In a brief interview shared by Briarpatch Magazine, activist and author Nandita Sharma challenges popular perceptions of sex work, migration, and trafficking. Sharma argues that anti-trafficking legislation, rather than being implemented by states to prevent exploitation of vulnerable people, is predominantly a tool used to strengthen border policing in order to prevent “illegal migration” by criminalizing people who assist consenting-migrants to cross borders.
Instead of trying to end exploitation with ineffective trafficking laws, Sharma suggests that we should, “challenge capitalism, which is the basis for all our exploitation,” and that we should give power to sex workers rather than the state to criminalize these workers and migrants. A more effective way to end exploitation is to end the criminalization of migrants, end poverty, and to decriminalize sex work. Sharma encourages us to challenge our ideas of trafficking and sex work legislation by understanding the oppressive systems that perpetuate and criminalize them both.
This brief interview is valuable in laying out how sex work and trafficking are separate and both affected by migration, since policy discussions often conflate the two. Sharma highlights that while increased migration and trafficking is caused by political and economic crises largely caused by the West, the West is also implementing restrictive policies to turn away migrants. Because the discussion of sex work and trafficking is so divisive, building a strong understanding of both state-based and anti-state solutions is important for transnational feminist discourse. Since sex workers themselves are fighting for decriminalization of sex work and a separation from being conflated with trafficking, it is important to learn the complexities of trafficking discourse and how trafficking can be manipulated by nation-states as a tool to limit migration.
Sharma’s argument gives examples of how anti-trafficking laws make migration more difficult or dangerous for women, by forcing rising costs and less-safe routes. Contemporary debates about trafficking and sex work legislation are rarely discussed through the lens of anti-capitalism, border imperialism, and nation-states. Looking at the discussion from this angle allows new perspectives of how exploitation of gendered bodies is directly tied to migration and nation-statehood itself.
Keywords: sex work, trafficking, migration, criminalization, anti-capitalism, status
Author: Petro Poroshenko
I agree that this article clearly differentiate between sex work and sexual exploitation. The two are so often conflated in media and legislation and I believe it is done so intentionally by design as a means of policing bodies and forms of migration. The moral panic in the move towards protecting people replicates and follows the notion of a Western or White savior type person, usually a man, coming in to save the vulnerable at-risk woman or women. Anti-trafficking legislation is produced under the guise of protection while also oversimplifying complex migration and living situations by portraying women under a single narrative and image. Thus far anti-trafficking legislation has failed to address the legal quagmires it leaves people to navigat…