Today I read an article in the Wilson’s Quarterly about modern-day slavery. The author, John Miller, calls for action: First for laws and enforcement of those laws, and second, for education.
Two examples of education:
1. He spoke in Japan about the thousands of Japanese work visas given to Female filipino “entertainers.” Within a couple of years, those visas were reduced dramatically.
2. In certain places, men caught with prostitutes have to attend classes, where they learn how the demand for prostitutes drives sex slavery. It appears as though recidivism rates (of johns) are lower in those areas.
Miller relates stories of women who have thought they were going to work as a housekeeper, or model, or dancer. They end up being beaten, threatened, tortured. Some of them are sex slaves, of course, but some are worker-slaves in factories or households. So they really may end up a housekeeper, but in chains.
He doesn’t want it to be called human trafficking, because that hides the nastiness of it. Call it slavery, he says.
The whole time I read the article, I wanted to re-read an earlier one from the New Statesman. It was a book review, called The Myth of Trafficking. The review was of a book by Laura Agustin, claiming that cries of sex-trafficking are making a mountain out of a molehill. (The book doesn’t talk about non-sex trafficking.)
One thing Agustin says is that when groups report the number of victims, they often include all migrant prostitutes in the report. As though there couldn’t be a woman who migrated and became a prostitute without being enslaved. So the numbers are wildly inflated.
Agustin thinks that the laws making it harder for migration (some of which are anti-trafficking laws) are actually counter-productive. The harder they make it for people to come legitimately, the more they’ll come as sex-workers, because sex-workers can get people to bring them in.
I don’t know how a smackdown between Agustin and Miller would turn out. I think they’d be able to agree on the education side of the deal.
Meanwhile, and completely off that topic, Miller uses the phrase, “moral suasion” in his article, which I thought was a typo. Go figure.
I’m ideologically inclined to believe the argument that restrictions on legal migration cause an increase in illegal migration, so while I haven’t read the book, I’d probably wind up agreeing at least somewhat with Ms. Agustin.
But that they’d both agree on education? Demand-curbing through education has failed badly in the somewhat similar “War on Drugs”, I don’t see why it would be more effective here. There seems to be an inherent demand for things like sex, drugs, and rock & roll, that will be satisfied either legally (a glass of wine, taking your date to a concert) or illegally (a joint, a whore, and a BitTorrent account).
Unless the education includes effective moral instruction on why the prevention of enslaved women should be higher on a man’s priority list than an orgasm, it’s probably not going to work.
But the education has apparently already been working. The two examples I gave are, well, examples.
A guy who goes to a prostitute doesn’t necessarily realize that he’s driving a sex-slave industry. The article says that once informed of that, the men go less often.
And people may not realize that their government has granted lots of visas to people possibly being trafficked. Once that information was brought out, the government eased up on those visas.
Maybe if people were educated about factory-workers, they’d look at labels more carefully. It’s worked to some degree for blood diamonds and sweat shops. Nike can tell you that.
Those interested in this post might like to look at my website: Border Thinking on Migration, Culture, Economy and Sex at http://www.nodo50.org/Laura_Agustin
Best, Laura