Beyond Victimhood and Beyond Employment? Exploring Avenues for Labour Law to Empower Women Trafficked into the Sex Industry

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-224
Author(s):  
Inga K Thiemann
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Labour Exploitation ◽  
Service Jobs ◽  
Labour Legislation ◽  
Female Migrant

Abstract This article explores under which circumstances a labour law approach could make a meaningful contribution to combatting human trafficking into the sex industry. In this, I critique the existing criminal law approach to human trafficking and its policies, which focus on trafficked persons as idealised victims in need of protection, rather than on their rights as workers, migrants and women. Furthermore, I also challenge the exclusion of sex workers from arguments for a labour law response to human trafficking, as they maintain the construction of trafficking for sexual exploitation and trafficking for labour exploitation as separate phenomena. Instead, this article advocates an alternative labour law approach to human trafficking, which incorporates wider interdisciplinary issues of gender equality and societal exclusions for women and migrants, and particularly female migrant sex workers, within a labour response. My focus is therefore on exclusions maintained by existing labour legislation, which are based on the standard employment contract and amplified by barriers to labour protections faced by workers in female-dominated service jobs in general and by sex workers in particular. As sex workers’ embodied feminised labour is deemed not to be ‘real work’, they seem to be unworthy of labour protections. My proposed labour response to human trafficking into the sex industry therefore combines some of the strengths of the existing labour rights-focussed anti-trafficking and exploitation discourse with arguments from feminist labour law theory in order to tackle the intersectional dimension of human trafficking into the sex industry.

scholarly journals Framing the Mother Tac: The Racialised, Sexualised and Gendered Politics of Modern Slavery in Australia

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 192
Author(s):  
P. G. Macioti ◽  
Eurydice Aroney ◽  
Calum Bennachie ◽  
Anne E. Fehrenbacher ◽  
Calogero Giametta ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Gendered Politics ◽  
Labour Exploitation ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Modern Slavery ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Structural Roots ◽  
Migration Pathways

Centred on the slavery trial “Crown vs. Rungnapha Kanbut” heard in Sydney, New South Wales, between 10 April and 15 May 2019, this article seeks to frame the figure of the “Mother Tac” or the “mother of contract”, also called “mama tac” or “mae tac”—a term used amongst Thai migrants to describe a woman who hosts, collects debts from, and organises work for Thai migrant sex workers in their destination country. It proposes that this largely unexplored figure has come to assume a disproportionate role in the “modern slavery” approach to human trafficking, with its emphasis on absolute victims and individual offenders. The harms suffered by Kanbut’s victims are put into context by referring to existing literature on women accused of trafficking; interviews with Thai migrant sex workers, including Kanbut’s primary victim, and with members from the Australian Federal Police Human Trafficking Unit; and ethnographic field notes. The article unveils how constructions of both victim and offender, as well as definitions of slavery, are racialised, gendered, and sexualised and rely on the victims’ subjective accounts of bounded exploitation. By documenting these and other limitations involved in a criminal justice approach, the authors reveal its shortfalls. For instance, while harsh sentences are meant as a deterrence to others, the complex and structural roots of migrant labour exploitation remain unaffected. This research finds that improved legal migration pathways, the decriminalisation of the sex industry, and improved access to information and support for migrant sex workers are key to reducing heavier forms of labour exploitation, including human trafficking, in the Australian sex industry.

PERSEFEKTIF IN HUMAN TRAFFICKING CRIME LAW NUMBER 39 OF 1999 ON HUMAN RIGHTS CASE AGAINST CHILD TRAFFICKING IN MEDAN

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-51
Author(s):  
Ida Monika Putu Ayu Dewi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Trafficking In Persons ◽  
The People ◽  
Public Company ◽  
Legal Sanctions ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Human Rights Violation

Laws are the norms that govern all human actions that can be done and should not be carried out both written and unwritten and have sanctions, so that the entry into force of these rules can be forced or coercive and binding for all the people of Indonesia. The most obvious form of manifestation of legal sanctions appear in criminal law. In criminal law there are various forms of crimes and violations, one of the crimes listed in the criminal law, namely the crime of Human Trafficking is often perpetrated against women and children. Human Trafficking is any act of trafficking offenders that contains one or more acts, the recruitment, transportation between regions and countries, alienation, departure, reception. With the threat of the use of verbal and physical abuse, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of a position of vulnerability, example when a person has no other choice, isolated, drug dependence, forest traps, and others, giving or receiving of payments or benefits women and children used for the purpose of prostitution and sexual exploitation. These crimes often involving women and children into slavery. Trafficking in persons is a modern form of human slavery and is one of the worst forms of violation of human dignity (Public Company Act No. 21 of 2007, on the Eradication of Trafficking in Persons). Crime human trafficking crime has been agreed by the international community as a form of human rights violation.  

Labour Exploitation in Human Trafficking Law

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Weatherburn
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Trafficking In Persons ◽  
Transnational Organized Crime ◽  
Labour Exploitation ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
United Nations Convention ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Agreed Definition

The 2000 Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime provides the first internationally agreed definition of the human trafficking. However, in failings to clarify the exact scope and meaning of exploitation, it has created an ambiguity as to what constitutes exploitation of labour in criminal law. <br>The international definition's preference for an enumerative approach has been replicated in most regional and domestic legal instruments, making it difficult to draw the line between exploitation in terms of violations of labour rights and extreme forms of exploitation such as those listed in the Protocol. <br><br>This book addresses this legal gap by seeking to conceptualise labour exploitation in criminal law.

scholarly journals Precarious or Protected? Evaluating Work Quality in the Legal Sex Industry

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 173-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Orchiston
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Industry Regulation ◽  
Regulatory Model ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Legal Sex

Decriminalising (or legalising) sex work is argued to improve sex workers’ safety and provide access to labour rights. However, there is a paucity of empirical research comparing how different regulatory approaches affect working conditions in the sex industry, especially in relation to venues that are managed by third parties. This article uses a mixed methods study of the Australian legal brothel sector to critically explore the relationship between external regulation and working conditions. Two dominant models of sex industry regulation are compared: decriminalisation and licensing. First, the article documents workplace practices in the Australian legal brothel sector, examining sex workers’ agency, autonomy and control over the labour process. Second, it analyses the capacity of each regulatory model to protect sex workers from unsafe and unfair working conditions. On the basis of these findings, the article concludes that brothel-based sex work is precarious and substantively excluded from the protective mantle of labour law, notwithstanding its legality. It is argued that the key determinant of conditions in the legal brothel sector is the extent to which the state enforces formal labour protections, as distinct from the underlying regulatory model adopted.

scholarly journals Stop traffick: Tackling demand for sexual services of trafficked women and girls

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 42-60
Author(s):  
Edward Keegan ◽  
Nusha Yonkova
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Commercial Sex ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Research ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
Sexual Services

The research focuses on the characteristic, knowledge, and experiences of buyers of sex, focusing on human trafficking and exploitation. Recognising that those trafficked for sexual exploitation are often exploited in the commercial sex industry, the research adopts an understanding of ‘demand’ in the context of human trafficking which includes demand for women in prostitution. In order to study buyers, a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research tools was used, including online questionnaires and face-to-face interviews. Through these methods, a total of 763 buyers engaged with the research, across four EU Member States (Ireland, Finland, Bulgaria and Lithuania). A number of important findings emerged in the research. Buyers interviewed were seen to have a complex view of sellers. They overwhelmingly viewed the sale of sex as a transaction between two consenting adults, but also saw sellers as different from other women. At the same time, although up to a third of buyers had witnessed or suspected exploitation, a gap emerged with regard to those who had reported such fears. Finally, irrespective of their knowledge of human trafficking, or measures targeting those who knowingly purchase sex from trafficked victims, buyers rarely considered trafficking when purchasing sex.Keywords: human trafficking; sexual exploitation; prostitution; demand; buyers

Exploitation at Work

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-115
Author(s):  
Jennifer Collins
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Work Relations ◽  
Labour Exploitation

The theme of exploitation in work relations has produced an increasingly polarized set of positions ‘for’ or ‘against’ criminalization. For example, it has been argued that the effects of criminalization, deployed in a political environment that welcomes a ‘law and order’ policy agenda, over-bear other areas of law (such as labour law) which are worker-protective in ameliorating labour exploitation. In this chapter I argue that a rigid position ‘for’ or ‘against’ criminalizing exploitation ought to be resisted in favour of a more nuanced regulatory mix. There ought to be a greater focus on the ways in which decisions between regulatory channels are made once an in-principle case for criminalization has been established. This includes appraising criminalization in its wider regulatory context, as well as more nuanced arguments about the appropriateness of criminal law interventions which include ‘regulation plus crime’ measures.

scholarly journals Conflicting Rights: How the Prohibition of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation Infringes the Right to Health of Female Sex Workers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Maher ◽  
Thomas Crewe Dixon ◽  
Pisith Phlong ◽  
Julie Mooney-Somers ◽  
Ellen S. Stein ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Female Sex Workers ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Phnom Penh ◽  
Female Sex ◽  
The Right

Sex Trafficking and Prostitution in South Africa

2014 ◽  
Vol 653 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chandré Gould
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Work Environment ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
World Cup ◽  
The World ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article examines the complex arrangements within which women working in prostitution in South Africa find themselves, and documents their resilience in a hazardous work environment. Findings are drawn from a survey and in-depth interviews with sex workers in Cape Town that investigated the nature and extent of human trafficking in the sex industry, and from a separate survey of sex workers during the World Cup in South Africa in 2010. The findings provide the basis for a critique of Western rescue missions and the larger antitrafficking movement.

Born unto Brothels—Toward a Legal Ethnography of Sex Work in an Indian Red-Light Area

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (03) ◽  
pp. 579-629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prabha Kotiswaran
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Red Light ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Market Structures ◽  
Light Area

The global sex panic around sex work and trafficking has fostered prostitution law reform worldwide. While the normative status of sex work remains deeply contested, abolitionists and sex work advocates alike display an unwavering faith in the power of criminal law; for abolitionists, strictly enforced criminal laws can eliminate sex markets, whereas for sex work advocates, decriminalization can empower sex workers. I problematize both narratives by delineating the political economy and legal ethnography of Sonagachi, one of India's largest red-light areas. I show how within Sonagachi there exist highly internally differentiated groups of stakeholders, including sex workers, who, variously endowed by a plural rule network—consisting of formal legal rules, informal social norms, and market structures—routinely enter into bargains in the shadow of the criminal law whose outcomes cannot be determined a priori. I highlight the complex relationship between criminal law and sex markets by analyzing the distributional effects of criminalizing customers on Sonagachi's sex industry.

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