Las polacas w Buenos Aires: prostytutki w historii i kulturze

The article discusses the literary and cultural uses of so-called white slavery – the prostitution and pimping in the Americas (especially in South America) of women from Eastern Europe at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This motif, tragically linking the history of Poland and Argentina, is associated with historiographic, literary, and sociological research. The article analyses various attitudes of historians towards the issue and the scope of ideological issues (in particular, the issue of anti-Semitism) and criticises the impact of the specificity of media coverage on the sensational nature of reports on the white slave trade. The main aim of the work is to present to the Polish reader both the historical context and the literary and cultural realisations of the subject in a multi-faceted manner, especially since only a few works have been translated into Polish. The second goal is to identify repetitions in prose, dramas, and audio-visual texts depicting the stories of Eastern European prostitutes in South America.

The History of the Global Anti-Human Trafficking Agenda, with a Focus on Prostitution and Sexual Exploitation

Heli Askola examines the early history of international instruments for the suppression of the trafficking in women and children involved in so called ‘white slavery’ as precursors to the more recent developments relating to human trafficking. She challenges the notion of the linear progression in the development of the law and illustrates that the contests between various NGOs and government organizations meant that this development was neither smooth nor uncontested.

Child Trafficking vs. Child Sexual Exploitation: Critical reflection on the UK media reports

This article explores how UK media narratives construct sexual exploitation of British children as a phenomenon to be approached differently than sexual exploitation of trafficked minors who are non-British nationals. Qualitative analysis of media articles that frame infamous child sexual exploitation cases as occurrences of human trafficking shows that they bank on the motifs from the historical white slavery myth. Thereby, these articles endorse the stereotypes of white victim and foreign trafficker and obscure the diversity of trafficking victims, perpetrators, and experiences. Furthermore, comparison between media reports focusing on cases involving British minors, on the one hand, and minors from abroad, on the other hand, reveals that only the former problematise inadequate victim assistance and systemic failures in dealing with sexual exploitation of minors. This leaves structural causes of child trafficking unaddressed, promotes differential treatment of victims based on their nationality, and stigmatises whole communities as immoral and crime-prone.

Nation, Internationalism, and the Policies against Trafficking in Girls and Women after the Fall of the Habsburg Empire

Interwar Poland inherited the problem of prostitution and human trafficking from its three predecessor states, above all from the Habsburg Monarchy. It soon came into the focus of interest of the League of Nations’ anti-trafficking agencies. Exploring the interaction between the recently acquired national sovereignty of post-Habsburg Poland and the new world order with the League of Nations as its pivotal force is tantamount to understanding how a nation state tried to tackle a transnational problem such as ‘white slavery’, as well as how it struggled with commitments resulting from its new position as a sovereign actor in interwar international politics. This chapter investigates governmental and non-governmental activities against prostitution and human trafficking in Poland, along with the government’s stance on the League’s recommendations. Whereas prewar international Jewish activities to save women from prostitution came to an end, domestic institutions seized opportunities provided by a democratic state and took their place.

“In a distant unknown country:” A New Historicist Look at James Joyce’s “Eveline,” Argentina, and the Zwi Migdal in the Early 1900s

This article analyzes James Joyce’s story “Eveline” (1904) looking at the moral panic about “white slavery” in Europe and the new continent, especially focusing on Argentina, the foremost recipient of trafficked women between 1880 and 1930 (and, of course, Joyce’s destination of choice for Eveline). It was precisely at the turn of the twentieth century that, along with the popularity of transatlantic migration, sex trafficking went fully global and news about international “dangers” for single white women reached the general public, provoking all kinds of repressive reactions through what became known as the “social purity” movement.

White Skin Privilege: Modern Myth, Forgotten Past

European women dominate images of beauty, presumably because Europe has dominated the world for the past few centuries. Yet this presumed cause poorly explains “white slavery”—the commodification of European women for export at a time when their continent was much less dominant. Actually, there has long been a cross-cultural preference for lighter-skinned women, with the notable exception of modern Western culture. This cultural norm mirrors a physical norm: skin sexually differentiates at puberty, becoming fairer in girls, and browner and ruddier in boys. Europeans are also distinguished by a palette of hair and eye colors that likewise differs between the sexes, with women more often having the brighter hues. In general, the European phenotype, especially its brightly colored features, seems to be due to a selection pressure that targeted women, apparently sexual selection. Female beauty is thus a product of social relations, but not solely those of recent times.