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

by Laura María Agustín

This groundbreaking work explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims, and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest.

Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' disempowers them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radical analysis. Frequently, says Agustín, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry. Although they are treated as a marginalised group, they form part of the dynamic global economy.

Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice.

-from the back cover

Genres: Nonfiction, Sex Work, Feminism, Politics, Sociology, Sexuality, Anthropology

248 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2007

About the author

I write about people who travel and cross borders to work - lots of them without permission or with fake papers. Women who work as live-in maids or sell sex, men who wash dishes, pick fruit or sell sex. Border-crossers, undocumented migrants, folks who have paid smugglers to get somewhere new. In the media this is usually positioned as hideous trafficking, and all jobs in the sex industry as a fate worse than death. It's true, some women would rather die than be sex workers, but guess what? Others would rather die than be maids. In my writing I don't generalise. You need a whole lot of information before it's okay to stick labels on people.

My new book is Mediterranean noir, The Three-Headed Dog. It takes place in Spain, on the crazy-mixed Costa del Sol and Madrid.

Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry lay the non-victimising groundwork in 2007 and continues to be read and highly relevant! I wish the publisher did not set the price so high.
Connect on facebook https://www.facebook.com/lauramariaag...

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Agustin makes a compelling case here for the reconsideration of migrant sex workers that is both challenging and certainly grounds for pause on the part of humanitarians. Among my own studies of late, the question of politics within human rights work comes up time and time again. The idea that competing negative viewpoints on (a) immigrant workers, (b) sex workers, and (c) women violating moral sexual norms come together to form a 'rescue industry' that in its efforts to rehabilitate women in fact disempowers them should be the concern of feminists, humanitarians, and those who embody the two. Agustin urges readers not only to reevaluate how we envision 'sex trafficking' in the mainstream, but also how we frame the issue of sex work and women's labor.

Great book. I read it for a women's studies course, and I loved it. Agustin's voice is a refreshing and brave change of pace in trafficking discourse.

[Steelwhisper · Rating 1 out of 5]

Prostitution apologists. Duh. And particularly toxic when coming along as either leftist or social justice warrior.

In this case it's both. One of the biggest "whataboutism"-books I've read in a long time. A very long time. Good grief.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laura Agustin has a remarkable ability to turn things on their head.If you read her blog, you'll be familiar with the narratives that she contests. But the book really brings it all together.

The narrative is that all women who do sex work are victims. Nobody would ever chose to do that work. They have been coerced or duped. They need to be rescued. Triple that for migrants.

But who is a migrant? Why are some people called migrants while others are called travelers, tourists, expats? A privileged person might go to another country to work a bit and have an adventure. But a poor person is only seen to be pushed out because of conflict or pulled in to earn money and nothing else - as though a worker is the only thing they are. Never do you hear that a poor woman wants to migrate in order to get new experiences or find herself. That's just reserved for the wealthy.

Why is sex work treated so differently from other work? Why is it assumed to be worse than housekeeping, nannying, working in a factory, or investment banking at Goldman Sachs? Domestics are exempted from even the most basic employment laws. They are at the beck and call of the family they work for, often 24/7. Most people say that freedom and flexibility are the things they most want from their jobs. Yet we are all blind to that desire when it comes to women who are choosing between sex work and domestic service.

It is difficult to find a rational reason for people to look at sex work as so much more exploitative than all the other types of work out there. Why is it so clear to people that sex work is problematic, but so difficult for people to see how dehumanizing other work is?

Even more problematically, many of the women who work in the rescue industries are more than happy to use poor women as domestics while they pursue their careers. One of the most interesting parts of the book for me is the history of how the helping industry came to be, how middle class women with few options made careers out of charity work. But charity work requires victims to be saved, whether or not those people want the "help".

It is always difficult to find the balance between considering the social circumstances and systemic injustices that limit people's choices while still respecting people. All people, regardless of their constraints, should be seen as full human beings with the ability to make decisions. Too often we see problems as statistics and certain people as acted upon only. This book tips the scales back in the direction of full human being.

Update: Been thinking about this book so much lately I had to come back and change it from 4 to 5 stars

[Mariana Rivas · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible book about the intersection of migration and sex work. It gives you a perspective of how the sex industry works and the way in which migration is endemic to it. Wonderfully and clearly written.

[Tim Mcleod · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this more, as I share similar wariness of the rescue industry. I value the author's attention to the often unspoken relationship domestic work and sex work share. The way Augustin draws attention to the caricature of "Migrant" is powerful. The conflict she describes between organizations seeking to save ( or rehabilitate, empower, etc.) people who engage in sex work was sobering.
Most likely, I'm not immersed enough in the world, coming from a harm reduction and public health background. Does anyone else find it frustrating when you go looking for a way forward and only find "problematization"? Yes, it is necessary to look behind the motivation of an argument and steel oneself from dichotomizing every problem as good or evil. But can we get a little guidance?
For instance, I really bristled at the way Agustin framed epidemiological work as some big industry set on exploiting participants for numbers. I fully admit there needs to be a bridge to action from collected data, especially one that respects the underprivileged and meets them where they are rather than as subjects. And yes! Scientific work is not objective and without its own motives! But it seemed to me that the author was painting fundamentalist activists and public health workers with the same brush.
All said, the work presented is innovative, rare, and definitely has merit.

[Yupa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conoscevo già da tempo l'operato dell'autrice, di cui seguo sia il profilo Facebook che il blog (ormai non più aggiornato da uno o due anni: ma purtroppo l'era dei blog è finita da un pezzo), e quindi in questo libro del 2007 non ho trovato grandi sorprese, ma mi ha fatto comunque piacere avere in forma completa e ben articolata quei ragionamenti che finora avevo seguito solo in maniera sparsa ed episodica.
L'autrice, antropologa, praticamente da quando è attiva si occupa di quello che succede all'incrocio tra le grandi migrazioni globali e la vendita di servizî sessuali, mettendo in discussione e contrastando con forza e intelligenza l'idea dominante che quel che succede non possa che essere una forma di sfruttamento e violenza (sussunta sotto il termine inglese di "sex trafficking", cioè tratta a scopo sessuale), un incubo le cui vittime (immaginate come principalmente donne) devono essere salvate e instradate verso forme più socialmente accettate con cui guadagnarsi da vivere.
L'autrice può compiere questo suo lavoro avendo trascorso lunghi periodi in diversi paesi del Mondo proprio coi protagonisti e le protagoniste del suo oggetto di studio, avendone ascoltate le voci senza pregiudizî, voci che parlano certo di percorsi difficili, di situazioni non inquadrabili entro i parametri culturali di chi vive invece nei paesi ricchi, di casi anche (perché nessuno nega che manchino) di violenza ed effettiva schiavitù. Ma questa è solo una parte di quadro molto più complicato e sfaccettato, non riducibile solo alle sue tinte peggiori e più scioccanti.
Come afferma l'autrice bisogna tener sempre fermo un confronto (perché quasi mai lo si fa) con altre forme di lavoro con cui cercano di vivere o sopravvivere le tante persone che migrano nei nostri paesi, che sia per fare le badanti per gli anziani o per lavorare nei campi e nei cantieri. In tutti questi àmbiti esistono usi e abusi, ma l'atteggiamento dominante cambia radicalmente a seconda che in essi sia implicata o meno la sessualità. Per dire, se com'è noto nei campi di pomodori vengono sfruttati i migranti, nessuno chiede che come soluzione del problema vengano stigmatizzati i lavoratori, che si smantelli l'intera industria agricola o che venga criminalizzato chi mangia la pasta al sugo.
Il nocciolo della questione è proprio questo, e l'autrice lo coglie con grande chiarezza: l'incapacità di affrontare la questione della sessualità come se fosse un àmbito come tanti altri e non, invece, un àmbito speciale che richiede un trattamento speciale, come se fosse materiale radioattivo e contaminante se non trattato nel modo "giusto". C'è ancora l'idea, molto vicina a quella tipica della famiglia "tradizionale" di origine religiosa, che la sessualità sia qualcosa di prezioso che rischia di essere sporcato se esportato al di fuori di una relazione duratura, o comunque tra persone che si conosco, insomma che debba essere comunque santificato dal sentimento e che non possa essere fatto oggetto di interscambio economico. È una visione della sessualità (come esperienza intima ed esclusiva) certamente legittima, ma il punto è se essa debba essere per forza applicata a tutti e tutte, e dunque se le esperienze di sessualità non conformi (anche come esperienza anonima e come semplice servizio) siano da condannare a reprimere, magari con l'ausilio della legge e del codice penale. È la solita differenza tra cui pensa che la propria morale e la propria idea di intimità debba valere universalmente e che invece accetta un ecosistema relazionale pluralistico, anche composto di fenomeni che possono essere difficili da capire.
Che sia questo il punto, e che in realtà la questione sia molto più semplice di quanto possa apparire, lo chiarisce l'autrice nelle conclusioni del libro, quando afferma che, nell'incontro-scontro tra chi si propone di salvare chi vive vendendo servizî sessuali e queste ultime persone, si verifica tipicamente una divergenza nella definizione di quali siano i problemi da affrontare al riguardo, e accade così che le persone da salvare non vogliano proprio essere salvate. E allora bisogna chiedersi se chi vuole salvare è disposto ad ascoltare le esigenze e le prospettive di chi va salvato o non preferisce invece soltanto imporre all'intera società una propria visione dell'intimità e di ciò che è corretto e scorretto fare con la sessualità, andando poi a escludere dal discorso pubblico, in virtù del proprio potere politico, economico e istituzionale, le voci di chi, cioè le persone che vendono servizî sessuali, vorrebbe far sentire anche il proprio punto di vista.
In un capitolo centrale del libro l'autrice traccia una genealogia dell'attivismo contro la commercializzazione del sesso facendola risale all'800, quando le classi borghesi, ormai sempre più forti, cercano di imporre la loro (rigida) moralità sessuale alle classi lavoratrici, immaginate come sregolate e immorali, da disciplinare e da educare all'autocontrollo e alla "decenza". È un secolo in cui si afferma la famiglia nucleare chiusa, in cui si forma il concetto di spazio domestico e intimo, separato dallo spazio del lavoro, in cui si rafforza una rigida divisione dei ruoli tra l'uomo che lavora all'esterno e la donna che deve gestire la casa e i figli (che ora non possono più lavorare). La donna delle classi borghesi, ora con molto tempo libero e risorse finanziare da spendere, diventa una "custode della morale", cui è assegnato il gravoso compito di educare e correggere le classi inferiori. Si tratta di una grande impresa sociale che certamente ha portato dei benefici (specie in termini di igiene e salute), ma che ha anche operato per disciplinare e condurre nei ranghi della rigida moralità borghese gli stili di vita "indecenti". Si tratta di un processo che, sempre negli stessi anni, coinvolge le popolazioni dei paesi colonizzati, a cui si portano strade, ferrovie e la medicina scientifica, ma a cui si insegna anche a vergognarsi dei proprî corpi (che quindi vanno coperti) e di una sessualità non irreggimentata (che quindi va repressa).
Si tratta di una storia che, tra alterne vicende, come dimostra questo libro arriva sino a oggi, con i due fronti ora composti dalle élite istituzionali dei paesi ricchi da una parte e le popolazioni migranti dall'altra. L'autrice riporta la sua esperienza di diverse conferenze e convegni organizzati da attivisti e ricercatori il cui obiettivo sarebbe quello di "abolire la prostituzione". Convegni e conferenze tenuti in palazzi d'alta classe, sotto l'egida dei simboli del potere politico e dal potere politico riccamente finanziati. Sono ritrovi molto autoreferenziali nelle idee che espongono, privi di ogni volontà di dar spazio alle voci delle persone direttamente interessate, cioè di chi vive vendendo servizî sessuali, e pronti ad attaccare e schiacciare qualunque opinione contraria al dogma repressivo, come quelle dell'autrice. Sono insomma, gli eredi non si sa quanto consapevoli dei movimenti borghesi anti-prostituzione dell'Ottocento ancora vivi, vegeti e attivissimi. La storia continua...

[Jamie Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genuinely extraordinary. The breadth of the research and the intersectionality of the issues discussed is brilliant. The dissection of the 'rescue industry' is so thorough that it genuinely feels like I've attended six different uni courses.

[Annalvogt · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone in the helping profession, this critique of helpers who refuse to examine or are unaware of their own constructed realities and interests was at times hard to read. However, based on Agustin's examination of historical movements to define sex work, and her field work in Spain among migrant sex workers and those attempting to help them, it was an excellent reminder of the agency of people everyone and the need to let them define themselves, even if that definition is not I one that I am always comfortable with.

Historical contexts and notions of ethnocentrism and otherness are at play whenever we attempt to "save" someone. This is not an argument to never be involved in helping others, but rather Agustin challenges us to examine our own self-interests at play in those actions and to ensure that those we are "helping" actually want and are in charge of defining the help we are offering.

We are not operating in a vacuum- words like trafficking, prostitution, slave and abolition all fit within a context that has not often been kind or beneficial to the women it proposed to save; those same patterns continue today in the rescue industry that is involved in constructing its own reality "in order to study, organize, manage, debate and serve them". To simply feel compassion is not enough, rather we must think about the constructed character of the social problems that tug on our heart strings. As social constructions, how can working to change the construction dissolve the problem?

Highly recommended for anyone working in a helping field, from development to health, but especially for those who are engaged in issues of human trafficking, prostitution and modern day slavery.

[Dafna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and easy to read ethnography of global migration and service industry. Though sometimes I lacked depth in her analysis, I very much liked the historical part, where she outlines the rise of the salvaging/helping industry, and her suggestions on how to re-frame and re-conceptualize migration and the global sex industry in order to not to assign unnecessary labels to those whom one studies.

[Jen Well-Steered · Rating 4 out of 5]

A counter-narrative to the idea that women who become prostitutes are trafficked or abused and are in need of rescuing. According to the author, the women are victims of poverty and social structures that keep the other jobs they might qualify for low paid and low status. For many of them, prostitution is the best-paid job they can do. Even the ones who end up in brothels in Europe had a fairly good idea of what they were signing up for when they applied for a job as a 'dancer' or 'bartender.'

[Gabrielle Gosselin · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Were government employees, political appointees, feminists, NGO spokesperson, academics, and other social agents able to shed their certainty of knowing how everyone else should live, they might be able to dispense with neocolonialism, admit that agency can be expressed in a variety of ways, acknowledge their own desires, and accept Europe's dynamic, changing, risky diversity is here to stay. [...] Leave behind certainties, listen to Others - leave home." (pp. 194)

[Dozy Pilchard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laura Agustin has produced a solid, valuable, and highly readable piece of work which I would certainly recommend to anyone carrying out research into sex work, migration, trafficking and related phenomenon. There's plenty to learn in this book about sex work in relation to other forms of work for migrants.

[Roz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The content is interesting, if perhaps dated. I’d be interested to see what changed the increase in online sex work have made and how labour laws have changed since the book was written.

The style of this book, trying to tread the line between academic and more general non-fiction, just doesn’t work for me. Very dry and the structure is a little all over the place.

[Lauren Levitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book examines the historical and contemporary discourses around sex work and sex trafficking in a straightforward and accessible way. I especially liked the later chapters in the book, where Augustin describes what she calls “the Rise of the Social” in the 19th century and her own ethnographic research with social agents who seek to “help” migrant sex workers in Spain.

[C Forward · Rating 5 out of 5]

The go-to book about white people who try to rescue women from sex work. All the analysis you need.

[Tom Chaffey · Rating 3 out of 5]

first half was lame second half was good

[isabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was kinda fascinating

[Jschrag · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always like books that challenge my unquestioned beliefs with good data and research. Agustin's work is straightforward and factual, and completely blows apart the standard social narrative around prostitution and migrant work. The media and government feeds us simple, uncritical images of homogenous poor migrants, victimized women, people with no agency in their lives who need us more educated, more affluent people to 'save' them -- Agustin shows the data from migrant workers, in their own words -- and she turns the academic lens back on the people who claim to help or save them, to look at their motivations and how effective their 'helping' work actually is.

What emerges are stories of people who are making choices in their own lives, who do not see themselves as victims, but as making the best of the difficult situation they are in. Agustin exposes how common language -- words like "trafficking" are used to hide the complexity of what is actually going on. And she points out some things that are obvious in retrospect -- that poor people want to travel to see the world and become more cosmopolitan; and that some people see selling sex as a much better job prospect than cleaning toilets, which are also disgusting and dangerous (for undocumented workers) but pays much, much less. That male and transexual sex workers are ignored completely in most of the data and discourse. That economic discussions and research of migrants leave out sex workers entirely, although those workers (and the surround economy they generate) constitute a very large proportion of migrants.

Agustin does not in any minimize the dangers of sex work (or of being an undocumented migrant), but she does expose that it is not something that can or should be reduced to a few simplistic sound bites -- doing so just victimizes the workers more.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not sure if this book is groundbreaking but it certainly is a unique and well documented look at women who migrate to become sex workers. Laura Augustin has a Ph.D. and a refreshing attitude toward what has become called "trafficking" but which she shows is often the best choice a woman in the global South has of supporting herself and her family. She really goes after the canard that all migrating sex workers are controlled by vicious pimps and that none of them are economic migrants looking for a better life.

Augustin does a great job in punching through the thick accretion of myth that has built up around the subject through a combination of ethnographic interviews and reviews of literature. Her discussion of the "rescue industry" is devastating, showing that much of its statistical basis is either created from whole cloth or interpolated from inadequate or biased samples.

This is social science with an edge.

[Marshall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book shatters many myths about sex workers: that all sex workers are victims, that migrant sex workers are all trafficked, and that all men who use their services are exploitative and perverted. Many of these myths come from feminist theory and moralizing, rather than research of what actually happens in the real world. This author uncovers this research, and exposes the self-interest of many of the organizations that claim to help these "victims," who in most cases never asked for their help, even resent it. This author is refreshingly objective and balanced in her treatment of the subject.

[DoctorM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Agustin looks at global migrations and the sex trade and takes issue with the idea that all sex-trade linked migration is "trafficking" with violence and abuse. She also asks whether the "rescue industry" of NGOs and social agencies is itself victimising women in the sex trade. Agustin looks at migrants in the sex trade as part of--- not a distinct, morally-charged realm ---a larger issue of migration and job-seeking. Her website is worth looking at for further examples of the points she makes.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book shifted my perspective of those valiant first-wave feminists of the Progressive Age, and with it, my feminism altogether. I was also pleased to have my perspective of migrant workers shifted from "huddled masses" to "adventurous world travelers." The book's tone is fairly academic (though totally accessible) but a bit uneven in places. I felt like the chapter presenting her research experiences to be a bit thin, and wished for the kind of depth of analysis she'd given to the overview and history of the rescue industry.

[Jake Teresi · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. Very academic but I don't mean that in a pejorative way. I wouldn't go as far as she does, but it's a refreshing counter thesis to a lot of highly privileged white feminist discourse surrounding sex work. Agustín argues persuasively here that the pervasive trafficking narrative is largely disingenuous, advocates for the agency of the women involved and highlights the further marginalizing effects of what she terms "the rescue industry."

Minor note: I was puzzled why a man narrated the audiobook.