Gender Exploitative Migration

Gender, Technology and Development
http://gtd.sagepub.com Gender, Exploitative Migration, and the Sex Industry: A European Perspective
Thanh-Dam Truong Gender Technology and Development 2003; 7; 31 DOI: 10.1177/097185240300700102 The online version of this article can be found at: http://gtd.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/7/1/31
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Gender, Exploitative Migration,

and the Sex
A
Industry:
European Perspective
THANH-DAM TRUONG
This article weaves together three dimensions of sex trafficking, notably commercial sex violence against women, as a livelihood option, and as part of the social formation of an inter-state system of transaction of sex as a commodity. Based on data from Europe, the article shows how analysis of violence against women in commercial sex must be taken beyond the workplace and located in social processes that precede it—economic policy of transition and intra-state violence that undermine womens human insecurity in their daily lives. Diverse forms of violence at the workplace are outcomes of the treatment of women as a commodity on the labor market through unethical self-regulating recruitment systems, as well as an ineffective regulation of migration and commercial sex. Responses to this problem at EU level could benefit from a human security framework sensitive to existing sex/gender systems and their dynamics.
as
Introduction
Current trends in international female migration in the context of sex work are complex, and pose a considerable challenge to policymakers, human rights advocates and womens organizations. Given the employment options for women in the present structures of global political economy, supporters of womens economic independence consider migration for sex work as a way to expand life choices and livelihood strategies. Purportedly, women in prostitution should be seen as working people to whom social rights and labor standards should be expanded to ensure the protection of their interests at the workplace (Kempadoo and
commercial
Thanh-Dam
Truong,
Institute of Social Studies, The
Hague,
the Netherlands.
32
Doezema, 1998). However, concerned with the growing evidence of

sexual brutality and exploitation in commercial sex, as well as the fact that cross-border migration of women is ridden with diverse forms of human rights abuse, opponents argue that commercial sex reflects the culture of violence against women and should be challenged. The recognition of commercial sex as work may serve to re-enforce this culture (Hughes and Roche, 1999). While consensus has been reached on the need to protect human rights abuses in cross-border migration and in prostitution, controversy remains with the recognition of migration for sex work as a livelihood option for women. Uncertain of the feasibility of an effective regime of prohibition, analysts of the spread of the sex sector as a component in the illegal economy show how the functioning of this sector, involving billions of dollars annually, has been enabled by corrupt elements in law enforcement agencies, making it virtually impossible to distinguish between coerced and voluntary commercial sex (Lim, 1998; Phongpaichit and Baker, 1998). There appears to be an ongoing formation of an inter-state system of transaction over commercial sexual services as a commodity. Although they operate under localized rules, these types of economy of sex are linked by vast networks of labor supply and financial transfers which, so far, are poorly understood (Truong, 2001 ). This article seeks to weave together the three dimensions of sex trafficking in the era of globalization based on data from Europe. Given the heterogeneity of womens positions in migratory processes and in the sex industry, the article argues that responses to the problem must be based on a combination of approaches that recognizes the gender-based dimensions of human insecurities triggered by conflict and violence, as well as economic policy. Working towards the enhancement of human security in everyday life requires serious commitment to gender equality as a principle. This principle should cover an improvement of womens s in the and as well as a social transformation of order, political position the masculine characteristics of this order. Masculine characteristics of governance rules at global and national levels have yet to give due recognition to the significance of womens work relative to mens work, and womens security needs relative to mens security needs. Such rules of governance have veiled a deeper gender-based value problem, which is revealed through the experiences of migrant women in the global sex trade. Whereas care for the old, the sick, and the young-socially defined as womens work-tends to meet with less supportive responses from
33
state-based and community-based entitlement systems, care for mens sexual needs is highly responsive to market forces. An uncontrolled market system of sexual services at the global level eventually leads to new structures of inter-state relations, whereby destabilized and poor areas are supplying sexual labor under conditions of high risks to consumption chains in relatively stable and affluent areas, which operate under low-risk conditions.
Sex
Trafficking in the European

Trends and Issues
Union:
Europes experience in the trafficking of women and young girls for the purpose of exploitation is not new. Historical records show that sex trafficking as a form of trade was found in Western Europe as early as the 14th century. With colonial expansion, some countries in Western Europe also had the experience of exporting young women to the Americas, Middle East and Pacific Asia (Commission of Inquiry, 1933). In contemporary history, Western Europe has become a well-known importing avenue in the services of commercial sex workers and professional housewives through commercial arrangements such as mail-order-brides, and other forms of market-based matchmaking. Three main waves in the contemporary history of sex trafficking in Europe may be identified. The first wave was from 1978 through the
1980s, and involved adult women from Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and West Africa, destined for the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Spain. In the 1990s, a second wave involving women from China, the Baltic States, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) became visible, involving younger women, sometimes under-aged (Europol, 2000a; IOM, 2001 a; Brussa, 1999). In this wave, new destinations such as the Scandinavian countries have also been added. In the late 1990s and early 2000, women from the Balkans have also emerged as victims as well as agents in sex trafficking activities, and a number of countries in CEE and the Balkans have assumed the role of transit points (IOM, 2000, 2001 b, 2001 c; UNMIBH,
to identify and locate the causes, conseand structural variations of sex trafficking, which seems to be quences, to the of integral history global capitalism but still remained underresearched until recently.
2000). It is, therefore, important
34
on current trends in sex trafficking either not representative, or are unable to adequately show its magnitude. Nevertheless, some dimensions of the magnitude of sex trafficking may be comprehended through an estimate of the percentage of migrant workers in the sex industry. A 1999 survey conducted by TAMPEP (Transnational AIDS/STD Prevention among Migrant Prostitutes in Europe Project) shows that the percentage of migrant women in the commercial sexual service sector has increased despite repressive measures introduced between 1997 and 1999 (Brussa, 1999: pp. 2526). In so far as countries of origin are concerned, Brussas survey also shows that the geographical origins commonly known in the 1980s, i.e., Africa, Latin America, and Asia remain unchanged. In addition, new countries of origin such as the CEE and CIS countries have also emerged, contributing to an increase in the number of nationalities of women and men in the sex trade. In the European Union (EU) today there are 25 to 27 nationalities in the sex trade, reflecting an increase from 10 to 12 compared to surveys of 1993-94 (ibid.: p. 39). Brussas findings also reveal an important feature regarding the effectiveness of government measures, or lack thereof. Legalization or abolition of prostitution seems to have affected only the locations where the sex trade takes place (i.e. street or brothel), and not necessarily the flow or safety of migrant women in the trade. For example, the Netherlands and Germany have adopted a regulatory approach to prostitution. These countries are known as the traditional receivers of trafficked women, who may be deployed elsewhere thereafter. Greece and Austria, which also have a regulatory system, now receive a high percentage of migrant sex workers, mainly from neighboring CEE and CIS countries (Brussa, 1999). In contrast, Italy has the highest percentage of migrant sex workers in all the EU countries, yet it follows an abolitionist system which includes provision for the prohibition of recruitment as well as employment of persons in the sex trade. Indeed, the most widespread form of prostitution in Italy is street prostitution (ibid.: p. 37). Survey results on the population of migrant women in prostitution are also reflected in Europol findings on human trafficking (Europol, 2000a). Although Europol data does not differentiate between human trafficking for sexual and non-sexual purposes, the data shows an increased national diversity of victims of trafficking, notably from CEE and CIS countries. Among 15 EU member states, Belgium, France,
For a variety of reasons, statistics
are
35
Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have shown more national diversity than others. It is not known a priori why some countries serve as attraction poles for migration. Europol (2000a, 2000b) suggests that strategies of organized crime may be an explanatory factor. Such strategies tend to target countries with easy entry regulations, flexible and/or weak laws on prostitution and sex trafficking, which are then turned into transit points for further distribution in the EU. Moreover, the lack of uniformity in legal regulatory system within the EU as a community has created the conditions for forum shopping by criminal gangs, who evaluate the market situation by looking at the situation of law enforcement as well as the supply and demand sides. These gangs exploit the differences in legislation to minimize risks, assess supply on the basis of the vulnerability of potential victims, and allocate the supply of recruited laborers
demand sites. regard, a serious conflict between the legislative and capitalist domains of EU regulation may be noted. It is not possible to recognize enterprises providing sexual services with diversified market structures as legal entities, and at the same time deny the existence of illegal workers who sustain that system. Current legislation that targets illegal migrant women in the sex sector as violators of immigration law indirectly buttresses the power of sex-capitalists,4 and turns sex trafficking into a crime of low risks and high profits. Over time, activities in the sex sector affect patterns of consumption and investment that sexualize leisure activity more broadly, creating a proliferation of sex-related conspicuous consumer services for which a regular supply of fresh labor must be ensured. Increasingly, young transvestite men are also found in the sex industry, particularly in England and Spain (Brussa, 1999). The combination of dynamics on the demand side with those on the supply side has created an economy of sex based on predatory principles, violence, and primitive accumulation. Based on available evidence, Figure 1 distills the essential features of organized crime in sex trafficking. Despite the diversity of practices and actors involved, it is clear that sex trafficking constitutes an interface between two types of services provided on a semi-legal and illegal basis. One is the provision of information and arrangement of facilities for would-be migrants as part of recruitment. The second is the allocation of migrants as laborers to commercial institutions providing asexual
to the
In this
36
Source: Compiled from various IOM reports and Amy ONeill Richard (1999).
37
services according to market structures and prices. The accumulation of profits is primarily based on the violation of the human rights of trafficked persons at every stage of the process, and the creation of a dependent relationship between the trafficked persons and an underground system of governance. According to Europol (2000a), migrants from countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America rely more on the information networks of affiliated ethnic communities. Hence, they are subject to more informal than formal governing. The case of trafficked women from Nigeria being made subject to voodoo (magic) to force them to accept the oath of secrecy is a case in point (ibid.). The oath of secrecy is used to silence the victims by instilling the fear that if they denounced the perpetrators, they and their family would be destroyed by that magic. In contrast, citizens of countries which have a formal economic association with EU, or are in the process of applying for membership, benefit from bilateral agreements with regard to ease of entry and work permit. They can enjoy ease of entry for non-sexual purposes, and can be deployed thereafter to work for sexual purposes and claim their rights. However, this does not imply that citizens from countries with formal economic associations with EU are less exploited than citizens from other countries. What is clear is that the legal space for them to maneuver is greater than for others without such
rights.
An illustrative example is the case of a Czech woman who challenged the Netherlands state for refusing to grant her a residence permit to work as a self-employed sex worker. According to an association treaty between Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, and the European Union, citizens from these transition countries may enjoy the right to selfemployed labor in the European Union. The Czech woman, whose means of entry to the Netherlands is not known, applied for a residence permit to work in prostitution in the Netherlands. The Ministry of Justice denied this application on the grounds that prostitution could not be seen as labor in the sense of the treaty. The woman took the Dutch state to court, and on 18 July 1997 the court in The Hague overruled the decision of the immigration office, making it clear that prostitution is labor in its full juridical meaning. It concluded that if citizens from countries under the association treaty could prove to the Dutch administration that they could support their own living costs by working in the sex trade as selfemployed rather than under wage-labor conditions, then they must be given a residence permit (Visser, 1997).
38
Regulatory Framework
This case raises the controversial issues as to whether a regulatory framework that recognizes commercial sexual services as work enhances the protection of commercial sex workers or promotes the integration of the sex trade in the world economy. The new Dutch law that recognizes prostitution as labor seeks to protect women in the sex trade by creating an opportunity for them to be separated from the control of organized crime through the provision of incentives for self-employment. In this sense, the law can potentially dismantle the hegemony of criminal networks in the sex trade, but cannot prevent the re-clustering of selfemployed sex entrepreneurs under a constitution similar to organized crime. The law gives protection to some women, but continues to sustain the functioning of the sex trade based on a segregated labor market. The main flaws in legislation that recognizes sex work only in the context of self-employment may be located in two key assumptions. One is the assumption that there is no competition between the legal and underground dimensions of the sex trade that affect the prices and behavior of sex entrepreneurs (self-employed or otherwise). A second is the assumption that practices of the sex trade among the self-employed are embedded in norms of self-exploitation only, and are not capable of encroaching on the dignity of others. In reality, price competition between the legal and the illegal sex trade often arises around the issue of safe sex (with or without condoms), duration of service and a range of other factors. In reality, self-employed women in the sex trade can be squeezed and constrained by price pressures from the underground. As selfemployed sex workers rarely operate autonomously and are often linked to a chain of activities, their risk-reducing and profit-enhancing strategies can make them capable of assuming the role of pimps, i.e., rendering services to the illegal sex trade through labor recruitment rather than through sexual services to clients. A regulatory approach that only guarantees the safety of legal persons and is not concerned with the safety of non-legal persons or undocumented workers in the sex trade can turn legal persons (women or men) into exploiters of non-legal persons. Most women migrants are undocumented persons, while the mediators and clients are legal ones. A balanced regulatory system would require governments to grant a legal status to all undocumented workers found in the sex industry, and not just to those who benefit from bilateral agreements between states. However, such an option is currently not favored for reasons related to the cor.trol
39
of immigration. Furthermore, the sex trade has a tripartite system involving the consumer, the provider of services, and the mediator. A fair regulatory approach would need to create mechanisms of control directed at all three agents to create a balance of power between them. This option is ridden with difficulties due to consumers resistance and public avoidance to protect their privacy. Without this balance, a legal framework, whether based on a regulatory or an abolitionist approach, remains defective, and as such it may continue to serve as an attraction point for the sex trade without being able to protect women listed as undocumented persons. Unable to resolve these differences, many countries now turn to the protection of the human rights of victims as an area where consensus has been achieved. In several countries, notably the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy, civic groups have lobbied and succeeded in reforming legislation that permits a temporary stay for a victim of trafficking while she/ he decides whether or not to participate as a witness in criminal proceedings. During this time she/he is provided the necessary support mediated through NGOs, and in some cases may be allowed to study or work and regain her/his autonomy. Cooperation with the law enforcement and judicial authorities will provide victims with a residence permit until the criminal proceedings are completed. Other EU governments may informally tolerate trafficked persons for a period of time as long as they cooperate with law enforcement (OSCE, 1999). For example, one condition is that victims of trafficking who come forward must leave the country after the criminal investigation and prosecution are completed. Legal and social protection of victims seems to have worked. Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy all report a significant increase in witness testimony and successful prosecution of traffickers, although restitution or civil remedy to and protection of the victims after repatriation remain a weak area (ibid.). The problem is that there is no mechanism to monitor returnees or provide additional support so far. Therefore, the vulnerability of returnees to re-trafficking remains open to inquiry. As pointed out, in countries where trust does not characterize the relation between law enforcers and the victims, even NGOs who are on the side of the victims are reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement agencies (ibid.). Victims are seen primarily as instruments for criminal investigation, hence their role as witnesses is more emphasized. Obliterated are their real needs such as psychological security (regaining self-respect and autonomy), and financial security. Thus, in the absence of a legislative framework and procedural mechanism to ensure the safety and fair treatment
40
of trafficked victims, few have come forward. EU action programs with clear mandates to benefit victims of sex trafficking tend to target enhancement of the capacity of institutions to deal with the problem of sex trafficking (i.e., monitoring and control) rather than enhancing the capacity of victims of sex trafficking to develop other options. To recapitulate, the long history of sex trafficking in Europe suggests that there is no easy solution to counter an institution caught between the dynamics of male sexual dominance on the one hand, and marketdriven forces on the other. Institutionalized commercial sex supported by transnational trafficking of persons for sexual exploitation manifests an exacerbation of a male-centered sex/gender system which, despite two centuries of the womens liberation movement and nearly one century of social engineering for gender equality in CEE and CIS countries, remains resilient. Strategies for change cannot ignore this systemic dimension that underlies the institution of commercialized sex. Answers must be found to questions regarding what makes sex/affective relations conventionally bound by kinship relations and the private domain vulnerable to encroachment by market forces; how sex trafficking emerges as a transfer of sex/affective labor across national borders historically, and what the implications of this transfer on women and gender relations are in society. Currently, it appears that the burdens of this transfer are mediated through an unhealthy system of inter-state relations, by which women from low-income countries shoulder the risks of exploitation to ensure an enlargement of sexual choices for men in high-income countries.
Gender Aspects of Human Security and their Relationship with Sex Trafficking: Evidence from CEE and CIS Countries
The emergence of women from CEE and CIS countries in the sex industry in the EU since the 1990s expresses the two major dimensions of human insecurity, i.e., forms of human insecurity resulting from conflict and violence, and those that are linked with economic policy. Military conflicts in many parts of the world have had a history of posing serious threats to women and young girls who become the targets of sexual violence and abuse by military men. The Balkan region is not an exception. Initially, women and girls in the Balkan region experienced sexual
41
violence during the militarized ethnic conflicts, both by the military and armed rebels (Bellamy, 1997). In the post-conflict era, the tacit tolerance of such violence by power structures and communities has led to organized prostitution catering to the UN Peace-keeping forces (MacKinnon, 1994), showing how women and children in conflict zones are sexually vulnerable and insecure-even from their own protectors. Prolonged post-conflict economic and social destabilization of the region has induced massive population movements and facilitated the formation of trafficking networks, targeting refugee populations who are uninformed and eager to search for a secure life space (IOM, 200 lc).~ With regard to the forms of human insecurity that are linked with economic policy, a comparison between the gender effects of different types of economic and social crisis and their recovery strategies is useful in the search for common grounds for an explanation of processes that induce womens international migration for employment. Despite their different nature and structural determinants, Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) in developing countries and the transition from communism to market-led societies share similar gender dimensions. SAPs introduced in the 1980s in most developing countries is essentially a process of market-oriented economic reforms that aim at restoring the balance of payments, reducing inflation, and creating conditions for economic growth. However, as pointed by a feminist economist Elson (1995), SAPs constitute a switch of gears in the economy through a change in resource allocation that uses price mechanisms rather than direct controls. The gender effects of SAPs have been documented by many studies (Rowbotham and Mitter, 1993; Elson 1995). Most notable is the intensification of womens labor time in non-tradable activities of careproviding, as well as in the production of specific export-oriented goods and services. Suffice to say here that despite policy packages to help cushion social effects at a later stage of SAPs, some key consequences on gender may be found in the market economy and the sex/affective and care-giving economy. While the market economy has offered more employment for women, the labor market has also become de-regulated and feminized from the standpoint of labor rights. The informalization of production relations in industrial work has been accompanied by a semi-formalization of work in the sex/affective and care-giving economy which, traditionally, was governed by non-monetary and gender-based norms rather than the market. In many countries in East and South-East
42
Asia, the sex sector emerges next to other industrial activities including tourism, leisure-related services, textiles, and electronics as an engine of growth (Lim, 1998). Rampant sex tourism gradually shaped and diversified the demands for commercial sexual services; and sex trafficking
became another way to bring such services to the consumers in their country of origin. Two features of SAPs make it possible to consider this reform process as masculine, i.e., predominantly serving male interests. These include the neglect of the care-giving economy, the burden of which is carried by middle-aged women, and the emergence of a sexualized service sector benefiting mainly young and middle-aged men as consumers. A shift of incentives in resources allocation based on price, without paying due attention to the ways in which care relations and sexual relations are organized, has led to a serious structural distortion of values, i.e., production in the sex sector yields higher returns than the care sector. As no control is placed on the market for sexual services, employment opportunities for the economy of sex become widened, whereas options for the care economy narrow. In other words, care systems based on traditional norms of kinship, or friendship and neighborhood, have come under threat while commercial sex systems based on market norms have been strengthened. The combination of government neglect of the care domain and market interests in the sex domain has led to what may be regarded as a gross exacerbation of existing imbalances in the gender order of societies. Notably, to continue to care for their families, many women must consider the sex trade as a means of livelihood. Similar trends may be observed in the CEE and CIS countries. Although the outcomes of the Big Bang market-oriented reforms have been more dramatic than SAPs, the gender dimensions may be observed in many areas. The transition under the Big Bang has brought an abrupt shift from a model of gender equality based on sameness derived from a communist ideology, to a new bipolar sex/gender system characterized by difference (Holzner and Truong, 1997). In this shift, womens identity as relentless workers in the construction of communism along with men became diversified into mothers, wives, mistresses, escorts, models, and objects of male desire. As pointed out by Vaknin (2001 ), women in the European transition countries experienced a shift from equal labor participation secured by a quota system, to a new system that was restructured on the basis of old principles which were patriarchal, discriminatory, and iniquitous. The female labor market has been restructured from many
43
and administrative categories down which have included sexual and domestic services. informal work, may At the same time, the costs of public goods such as health and education have been transferred from the state to the household through the commercialization of services. Data collected by UNIFEM (2001: p. 73) shows that the proportion of adult women who are members of the labor force was lower in 1997 than in 1985 in all transition countries in Europe. In this period, the rate of womens participation in the labor force fell by 40 percent in Hungary, 31 percent in Estonia, 33 percent in Latvia and 24 percent in Lithuania, 21 percent in the Russian Federation, 16 percent in Slovenia, 12 percent in the Czech Republic, and 13 percent in Poland. Womens paid employment in industry and services also experienced different patterns of change. As pointed out by UNIFEM (ibid.), in services women lost jobs in the expanding and remunerative sectors of banking and real estates, and are more concentrated in low-paid public services such as education and health. Unemployment is high in most CEE and CIS countries, as shown by data for 1999. Figure 2 shows that unemployment rates are highest in Slovakia, followed by the Baltic states, the Russian Federation, the Ukraine, and Croatia. In the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenias unemployment rates are between 7 and 9 percent. Womens unemployment is higher than that of men in Croatia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia. There are, however, variations within countries based on factors that are
options
to
in
professional, technical,
Figure 2 Unemployment in European Transition
Countries in 1999
Source: United Nations Statistical
Yearbook, 2000.
44
regionally specific as well as sector specific. For example, in the Russian Federation, although the difference between womens and mens unemployment appears marginal at the macro-level, the liquidation and restructuring of enterprises that are gender and sector specific (textiles and garments) affected women living in regions where these enterprises are concentrated. The same applies to men, as for example the restructuring of the military-industrial complex (Malysheva, 1998). The neglect of women-specific sectors in the recovery plan has led to fewer employment opportunities for women who were retrenched from their jobs. With their productive role being obliterated, middle-aged working mothers find themselves disproportionate victims of retrenchment or become deprived pensioners. From families based on a double-income, many became dependent on a single one. As coined by Russian sociologist Marina Malysheva (1998), opportunities for women are nowadays polarized between being peasants (i.e., growing food for consumption in limited living spaces) orlove machines (accepting sexual harassment in exchange for job opportunities, or accepting sexual services for pay). A divide between generations seems to have emerged based on different interests, aspirations, and responsibilities. On the one hand young women have become more driven by Western-style consumerism and influenced by notions of autonomy based on individual self-advancement; while on the other hand middle-aged women, who are now free from involuntary emancipation, must continue to care for themselves and their famvery limited means. less mobile than men, and owing to their double burden, retrenched women workers face a more limited range of options in the job market. Prolonged crisis in daily survival has led to the disintegration of the family in many areas. Migratory husbands have left women with children behind in search for work and remittances. Evidence in several reports suggests that many families in crisis are obliged to leave their children under institutional care, evidence clearly manifested in the crisis of orphans in Russia. According to the Human Rights Watch ( 1998), since the collapse of Soviet rule in 1991 and the subsequent economic turmoil, the number of abandoned children in Russian society has been rapidly increasing. According to the Ministry of Labor and Social Development, the number of children defined by the state as without parental care shot up from 67,286 in 1992 to more than 600,000 in 1997. There is also evidence of under-aged mothers abandoning their children. The social stigma attached to teenage mothers is so acute that many ilies
on
Being
45
of them either abandon their children to state institutions, or are expelled from homes and often end up joining prostitution-related businesses for their survival (Brutman, 1996). Given the problem of youth unemployment, young people with or without families became prey to organized crime. According to a survey conducted by IOM among women trafficked from Eastern European countries, 25.62 percent had no previous work experience either at home or abroad, and most of them were minors and single mothers (IOM, 2001c: p. 6). In many post-communist countries, the image of the West as a model of a liberal society has influenced young womens decisions to work abroad. Often this is seen as a way to break from the authority of the family and old traditions, and as a way of manifesting ones own liberty (Foundation of Womens Forum, 1998).
Womens Collective Agency: Between Masculine Authority and Feminine Tradition

On the political front, since the beginning of the Big Bang reform feminist scholars based in the West have raised concerns about the gender outcomes of the shift of power in the former communist world (Molyneux, 1990; Rai, Pilkington and Phizacklea, 1992; Einhom, 1993). Until recently, their discourses had little impact for a variety of reasons. In the initial years of the reform, the withdrawal of women from token positions in decision-making was remarkable in all countries, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
Change in Womens Share of Seats in National Parliament, 1987-2000
Source: UNIFE%L. 2001.
The decline in womens participation in politics was partly related to the discrediting of traditional mass organizations affiliated with the
46
Communist Party (Holzner and Truong, 1997), and the fact that feminism bears many negative and contradictory meanings in the post-communist
states
(Watson 1996; Molyneux, 1996). According to Molyneux (1996),
post-communist states bear the usual stereotypes of the man-hating lesbian, the foreign communist-imposed, and the unnatural world offorced emancipation. Anti-feminist sentiments based on widespread ignorance of the history of feminism, its diversity, and current concerns expressed in the media certainly had intimidating effects. For example, a Polish newspaper in an article on contraception stated: Half the feminists want to be raped, but there is no one who wants to do it (Molyneux, 1996: pp. 245-46). This decline turned out to be too costly, as womens organized agency has been too weakened to be effective in preventing the silent shift of gender norms which accompanied the shift in the economic system. Furthermore, given the historical connection between communism and womens movements, it is difficult for common people to distinguish
between the communist-led womens movement, and the autonomous organizations that have emerged since the 1990s. Without an internal support base, many womens non-governmental organizations turned to external support, and remain essentially philanthropic and independent of internal power structures. Their attempts to impact policymaking so as to alter the structures conditioning womens insecurity have so far met with limited success. Future prospects for women are ridden with difficulties (Funk and Mueller, 1993; Renne, 1997). The gender dynamics internal to CEE and CIS countries have had consequences on the trajectory of womens activism and their outcomes. In Russia, womens organizations are floating between pressures from two sides: the masculine authority and the lack of support from fellow countrywomen who would rather support the traditional division of labor in the family and society (Papkova, 2000). In the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Romania, womens groups are concentrating on the academic aspects of the movemem, and have limited experience in reaching womens everyday concerns. In contrast, the issue of abortion in Poland and post-conflict reconstruction in former Yugoslavia have contributed to bridging the activities of academic and grassroots politics to resist male-centered reasoning and practices (Renne, 1997: pp. 4-5). The above reality shows that womens organized agency in CEE, CIS and the Balkan countries cannot be expected to make significant inroads into the halls of power and decision-making without
feminism in the
47
sustained support from international solidarity networks that promote social justice, and are sensitive to local gender dynamics. It appear that womens vulnerability to exploitative migration for the sex industry is heightened in times of crisis when their citizenship rights are undermined and their political space for action reduced. Dislocations associated with economic transition and the dismantling of social security systems have left many women without protection. Furthermore, the evaporation of a socialist ideology of gender equality has left the social order with a vacuum, which is filled slowly by market values. The system installed in the communist era based on asexual norms has been replaced by a bipolar system which sexualizes differences between women and men. The current system comes close to the malecentered sex/gender system known in patriarchal cultures, by which commercial sex affecting women as the providers and men as consumers became an outcome of natural law. Left unaltered, coping strategies adopted by women and men involved in transnational sex trafficking as criminal actors, victims, and survivors further consolidate relations of power, production, and profits in the sex industry.
Conclusion
This article has discussed the implications of sex trafficking in the EU for human security and its gender dimensions. Gender-based human insecurity in the sex trade lies first and foremost with the withdrawal of womens social citizenship rights, which undermine the foundation of their security in everyday life. Their civic rights to articulate the problems they face are often undermined by formal and informal powers of intimidation. Once engaged in a migratory process, their formal identity represented in their passports is surrendered to the control of a criminal system of governance. At their workplace, womens legal status is also an important factor determining their position in the diversified market structures of commercial sexual services. Legal women are less subject to surveillance by the police or criminal networks, and hence can operate more independently. Illegal women are pushed under criminal surveillance and become subject to arbitrary treatment and abuse. If they manage to break out of this system, they face specific state rules of governance over migrant labor and prostitution. Liberal prostitution laws in some countries do give some women protection, in so far as they can emerge
48
self-employed and satisfy the conditions of migrant labor law applicable to specified countries. Migrant women whose citizenship does
as
under some kind of bilateral agreement are most vulnerable, outside the framework of legislation. Second, although the EU has an explicit strategy on gender equality for CEE and CIS countries, governments have not considered how this equality may be made an integral part of a human security policy framework. This is regrettable since the EU, unlike other regions in trilateral countries, has been exposed most closely to human insecurity derived from transition and post-conflict insecurity. Due to these limitations, policy instruments have not been able to tackle the issues faced by the most vulnerable. The relationship between the law and the victims is still determined by the notion of the individual as a legal person, and cannot fully address the needs of undocumented persons as social entities, such as women living with sex trafficking and prostitution. Third, the challenge to the EU is how to move beyond a pragmatic position directed at protecting the human rights of victims through the legalization of prostitution, or in using victims to fight organized crime. EU governments also need to seriously explore the range of policy options that can control the sex trade at its core. Finally, cultural means must be found to deal with the forms of expression of masculinity that are harmful to the integrity of women and children as social beings, and to help dissolve the sex trade. Current expressions of masculinity in the sex trade that support the image of the consumer of sexual services against payment as a representation of virility need to be countered with images of virility as the ability to care and take responsibility for the other. Less harmful and more constructive expressions should be promoted so as to help create a cultural balance that can eventually promote the value of caring and responsible sex as distinct from safe sex, irrespective of the social relations that mediate it (marriage, friendship, or commercial). The notion of caring and responsible sex seeks not only to enhance personal safety, but can also dissolve the subject-object relationship in sexual relations, and promote a cultural transformation towards non-violence in sexuality. It is through nonviolence that mutual respect can be built and a gender-based human security achieved.
not come
as
they fall
49
NOTES
Melody Lu and Yu Kojima are warmly acknowledged for their research assistance, facilitated by a small grant from the Toyota-funded project on Gender and Human Security: A Trilateral Comparison, coordinated by Seiko Hanochi and Kinhide Mushakoji. Revision of the project report into the current article is my own responsibility.
1. These include debt bondage, illegal confinement, slave-like practices, and abuses of a sexual and physical nature, often with the state as a complicit agent (Human Rights
Watch, 1993, 1995a, 1995b).

2. Bosnia, Albania, and Serbia are often used as transit countries for other destinations in Western European countries and Scandinavia, and within Balkan countries themselves. For trafficking routes, see the IOM report (2001c). 3. Most of the statistics are derived from small-scale research. Incomparability and gaps are found in national data derived from the different definitions and monitoring indicators of trafficking at national levels. In many CEE and CIS countries, sex trafficking was an unknown crime while in some EU countries, sex trafficking might have existed for some time but was not recognized. The current data from the police and border control on human trafficking does not address sex trafficking in particular. Women who are trafficked for purposes unrelated to commercial sex may later enter into the sex industry out of compulsion, manipulated consent, or of their own choice. 4. Owners of enterprises providing sexual services, recruiters, and procurers of migrant sex workers. 5. For example, Swedish legislation aims at penalizing the buying of sex, and eliminating the whole sex industry. However, since the law was passed in 1998, Nordic countries have increasingly become a popular destination of migrants from Baltic states and Russia (IOM, 2001a, 2001 b; Foundation for Womens Forum, 1998), and the percentage of migrant sex workers in prostitution has increased from 5 to 15 percent between 1997 and 1999 (Brussa, 1999: p. 25). A survey conducted in Sweden in 1998 shows that most people think that such law may effectively end prostitution, but it actually will be further pushed into the underworld. Indirectly, such a law may make the sex industry more organized, and enhance the degree of exploitation and dependency of prostitutes behind closed doors. 6. A report from an IOM counter-trafficking project in Kosovo suggests that 82.25 percent of the women seeking assistance from the project went abroad to seek jobs; 71.25 percent went with false job promises and 83.13 percent ended up in the sex industry; 50.63 percent did not have any relation with the recruiters; and 45.75 percent left the countries of origin without an international passport because they were told that they did not need one (IOM, 2001c: pp. 7-8). Many have been found to return home to recruit new victims, i.e., they have chosen to become pimps as one option to earn money and avoid the brutality of unwanted sex by multiple men each day (Hughes, 2000). 7. This is confirmed by the findings in Western Europe that the majority of victims from transition countries are much younger than the ones from Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Trafficked victims from Asia, Latin America, and Africa tend to have families and children to support (Europol, 2000a).
50
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