La Strada Documentation Center

Sex Industry and Trafficking : Migrant Opportunities ?

Document number
2243
Date
2007
Title
Sex Industry and Trafficking : Migrant Opportunities ?
Author/publisher
Mathilde DARLEY, Joanna NAPIERALA
Availability
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Document type(s)
Meeting Documentation/Conference Reports,
Keywords
International Conference, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France 6 - 8 December 2007, NEW MIGRATION DYNAMICS: REGULAR AND IRREGULAR ACTIVITIES ON THE EUROPEAN LABOUR MARKET,
Summary
Sex-trafficking -the ‘dirty underbelly' and ‘dark side of globalization' - function as one aspect of anti-immigration responses to forces associated with the globalization. Among the ways in which these discourses refer to anxieties about immigration and globalization are the racialization of trafficked women and trafficking criminals. Sex-trafficking discourses tend to focus on the ‘whiteness' of its ‘victims'. The putative ‘whiteness' of ‘the new white slave trade' or of Slavic girls or of ‘blue-eyed blondes' simultaneously functions to position these women as innocent victims in need of protection and contradictorily, as an internal, indistinguishable threat among ‘us'. The territorial, historical, institutional and ethnic contiguity between the EU and East Europe together render the presence of these ‘trafficked women' highly disruptive.
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