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Reviews / Comptes Rendus
| Paola Monzini, Sex Traffic: Prostitution, Crime and Exploitation (New York: Zed 2005)
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| PAOLA MONZINI's Sex Traffic is a clear, mainstream overview of the "traffic in women." Monzini sets out to explain to a non-specialist audience the phenomenon of the traffic in women, a system of exploitation that can ensnare those seeking a better life in the global labour market, particularly the global sex market. The author provides a broad analysis of trafficking by laying out the framework that she sees as sustaining the traffic: the coming together of "international migration, organized crime, gender issues and the 'global' sex-market." (3) That i s , Monzini explains the traffic in women as a product of the male demand for sexual services, the "supply" of young women seeking work in the global labour market, the growth of organized criminal networks who take advantage of those seeking to work abroad, and the gendered nature of all of these processes. In this discussion Monzini treads fairly carefully between the polarized schools of thought over trafficking — the radical feminist contention that trafficking and prostitution are two sides of the same coin of sexual exploitation and sex-workers' rights proponents' argument that the problem is neither sex work per se nor migration for sex work but the structures that limit sex-workers' independence in that work. |
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To her credit, Monzini is careful not to over-simplify in a debate that often becomes abstract and rhetorical. For example, she avoids painting a simplistic picture of evil men and innocent women as is sometimes the case in radical feminist discussions of trafficking. Indeed, she recognizes that many women are in fact aware that they will be working in the sex trade, or are already working in the trade, when they set out to migrate — although they may not be aware of the extent to which they are at risk of exploitation. And while she points to male demand for sexual services as part of the problem, she recognizes that not all clients are the same and not all are necessarily looking to sexually dominate women. |
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Nonetheless, because the study focuses on the structures and system of exploitation rather than the experiences of women or the meaning of those experiences to the women involved — that is, a top-down rather than a bottom-up study — the need to aggregate and generalize can sometimes lend itself to feeding pre-given notions on a topic on which there are strongly and deeply held beliefs and assumptions. Thus, there is sometimes slippage into a tone that could lead one to assume that prostitution itself is problematic by definition rather than the particular ways in which sex work is sometimes controlled and exploited by others. For example, discussions of a "global boom" in prostitution beg for further clarification as to what, precisely, the problem with such a boom is (i.e., is a "boom" a bad thing because prostitution is bad, or because the boom has been accompanied by increasing structural limitations over sex-workers' ability to work freely and control their own conditions of work?). While Monzini also recognizes, again refreshingly, that "trafficking" or the exploitation of migrant labour is hardly unique to the sex trade, one sometimes wishes that that point was reiterated when, for example, she points to the "intensive exploitation of women" that is packaged and sold in the promotion of sex-tourism — but which, one could point out, is also packaged and sold in the promotion of all tourism (i.e., the expectation of sunny and servile hotel staff and "colourful locals" both male and female). Nevertheless, Monzini is to be commended for the careful distinctions she does draw and her recognition that the process is far from singular or universal. There is, as she points out, a wide range of experiences in women's entry into and work in the global sex trade and the migration experiences of women are similarly complex and not all necessarily exploitative or exploitative to the same degree or duration. |
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The book is strongest in describing the operation of criminal networks in various locations around the world and the precise mechanisms they use to try to control and exploit women's migration and labour. She does this well and in some detail, since at base Monzini does view the problem as a criminal rather than a labour issue. The information provided here is very useful for those trying to understand exactly how the criminal process — which is certainly a part of the problem — works. However, the discussion does raise the question of how, if we are not to see this as a singular and monolithic force, these networks differ from smaller operators who enable the (potentially illegal) migration process and who may or may not be unscrupulous and how some women manage to evade or limit their exposure to or exploitation by such networks. The answer to this question might shed interesting light on potential solutions to the problems faced by migrant working women. |
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Monzini does provide an interesting and balanced discussion of potential solutions. The debate over the solutions to trafficking is also a contentious one, particularly in the wake of recent US support for "rescue" operations that pose non-Western sex workers as helpless victims to be rescued by good (Western) men despite protestations by the women themselves and the US government's attempt to cut off support to outreach organizations that fail to pledge themselves to an anti-prostitution approach. Again Monzini is careful not to endorse the quick and easy answers of abolishing the prostitution trade through legal sanctions or directly controlling it through legalization and she does point out that "greater scope for prostitutes to organize their own activity on a commercial basis, and greater recognition of it as a possible form of independent work, might help to bring about a change in social perceptions, and a reduction in the social stigma attached to the activity." (141) But she also calls for a closer study of the linkages between the way prostitution is organized in the receiving country and the incidence of trafficking. This is a call that both sides in the debate are no doubt open to. She also points to the problematic tendency of "solving" trafficking by deporting the presumed victims and draws attention to the need to address underlying socio-economic conditions and gender discrimination. |
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Overall, Monzini provides a fairly careful overview of the mainstream understanding of the problem of the "traffic in women" as a problem of criminal exploitation of migrant women in the sex trade. But in order to understand the wider political issues here the book is best read in conjunction with those studies that point out that criminal exploitation of migrant women in sex work is but one small part of a larger issue of migrant women's rights as sex workers — a problem that requires addressing the conditions of both sex work and migration for women. These same studies point out that focusing only on the criminal exploitation of migrant sex workers creates a moral panic that leads to repressive anti-immigrant, anti-sex-work measures which disempower women in the name of "saving" them. |
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Leslie Ann Jeffrey
University of New Brunswick, Saint John |
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