Prostitution,migration and deportation.

I am a sextrade worker, I am a feminist and I am apart of the liberation struggle of sexworkers. In 1996 I joined the association for sextrade workers in Montreal consisting of mostly street prostitutes which has been active ever since.In the association are some migrant prostitutes as well, but there are a lot less migrant prostitutes in Canada and North America compared to Western Europe, so the situation is a bit different. I also work with different international associations of prostitutes, for example, I was recently in Barcelona where sextrade workers associations met from all over the world, from Chile, India, Brazil, Thailand. First of all I would like to clear something. Of course there are many feminist perspectives, but it is important to remember that many prostitutes choose this way of life and many do not have options, and some are forced.A large percent of prostitutes choose freely this work and so it is up to them to decide if they want to be saved, or if they are victims or not. It is not up to you and I ask for a level of understanding and respect. I know that this is a point of friction and struggle in feminist circles and many feminists tell me I am not a feminist or that I am not human but I am here to discuss things and not to talk about personal experiences. I cannot represent migrant sexworkers, but I work tightly with them and will try to explain some of the issues and problems of what they are experiencing. So someone asked me what is the connection between the issues of sexworkers and a place like No Border camp, and alot of things came to mind. Many people have this thing in their head that prostitutes can only talk about themselves and their problems, and that they are not smart enough to talk about politics or anything else. This is funny, because in India there is a union of prostitutes with 37,000 prostitutes called the s gothi project which they organised themselves. They have a conference every year and this year the theme was war, so prostitutes can be vey political too and have reason to be. The prostitution organisations also allie themselves with transgender, transsexual and transvestites because they are mostly the sufferers of the worst violence, the worst police brutality and police murders, and deportations. We are also strongly connected with the queer struggle movement, because we are also dealing with questions of sexuality and many of us are also queer. We have also been working with Aids Activism like Act Up concerning the use of condoms and such issues. But more and more I think it is important now to connect with migration movements. There is a mass deportation of migrant sexworkers in North America and in Europe. As feminists I think we need to set our priorities for the No Border movements. For example I have not heard a mention about all the women migrants who are being economically exploited and sexually exploited by their middle-class bosses in Europe and North America, or all the migrant workers working and sewing in sweatshops all over Europe. These I think are very important priorities for any migration movement as are the rights of migrant sexworkers. Some examples, like in Spain this year, hundreds of Nigerian sexworkers were deported from Barcelona, In France two weeks ago as part of the Sarkovi laws there was an announcement that France was going to track down all migrant prostitutes especially Brazilian, and deport them. I find this very frustrating that there has been no mention of this at the No Border camp. This decision was made in Paris ,Lyon and in Strasbourg and it is surprising that so few people know about this. Also in Italy I think it was the minister for justice made an announcement encouraging the people to throw acid in the faces of African prostitutes. So in many ways the migrant prostitute has become the symbol of the bad migrant, not the good white working migrant, the bad migrant who is linked to organised crime. There is also the symbol of the bad woman who does not fit into society, in western society you have the good women who are married with children, and then you have the bad women, the lesbians, the sluts, the whores. So in many ways the migrant prostitutes have been attacked by these ideas and horrible forms of racism. In Canada 700 women were deported all at once with their children two years ago. I think it is also important to talk about the representation of migrants, for example when men migrate they are perceived as heroic, strong, saving their families, doing something good for their country. When women migrate they are perceived as victims, pathetic, lost , confused, and it's really interesting to me in general, that that's the way we look at migration in general, and that's interesting to see that that is the backdrop to talking about prostitution and migration. I want to explain to you what these deportations have meant concretely, and how the anti-prostitution laws in many countries lead to deportation. For example I want to explain to you a situation that happened in Canada because there is a lesson to be learned as feminists from this story. There were a number of Asian sexworkers working in an erotic massage parlour in America and they were found by the police and they had no papers. And so the police decided that they had been trafficked women ,that they were sex slaves, that they had been kidnapped. It was all over the newspapers and all of a sudden the people were sympathetic ,well it wasn't a genuine sympathy, it was scandalous. What happened then is that a number of white feminists who never had any experience in anti-racist work or migration work took the microphone from the press, and without ever asking these women what their experiences were or asking them what they want, and said that these women were trafficked women sex slaves.they said the only way to prevent the trafficking of these women was to shut down migration of coloured women from third world countries, because we can never know they are being trafficked, but if they are white working middle-class, we can let them in. And so the result was a stronger anti-migration law against coloured women from third world countries. Finally the sex workers hired a translator, the first translator quit because she didn't like what they were saying. The second told that the women were sex workers in their own countries and came to Canada becausevthey could make ten times more money.At first it was difficult because they could not report any rape of violence because they had no papers and also because of the anti-prostitution laws, this is a difficulty of all migrant women without papers. The women were imprisoned in the criminal jail because prostitution is criminal and then they were put in the immigration detention jail, and then deported with a criminal charge of prostitution. After this the white anti-trafficking feminists started working with the police, and we all know the police are no friends of prostitutes. Together they set up seven projects all with sexy, scandalous names, like project Alfonso and project Sexslave with the aim of arresting all the women working in strip clubs and massage parlours. So they did this and then arrested all the migrant women and put them in immigration jails to 'save' them. What happened with the other Asian women is that the police had telephone records hearing these women talking to their families telling them how great the money was and of course the newspapers turned against them and they suddenly became the bad migrants robbing our country, the bad women, the corrupt migrants. There were700 migrant sexworkers among these other arrests,they put them in jail in the clothes they were wearing with their children for seven months and then in the immigration jail for seven months with their children, and then deported with a criminal charge of prostitution. This means big trouble in many countries if you come home with a prostitution charge. In Canada I could lose my children, lose my immigration status, in a court case I am considered an unreliable witness, and if I have been raped and must go to court, chances are I will not be treated the same, or they will say it doesn't count because I am a prostitute and cannot be raped. In other countries it is a lot more severe, like mandatory health testing, forced gynacological tests which is essentially state rape, forced aids testing.In some countries if you come home hiv positive you will be murdered. This is the result of the anti-migration, anti-prostitution laws. The anti- trafficking feminists came to Montreal and the prostitutes tried to tell them that it is not the answer to imprison and deport the women, but they said no, it is the answer these women must be saved. These 700 women called the press and said the worst thing that ever happened to them was to be imprisoned and not to be a prostitute. Nobody can say what anyone else needs because the consequences can be pretty fucking dramatic.

Now I am going to explain what some of the anti-prostitution laws mean if you are a migrant. first of all it means you are always on the run, in hiding working without security and safety, it's harder to work with other women collectively. It means you can be incarcerated, which is also a form of violence. You also have no police protection and people know this, they know that in this society you're life doesn't count, that prostitutes cannot be raped and therefor there is a lot of violence. In Canada becaause of criminalisation 10% of homocides are from prostitiutes, the half of which are never solved, not to mention all the migrant prostitutes who are murdered on the streets or on their journey from their country. That said a lot of prostitutes in terrible conditions have organised themselves, and here are some examples. In India thay have organised themselves long before western countries, they are very active against police brutality. They say that anti-trafficking laws are anti-immigration laws because it makes it difficult for women to legally immigrate and therefor they are dependant on smugglers and more likely to be sexually exploited. The anti-trafficking laws don't make any distinction between women who migrate and want to work as a prostitute and women who migrate and work as a prostitute because she can't work legally. Migration for the purpose of prostitution is illegal. From my experience 95% of migrant sexworkers know they are going to sex work, before they go they are told of their conditions, but when they get there it is often quite different, like sexual exploitation and economical exploitation and they cannot denounce their working conditions because they have no rights. The law in Canada makes adistinction like the old rape laws, the good victim and the bad victim. If you are caught as a migrant sex worker and you want to prove that you were forced, you have to prove that you weren't a sexworker before and that you won't become one later, that you were a good innocent woman kidnapped on her way to work one day. A Phillipine woman said she was trafficked and tricked, and the police said we have proof that you were a slut in your country so it's not possible that you were tricked. You have to be a pure innocent heterosexual married woman who was kidnapped on her way to work, because there are no rights for sexworkers in Canada or anywhere else, The majority of abuse and exploitation happens to women who are already sexworkers, and if you are a prostitute without papers it is a nightmare. The prostitutes in India have denounced the anti-trafficking laws as anti-immigration laws and that they don't help any women or any sexworkers.

Other ways in which anti-prostitution laws can lead to deportation another example is the 100% condom programme developed by the UN which was supposed to be one of the best ever aids prevention programmes, denounced in Thailand by the prostitution association. This meant that the barkeepers and hotel owners had to make sure that the prostitutes were using condoms, taking the power from the prostitutes if they use condoms or not. They have to use condoms 100% of the time,and if they don't they can be taken to the police under military escort and are forced to have gynacological examinations with unhygenic utensils. They are forced to have hiv testing, and if they are migrants with hiv they are deported. So this goes against prostitutes rights, womens rights and human rights. So the forced health testing can also lead to deportation, women are deported because of anti-immigration and anti-prostitution laws. Canada for example deports hiv positve migrants and all migrants have mandatory hiv testing. According to Thai prostitutes, the police hang pictures up so that the customers can come and point out from which prostitute gave him what disease. Of course the clients never have forced testing, and this whole approach has horrific consequences for the women.

Another interesting point is that in the early 19th century there was a huge panic about white women slavery, which was also around the time of industrialisation, where many women were migrating alone all over the world. Here developed the idea if the crazy pimp lurking in every corner waiting to catch these innocent white women, and usually they were black or arab or jewish. This panic led to strict anti-immigration laws and anti womens rights laws. Although the goverments say they are trying to save women from this trafficking and prostitution, in fact they just want to keep migrants and migrant women out. An example of this is a very outspoken politician in france who talks about saving these women from sexual exploitation and prostitution by deporting them, is also the same man who started a white supremicist group in the early 80's.

On a positive note there are lots of things happening all around the world, like in 1982 in Equador there was the first prostitutes association with 800 prostitutes who are very powerful. They recently had a strike where they locked all the hotels who were charging too much and burned all the matresses. They kidnapped a governor to demand rights for prostitutes, they were at the forefront of the womens movement in Equador. Of course it is not just women who are being deported, many transgender and transexuals also, like Brazilian transgender people being deported from Italy. There is a huge phobia of trans people, for example 48 transexuals have been murdered in Argentina in the last year and a half. The association for transgender, transsexuals and prostitutes were working for the decriminalisation of prostitution, when a bunch of anti-trafficking feminists from Belgium and America flew down to Argentina, saying that we have to save the prostitutes, and they killed the bill, eventhough the prostitutes wanted it themselves. These feminists are not left wing, they are conservative receiving huge amounts of funding in America, working in the UN and closely with the catholic church. For a long time their slogan was "sex hurts" which made me realy laugh. They have a lot of money and their interests happen to be the same interest as tese frome the anti-immigration lobby. I think some of them have good intentions but some have bad intentions.

What´s hard is that when prostitudes are speaking out about this kind of things, saying that we don´t care when abuses happen, but of course we care, of course that´s what we are fighting against.
The group of India denounced the anti trafficing because it put more power into the hands of police and to borderguides. And whats interesrting is that now some of them are living in Spain and are organising the migrand prostitudes in Spain. Two weeks ago there was a demonstration in Barcelona of prostitudes. And there where about 200 people and i think 90% of us where sexworkers. About 80 of the people on the demonstration where ecuatorian migrand sexworkers , organising themselves. So a lot of prostitudes groups are existing in europe that you can support that you can work together with and I think a lot of antiracist groups are starting to denounce the deportation of migrand prostitudes. I have a manifesto from France that denounces deportation , so one of the first things you can do is start denouncing whenever deportation is happening. An the secon is to get in contact with the local sexworkers groups and to support them in the way that they need support. I was talkin i Spain to some nigerian women working on the street, and they said that the realationship is really dangerous and hard now, and they are telling me this like a white girl after two minutes talking I´m a total stranger and they are telling me this it´s because it is fucking bad. So I guess this is the adwise too, to go out and listen .I´m a sexworker but I´m not a nigirian sexworker in spain so we have to listen to what people have as their priorities.