South Asian Border Crossings, Migration and Sex Work
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Sexuality Research & Social Policy http://nsrc.sfsu.edu December 2008 Vol. 5, No. 4 South Asian Border Crossings and Sex Work: Revisiting the Question of Migration in Anti-Trafficking Interventions Svati P. Shah Abstract: Tracing the genealogy of U.S. foreign policy interests in trafficking through the first major con- temporary trafficking case in the United States, the author shows that historical concerns about pro- tecting U.S. borders form a set of principles criminalizing migrants and argues that these principles are being exported through U.S. anti-trafficking work abroad. Moving from the moment in the 1990s when a consolidated anti-trafficking agenda was being determined in the United States, the author discusses the ways in which this agenda is now potentially migrating to South Asia and, in particular, to India— albeit with some major tensions already in play. The author argues that states’ anxieties about migra- tion are themselves migrating, such that states in different regions are aiming to coordinate their responses to increased economic migration everywhere, and shows that anxieties about preventing sex work gain purchase in an international context in which migration and decriminalized borders are increasingly suspect. Key words: trafficking debate; law; India; diaspora; immigration Discourses and debates regarding the implementa- U.S. domestic policy. Using both Chapkis’s and Luibhéid’s tion of free-trade policies around the world have tended work on the relationship between anti-migrant and anti- to emphasize how these policies enable the more unfet- trafficking agendas, critiques of the conceptual and politi- tered migration of capital across international borders cal conflation of trafficking and prostitution, as well as the (Jha, 2000; Overbeek, 2002). Critics of these policies construction of innocence in these discourses offered by have tried to emphasize their human cost, especially with Chapkis and by Kamala Kempadoo and Jo Doezema (1998), respect to low-income migrants, who have more signifi- I argue that this synergy is now increasingly apparent in U.S. cantly reduced access to cross-border migration within the foreign policy as well. The focus on international security, context of neoliberalism than they did previously. At the contextualized by the so-called war on terror, has consti- same time, governmental concerns regarding human traf- tuted a foreign-policy discourse that seems to be aimed at ficking are rising, leading to further advocacy for height- heightening national border controls in countries and ened law enforcement and added border-control regions that are of strategic interest to the United States, measures, which are rationalized as protective of the rights including South Asia. Anti-trafficking initiatives under- of innocents who may be unwittingly trafficked into taken by the U.S. government abroad include both shaping prostitution. and strengthening law enforcement in allied countries In this article, I draw on the critiques of Wendy Chapkis through the dominant anti-trafficking framework. To illus- (2003) and Eithne Luibhéid (2002), who have argued that trate this trajectory, I discuss U.S. governmental interests there is a synergy, both contemporary and historical, in shaping anti-trafficking laws and policies in India. My between anti-trafficking and anti-migration discourses in argument, which stems from concerns that grew out of my Address correspondence concerning this article to Svati P. Shah, Department of Women’s Studies, Duke University, 210 East Duke Building, Box 90760, Durham, NC 27708. E-mail: [email protected] Sexuality Research & Social Policy, Vol. 5, Issue 4, pp. 19–30, electronic ISSN 1553-6610. © 2008 by the National Sexuality Research Center. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permissions to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp 19 SEXUALITY RESEARCH & SOCIAL POLICY ethnographic research on sex work and migration in the city person deserves this hell. Let us break our silence. of Mumbai (Shah, in press), is based on a contextualized Let us break our tolerance to such a crime, and analysis of newspaper reportage, research conducted by strengthen the hands of those of us who are fight- academics and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), ing this battle. Come. Join me in this global fight and legal cases. against human trafficking. Rhetorics of Trafficking and In Hindi, however, he said: Prostitution in South Asia Every girl bought and sold is someone’s sister or Current U.S. governmental interest in preventing daughter. Today you don’t have any relationship trafficking in South Asia—and especially in India—is sig- (rishta) to them, but you can. Until then, will you nificant, both in terms of the space the issue claims in pub- watch this fight in silence? The time is not for think- lic discourses on migration, sexuality, and charity, as well ing, the time is for stopping. Respect women. Stop as the number of resources being poured into the issue. human trafficking. (United Nations Office on Drugs India is becoming a hub of this work for international and Crime, 2007) agencies and for bilateral donors alike. One example of this focus is the South Asia Regional Conference of the Global As the Hindi film industry’s biggest star, Bachchan’s Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN GIFT), a meet- involvement in this campaign is not insignificant. ing held in New Delhi in October 2007 and sponsored by There is much to pull apart regarding the fact that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Celebrity these messages emphasized organized crime for the endorsements for fighting trafficking in India accompa- English-speaking audiences but stressed family, rela- nied the conference, including prerecorded messages of tionships, and the status of women in the Hindi mes- solidarity from such A-list Bollywood actors as Amitabh sage. The issue of subjectivity in these messages, as Bachchan, Preity Zinta, John Abraham, and Suneil Shetty. well as in the discourse as a whole, is also critical: To A growing cadre of major and minor Bollywood per- whom is our hero speaking? In the Hindi message, sonalities, it seems, are jumping onto the anti-trafficking the imperative form of Bachchan’s exhortation to bandwagon, probably because the issue increasingly is respect women indicates that women are not speak- becoming a nodal point for charity. With trafficking being ing here at all; rather, they are the object of a con- represented as the nexus of all so-called social evils, includ- versation between Bachchan and his imagined (and ing prostitution, slums, child labor, poor sanitation, educa- necessarily gendered) audience, whom he implores tion, and HIV/AIDS, an endorsement on behalf of an to take action to protect their women. For the purpose anti-trafficking campaign, it follows, is an endorsement of this piece, I indicate this analysis but bracket it in against all of these ills rolled into one simple message. The favor of emphasizing the ways in which Bachchan’s celebrity endorsements at the New Delhi event were the message mirrors some of the problems and elisions most public aspect of a series of high-level meetings and con- in the international anti-trafficking discourse, as well ferences held over the last year involving the United States as how these elisions may be historicized, in part, in Agency for International Development, the United Nations U.S. domestic anti-trafficking policy. Office on Drugs and Crime, UNICEF, and the Indian Ministry The genealogy of the international debate on traf- of Women and Child Development. These meetings and ficking includes contemporary feminist debates on pros- consultations have been convened to help formulate a road titution and, of course, older debates on pornography, in map for eradicating human trafficking in the region. which feminists in the United States argued that pornog- Although human trafficking does have several official, raphy and violence against women were two aspects of a yet highly contested definitions, the term itself is subject seamless whole (Bernstein & Schaffner, 2004; Spector, to the kinds of slippages that are evident in the celebrity 2006; Vance, 1984). Like contemporary anti-trafficking endorsements shown during the UN GIFT conference. Of and antiprostitution activism, antipornography activism these, Amitabh Bachchan’s video message to conference mobilized a call to empower states so that they could pro- participants was, perhaps, the most emblematic. Two ver- tect women from violence (Brown, 1995; Doezema, 2001). sions of his message were broadcast, one in Hindi, the Although Bachchan never utters the word prostitution in other in English. In his English-language message, he said: English or in Hindi, his messages’ emphasis on women in To combat an organized crime, we need to be orga- relation to human trafficking and slavery can be under- nized, all of us, who believe that no human being stood as referencing prostitution. In a matrix that empha- should be enslaved. No child, no woman, no human sizes femaleness and human trafficking, women are legible December 2008 Vol. 5, No. 4 20 SEXUALITY RESEARCH & SOCIAL POLICY as prostitutes because of the historicity of this particular with any historical perspective on how this situation came trope. An emphasis on people or human beings in relation to be or what other aims this rhetoric may serve. to human trafficking would have mitigated the conflation On the surface, increasing parallels are evident between trafficking and prostitution by emphasizing all between the U.S. government’s position on trafficking forms of human trafficking, which includes all manner of and prostitution and some elements within the Indian low-wage labor and labor sectors. government. Without critical historical analysis of the Institutions such as the United Nations and some sec- development of this issue in social policy, however, the tors of the Indian government are under pressure to adopt explanatory choices for this development are limited to an abolitionist agenda with respect to all sexual com- theories of unilateral U.S.