Migrant sex work

It has common features across various contexts, such as migration from rural to urban areas and from developing to industrialized nations, and the economic factors that help to determine migrant status.

[1] For women who engage in rural to urban migration in developing nations with growing free-trade zones and importation of foreign financial capital and tourism, sex work is often more lucrative than alternative forms of labor, such as working in manufacturing or in factories subcontracting to foreign corporations.

Scholars, service providers, and practitioners who attempt to remain apolitical and outside the feminist views on sex trafficking and sex work regarding prostitution still often remark how the legal definitions of human trafficking are still too vague for them to efficiently and neutrally define and count victims.

[1] Scholars Guri Tyldum and Anette Brunovski call sex workers "hidden populations" which they define as "A group of individuals for whom the size and boundaries are unknown, and for whom no sampling frame exists.

[12] Migrant sex work is also incredibly diverse due to the large number of countries and migration contexts that are involved.

[15] Nevertheless, the vulnerability of migrant sex workers can make them susceptible to exploitative or coercive labor practices that can resemble or be human trafficking.

Whether or not human trafficking and migrant sex work should be considered the same concept has been a contentious debate among feminist activists, government officials, scholars, and religious organizations for the past 20 years.

Issues surrounding the definition of human trafficking in relation to sex work and migration situations have contributed to a highly contentious debate and has played a prominent role in structuring how governments have responded to migrant sex workers in terms of viewing them as unwilling victims of a crime or as criminals themselves.

The possibility of facing deportation and anti-immigration sentiments are critical ways in which migrant sex workers are marginalized.

[24] Response from non-governmental organizations have largely been centered on anti-trafficking activism and service provision that may also include migrant sex workers.

[16] NGOs also largely target migrant sex workers for their high risk of attracting and passing on sexually transmitted diseases.

[2] In some contexts, such as the United States, NGOs have played a role in facilitating irregular migrants' access to legal status and eventually permanent residency or citizenship.

However, these legal benefits are often only available for individuals who can prove their involvement in commercial sex work was involuntary and a form of human trafficking victimhood.

[5] Many of these NGOs advocate for more humane migration policies that would not harm migrant sex workers and the risks that accompany illegal status.

"[29] Countries' responses towards migrant workers' conditions of vulnerability therefore play a pivotal role in their Trafficking in Persons Report ranking.

Many countries respond by placing more restrictive immigration standards or greater migration regulations, all for the purpose of seemingly improving state response to human trafficking risks that may accompany open borders.

For example, South Korea, after their Tier 3 ranking in the 2001 TIP, launched an in-depth national survey to examine the conditions of their foreign sex workers.

[31] In 2003, the US Congress under the Bush Administration announced the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a commitment of $15 billion over five years (2003–2008) from United States to internationally fight the HIV/AIDS.

This pledge has been heavily criticized by NGOs working to fight HIV/AIDS, sex worker rights activists and organizations, and even national governments who understand that a declaration of opposition towards prostitution would be counterproductive to eliminating HIV/AIDS among a vulnerable population.

[16][33][34] This pledge and its requirement of opposition to prostitution has affected the funding of many organizations working explicitly with migrant sex workers by eliminating many of their social services and increasing their risk of abuse and limited mobility.

[16] Some pro-sex worker rights advocates argue that the Dutch model of legalization and regulation is the most beneficial for the labor standards and working conditions of sex workers, while many anti-sex work activists argue that the Swedish Model helps eliminate unfair criminalization of prostitutes instead of the janes, johns and pimps who exploit them.

[16] However, many scholars argue that neither of these models have had dramatically different results in the status of sex workers or trafficking victims.

[16] Under the Dutch Model, these legal benefits and reduction of risk are not available to migrant sex workers who are largely illegal.

[5] The UAE's economic boom and aggressive development in the early to mid 2000s made it not only attractive to foreign migrants, but also dependent on them.

[5] For example, the spectrum of sex worker diversity ranges from migrants from Nigeria, Iran, Philippines, and Russia, with their skin tone corresponding to the price they command and the male clientele they see: the lighter the sex worker's skin color, the more Western the clientele and the higher the price.

However, because the UAE has banned prostitution, these sex workers remain largely underground, illegal, and in constant fear of law enforcement intervention and the possibility of deportation.

Because of the UAE's large migrant worker population, restrictive labor contracts, and lack of anti-trafficking partnerships with NGOs, the United States Department of State Trafficking In Persons Report gave UAE a series of Tier 3 and Tier 2 Watchlist rankings.

Also, migration reforms in parts of Europe have made it harder for people to stay for an extended period of time.

The Canadian government over time has initiated different preventive legislation to make migrant sex work more difficult to find.

[46] McIntyre asserts that because of these types of laws migrant workers who are deported put women more at risk to encounter poverty and abuse in their home country.