Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry: 1 Paperback – 15 May 2007

What a relief to have a different conversation about sex and economics outside of the usual morality/rescue mentality. My first reaction to reading the book was to want to meet the author, talk to her all day, and then take her on tour to discuss it with everyone else.

This is the wave of the future, when it comes to discussing "prositution," which already seems like quaint terminology. If you're someone who's interested in progressive sexual politics and how the world works, you are going to EAT THIS UP.

The author does write like a scientific observer, an academic. I appreciated her style and perspective. I would almost say it's not beach reading but actually I read it lying under a mosquito net under one of the most beautiful beachside locations in California. Everyone kept passing me food and tabloid gossip magazines, and I refused them until I got to the last page.

This book is an excellent antidote to all the fantasies about rescue that the high-minded indulge in when they want to save sex workers from their allegedly miserable fate. There are many complex reasons why people - and it's not just women, as Agustin reminds us - perform sexual acts for money, and it would be a good idea for their self-nominated saviors to listen. And there are many complex reasons why people patronize sex workers - it's not just "exploitation," as sex-work abolitionists believe.

Oh and it illuminates the weird affinity between some "fundamentalist feminists" and the religious right, not an attractive alliance.

Though the book is mostly about sex workers who travel from their homelands to ply their trade, the book also helps us think about the whole issue of migration, and our contemporary paranoia about immigrants. The whole notion of "migrants" is deeply class biased; no one ever called an Indian bond trader working in New York a migrant. But he or she has travelled for the same reasons as dishwashers, nannies, and strippers - to make money, for sure, but also to see the world, or escape suffocating origins.

The writer gives us a new perspective of sex work and migration i.e. trafficking; one that questions the "victim" status commonly given to prostitutes and those who leave their home country for work abroad. A very good read, it will be lent out so much I'll want to buy a second copy.

I applaud Professor Agustin's book - it's about time that a book about sex work actually listens to what sex workers have to say! There is this constant drumbeat of "rescue" propaganda, that presents cisgendered female sex workers as "fallen women" who need to be "saved" from their jobs by upper class ladies (and totally ignores the existence of cisgendered male and transgendered sex workers). Professor Agustin totally breaks with that, lets the voice of sex workers enter the room and challenges the respectable affluent ladies, the cops and the bible thumpers and their reactionary anti sex worker agenda. She also exposes the subtle racism and xenophobia that lies behind many of these "anti human trafficking" campaigns.

Professor Agustin's book is actually very readable for an academic tome and I applaud her for that also.

So, if you want to know the real deal about sex work and "human trafficking" you need to buy Professor Agustin's book "Sex At The Margins".

In terms of academic heft, there may be better books that tackle the mess that is modern abolitionism, its take-over of the global anti-trafficking movement and the transformation of the human rights struggle into a new, convoluted form of anti-immigrant prejudice. There is no better book than this, however, for a general overview and introduction.

Agustín's work has become a classic in the fields of sex work and immigration studies. It is safe to say that no book has irritated or inspired more people in the anti-trafficking field than this one.

And because Laura has snarked about "classic" in her comments below, let me define that word.

1) When someone comes up to me and says "I am interested in learning about trafficking. Where should I start reading?", this book is the first thing that springs to mind.

2) It goes against the grain of the received wisdom of the times and yet hits its subject matter square on, in such a way that you'll never be able to hear someone say "trafficking" again without thinking of it, whether or not you agree with Agustin.

3) Because so much of the subject matter is absolutely contaminated by moral panic and bulls*** in other books -- even well-meaning academic books -- but is not contaminated HERE, people are still going to be reading this a century from now and saying "Yes!" when 99.9% of what is now written about so-called trafficking will read like Victorian screeds against masturbation do today.

They best comparison I can make is with Emma Goldman's classic (I do not use this term lightly or ironically) 1910 dissection of that generation's anti-trafficking panic. You can still read that today and nod your head while reading most of what passed for highly wise and popular portrayals of "trafficking" at the time will strike you now as being so much moralistic and hypocritical blather.

Like Goldman, Augustin is not well received by the powers-that-be of her times. Like Goldman, she is often unpopular, not the least among people who should consider her to be their ally. Like Goldman, she speaks truth to power, backed up by a rapier-sharp wit and a deep intersectional analysis. This is why the book is called a "cult classic" today.

That will be shortened to simply "classic" in, oh, say, ten-twenty years. I'm just getting in on the ground floor.

For those who don't have the slightest clue of what I'm talking about, but who are worried about the "scourge of human trafficking", read this and have your mind blown!