scholarly journals Marriage as Ruse or Migration Route: Jewish Women’s Mobility and Sex Trafficking to Argentina, 1890s-1930s

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mir Yarfitz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Migration Route ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Transnational Mobility ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of

The victim narrative of the international anti-white slavery movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century highlighted the suffering of prostituted women entrapped by violent men. Due to both antisemitic exaggeration and the reality of Ashkenazi Jewish networks of international sex work management in this period, Jews faced particular scrutiny as traffickers, and organized internationally with non-Jewish reformers against the phenomenon. Reformers often decried the shtile khupe, a Jewish religious marriage ceremony without a civil component, as a key trafficking technique. Drawing on League of Nations archives, court records, and the Yiddish, Spanish, and English press, this essay provides a granular social history of marriage and associated relational strategies for cross-border migration and structuring Jewish sex work on the ground in early-twentieth-century Buenos Aires. Evidence from sex workers and their managers pushes against these victimization narratives, reframing marriage as a method to achieve transnational mobility and improve labor and living conditions. Historical and contemporary feminist responses to trafficking share rhetorical strategies and critiques – in both past and present, transnational sex work can be analyzed in a migratory rather than coercive context, centering individuals making difficult choices from among limited options.

Venereal disease and the politics of prostitution in the Irish Free State

2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (131) ◽  
pp. 320-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Howell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Venereal Disease ◽  
The State ◽  
Free State ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Technical Sense ◽  
Specific Sense

This article is intended primarily as a contribution to work on the regulation of sexuality in modern Ireland, but, more generally, it attempts to situate the Irish experience within a wider problematic concerning the relations of state and society in the regulation of prostitution. The regulation of sexuality in early twentieth-century Ireland has been a focus of concern for feminist historians in particular, and recent work has clearly demonstrated the salience of questions of gender and sexuality for the politics of the Saorstát. This article is directed at these same concerns, elaborating on a series of proposals to regulate prostitution in the Free State in the mid-1920s. But when discussing prostitution or sex work, the word ‘regulation’ can be used in a quite specific sense, ‘regulationism’ referring to the argument that the state should control venereal disease by registering prostituted women, inspecting them for signs of communicable venereal disease, and incarcerating the contagious in order to protect the health of both nation and state. The history of ‘regulationist’ policies in Europe and beyond allows a point of comparison by which we may understand the specifics of Ireland’s situation in the post-revolutionary era. The history of regulationism, in this technical sense, is a particularly useful context, not least because such policies amply acknowledge ‘the enduring power of the state as the author and executor of regulation’. Particularly important, in ways that suggest a direct parallel to the Irish experience in the early twentieth century, is the coextensive experience of state formation and the regulation of sex work, the most notable example being that of modern Italy.

Geographical Dimension of Colonial Justice: Using GIS in Research on Law and History

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 1027-1045 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ng ◽  
T. Edwin Chow ◽  
David W.S. Wong
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Social History ◽  
Web Sites ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Geographic Information ◽  
Digital Tool ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of

This article reviews and reflects on the use of the geographic information system (GIS) as a tool, or geographic information science (GIScience) as a research methodology, and associated techniques of analysis in an empirical study-in-progress on the law and history of early twentieth century British Hong Kong. The article begins by introducing the study and its objectives, as well as the rationale for adopting GIS/GIScience as one of its research methodologies. It then highlights the preliminary findings of the current project and compares them with those of earlier research on the legal history of early twentieth century Beijing using GIS. The article also discusses the difficulties involved in adopting such a digital tool and methodology in historical research. It concludes by reflecting on what GIS can help scholars understand about the social history of law in Hong Kong, beyond what is already known, and how specialists in law, history, and geography can collaborate in a digital law and history project involving the use of GIS. This article also gives an overview of the use of GIS in conducting empirical research in the humanities (including but not limited to history and legal history research) and points to digital sources and web sites useful to researchers who may need tools and data to launch a GIS study in law and history.

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