.
Hsiao-Hung Pai is an acclaimed Taiwanese-born writer and journalist. She is the author of Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2009, and Scattered Sand: The Story of China's Rural Migrants. Pai’s report on the Morecambe Bay tragedy for the Guardian was adapted into Nick Broomfield’s film Ghosts. She lives in London.
350 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 2013
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167 people want to read
About the author
Hsiao-Hung Pai
10 books29 followersHsiao-Hung Pai is a journalist and author of Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain’s Hidden Army of Labour (2008), shortlisted for the Orwell Book Prize 2009; Scattered Sand: The Story of China’s Rural Migrants, (2012), winner of the Bread and Roses Award 2013, Invisible (2013), Angry White People (2016), Bordered Lives (2018) and Ciao Ousmane (2021). She has written for the Guardian and many Chinese publications worldwide.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
January 10, 2024
Insightful for understanding the systems and dangers especially migrant women face when being undocumented and either forced or choose to sell sex for a living or in the cases of those being forced, not earning a living at all. The dangers and risks are unimaginable. The ending of the book was disjointed but I appreciate the insights this piece of investigative journalism has provided.
August 8, 2015
What can I say about this book? That it makes me wish the planet would extinguish our species? That it turns one thoroughly off the idea of having sex with men? That it is a must-read for prostitution apologists everywhere? That prostitution is a complex, terrible problem that will never, ever, ever be solved under imperialist white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy? That women deserve better than this? That nothing we do - sure as hell not legalization, not even the Nordic model- can solve this problem? That as long as we live in capitalist societies wherein the vast majority of men have nothing but utter contempt for women, poor women will be sacrificed to lives of horror? That the reason Andrea Dworkin caught such hell is because deep down, we know she was right? All this and more. What a depressing read. What a soul-destroying world we live in. Women deserve better than this.
October 3, 2018
With this book Hsiao-Hung Pai has cemented her reputation as one of the foremost investigative journalists writing in Britain today. Though the book was published in 2013 and relies on fieldwork from 2010, it still remains pertinent today. By exploring the stories of Beata a Polish woman from central Poland and Ming a woman from northern China; Pai maps out the trajectory that so many migrant women who enter the sex trade in the UK take. Driven by poverty back home and seeking to support both their children and elderly parents; without spousal support, these women drift into sex economy, as the jobs in the formal sector are either closed or too low-paying to illegal immigrants. Their very illegality makes them vulnerable to exploitation by employers who know they are desparate for money and will have no legal recourse being unable to go to the police or social services for fear of being deported.
This is a depressing tale of greed, exploitation, misery and suffering but Pai tells it with the right balance of empathy and analysis.
This is a depressing tale of greed, exploitation, misery and suffering but Pai tells it with the right balance of empathy and analysis.
November 23, 2021
I thought this was a really insightful book which tells of the nuances of migrant sex workers stories. It definitely paints a depressing picture of abuse, coercion and desperation. It shows how much immigration control and the hostile environment takes away people's agency to choose and makes them so vulnerable to abuse.
The ending was disappointing, it was almost like the author ran out of time. I had to re-read the final sentences several times as I felt I must have missed something. It almost made me give the book 3 stars but I don't think that would be fair as overall it is a really impressive and brave work of journalism.
The ending was disappointing, it was almost like the author ran out of time. I had to re-read the final sentences several times as I felt I must have missed something. It almost made me give the book 3 stars but I don't think that would be fair as overall it is a really impressive and brave work of journalism.
October 29, 2018
Hard to read of the experience of so many women trapped by hostile immigration, pimped out, or trafficked and caught in the sex trade. I was so saddened to read of the increase in recent years despite all that so many organisations are doing to try to help. The narratives within the book made it , for all that it was hard, a readable book, though sometimes they all got so tangled that it was hard to keep track.
May 7, 2018
Ending was a little dissatisfying as it just seemed to stop without a conclusion but very enjoyable and I learned a lot.
August 4, 2018
This was such an eye-opener. Incredibly heartbreaking, and very difficult to put down once I got started. It's so sad that modern slavery is all around us - those men are absolute evil.
October 30, 2018
A snappy and insightful glimpse into the lives of the otherwise invisible lives of women trafficked into the UK. This is based on the author's undercover work in a modern day UK brothel.
October 14, 2022
For anyone who's paid for sex Read this book it will open your mind.
June 8, 2025
了解移民的女性是如何向性交易妥協⋯看的無力又難過⋯沒有太多的分析，主要是圍繞著性交易者本身的故事！
January 23, 2024
‘“The growing number of women forced into sex work was the result of an increase in demand among British men for both paid sex and a variety of nationalities... The police...position has been that prostitution has to be managed so as to minimise the harm to the women caught up in it. They said their policy is in line with government guidelines, that massage parlours would not be targeted unless there were complaints, drugs or underage girls” He was referring to the recommendations of a 2000 Home Office report called ‘For Love or Money: Pimps and the Management of Sex Work’. (Roger a pimp from Manchester)
In Britain... selling sex and working alone as a prostitute are not prohibited but associated activities (such as soliciting) are. Brothels where 2 or more women are selling sex at the same premises are prohibited.
Governments of the EU have blamed the growth of illegal immigration for the growth in human trafficking. ‘The forging of a link between trafficking and immigration clearly benefits the state, as Anderson and Andrijasevic argue. In this process the role of the state in creating the conditions for trafficking –poverty, for example is largely forgotten’.
‘..migrant women are compelled to enter the sex industry by the low wage economy which they become trapped in as soon as they arrive in Britain. Within the sex industry they are trapped once again: their freedom of movement is restricted, most of the money they earn is exhorted and both their health and safety are put at risk’ such as from STDs.
‘I'm telling you some men are just evil. They don't even care if you're going to be alive after the session. They might as well fuck a dead body! Some of the punters play tricks with you and try to take off their condom. You always have to watch out for that and these days more and more punters are demanding unprotected sex’. Zhen Zhen migrant sex worker in Britain.
In 'Whores Glory' a documentary by Michael Glawogger some male workers from Faridpur, Bangladesh talk about frequenting the local brothel...
'Its all I think about. Without the brothel...women couldn't go out...without being molested. Men would be so horny they would rape them... The brothel is definitely good for the area'.
'After a long hard day's work we go there to enjoy ourselves and have fun. They give us satisfaction.. having fun with them makes us feel good'.
So the sex workers serve the community by releasing men’s pent up aggression and ‘exert[ing] a sobering influence’ (Women, Nation and the State in Australia’, in ‘Women, Nation State edited by Nina Yuval Davis which talks about the first 50 female ‘assisted immigrants’ to Australia in 1831 from another of Britain’s colonies)
More women are migrating from their homelands to Britain, compelled to take up temporary and low paid British jobs, such as carers, cleaners, domestic workers, masseuses and sex workers because of the poverty they have experienced in their homelands for a number of reasons such as economic reform, the opening up of the world market, the collapse of the Soviet Union and expansion of the EU.
‘From the end of the 1970s, migration into Britain (as well as Europe's) sex industry came mainly from outside Europe: South Asia, South America and Africa. The migration continued into the 1990s when Europe's sex industry began to see increasing number of migrants from central and eastern Europe’.
The number of foreign sex workers has grown and the industry has become highly ‘eroticised’, there is a big market for ‘exotic’ foreigners in the sex trade in Britain. ‘It is the otherness of such women that inflames male desire. Their foreignness becomes a commodity to be circulated and marketed’.
The lack of institutional protection for workers ‘reveal[s] the failure of government immigration policies as one of the causes of workers vulnerability’
They are the ‘...victim of choiceless choices...without capital there is no such thing as free will’.
In Britain... selling sex and working alone as a prostitute are not prohibited but associated activities (such as soliciting) are. Brothels where 2 or more women are selling sex at the same premises are prohibited.
Governments of the EU have blamed the growth of illegal immigration for the growth in human trafficking. ‘The forging of a link between trafficking and immigration clearly benefits the state, as Anderson and Andrijasevic argue. In this process the role of the state in creating the conditions for trafficking –poverty, for example is largely forgotten’.
‘..migrant women are compelled to enter the sex industry by the low wage economy which they become trapped in as soon as they arrive in Britain. Within the sex industry they are trapped once again: their freedom of movement is restricted, most of the money they earn is exhorted and both their health and safety are put at risk’ such as from STDs.
‘I'm telling you some men are just evil. They don't even care if you're going to be alive after the session. They might as well fuck a dead body! Some of the punters play tricks with you and try to take off their condom. You always have to watch out for that and these days more and more punters are demanding unprotected sex’. Zhen Zhen migrant sex worker in Britain.
In 'Whores Glory' a documentary by Michael Glawogger some male workers from Faridpur, Bangladesh talk about frequenting the local brothel...
'Its all I think about. Without the brothel...women couldn't go out...without being molested. Men would be so horny they would rape them... The brothel is definitely good for the area'.
'After a long hard day's work we go there to enjoy ourselves and have fun. They give us satisfaction.. having fun with them makes us feel good'.
So the sex workers serve the community by releasing men’s pent up aggression and ‘exert[ing] a sobering influence’ (Women, Nation and the State in Australia’, in ‘Women, Nation State edited by Nina Yuval Davis which talks about the first 50 female ‘assisted immigrants’ to Australia in 1831 from another of Britain’s colonies)
More women are migrating from their homelands to Britain, compelled to take up temporary and low paid British jobs, such as carers, cleaners, domestic workers, masseuses and sex workers because of the poverty they have experienced in their homelands for a number of reasons such as economic reform, the opening up of the world market, the collapse of the Soviet Union and expansion of the EU.
‘From the end of the 1970s, migration into Britain (as well as Europe's) sex industry came mainly from outside Europe: South Asia, South America and Africa. The migration continued into the 1990s when Europe's sex industry began to see increasing number of migrants from central and eastern Europe’.
The number of foreign sex workers has grown and the industry has become highly ‘eroticised’, there is a big market for ‘exotic’ foreigners in the sex trade in Britain. ‘It is the otherness of such women that inflames male desire. Their foreignness becomes a commodity to be circulated and marketed’.
The lack of institutional protection for workers ‘reveal[s] the failure of government immigration policies as one of the causes of workers vulnerability’
They are the ‘...victim of choiceless choices...without capital there is no such thing as free will’.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 27, 2013
This book read like a novel more than a factual book. It was really engaging and moving. It made me empathize with the women, who find themselves in an impossible situation. I was gripped by it, but I wondered how the author managed to get the dialogue between the characters- a lot of the novel was in dialogue- when she hadn't been there. And if it was conjecture, what are the ethics around putting words in someone else's mouth? By making the book as gripping and accessible as she did, I think some of the weight of it was sacrificed. I would happily read more of her work though, because it spreads awareness of things that need it, and does it in a way that makes the reader see through the eyes of the migrant women who find themselves doing sex work, without ever being leery or exploitative. It's a kind book about a subject where kindness is all too often lacking.
February 21, 2015
really informative read about the difficulties that migrants face coming to London. it's very much an eye opener where you feel only sympathy for them, because they care so much for their families back home. I was annoyed that they didn't really ley you know what ended up happening with Beata. I also still find it fun reading about places that I know! who would have thought there was a brothel in finchley!
December 4, 2014
I usually don't go in for non-fiction very often but i did hear a lot of positive reviews about this book. When i read it i couldn't help but feel for the victims of this industry considering what they're forced to do. Hsiao-Hung Pai did an amazing undercover job and by reading this book it's made me want to read her other works.
May 19, 2013
Sad. Simply sad.
May 28, 2013
Depressing story, didn't really have an end. But what does?
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews