The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women - Hardcover

Limoncelli, Stephanie A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804762945 ISBN 13: 9780804762946

Verlag: Stanford University Press, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Sex trafficking is not a recent phenomenon. Over 100 years ago, the first international traffic in women for prostitution emerged, prompting a worldwide effort to combat it. The Politics of Trafficking provides a unique look at the history of that first anti-trafficking movement, illuminating the role gender, sexuality, and national interests play in international politics.

Initially conceived as a global humanitarian effort to protect women from sexual exploitation, the movement's feminist-inspired vision failed to achieve its universal goal and gradually gave way to nationalist concerns over "undesirable" migrants and state control over women themselves. Addressing an issue that is still of great concern today, this book sheds light on the ability of international non-governmental organizations to challenge state power, the motivations for state involvement in humanitarian issues pertaining to women, and the importance of gender and sexuality to state officials engaged in nation building.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Stephanie A. Limoncelli is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Loyola Marymount University and a former Research Associate at the International Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Stephanie A. Limoncelli is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Loyola Marymount University and a former Research Associate at the International Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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The Politics of Trafficking

The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of WomenBy Stephanie A. Limoncelli

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2010 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-6294-6

Contents

List of Tables...............................................................................viiiPreface......................................................................................ixAbbreviations................................................................................xii1 Introduction...............................................................................12 The Internationalization of Prostitution and Emergence of the Traffic......................193 Constructing the Traffic as an International Social Problem................................424 Reforming Regulation and Nationalizing Prostitution........................................715 International Abolitionist Federation Reformers and the Dutch Movement.....................956 International Bureau Reformers and the French Movement.....................................1127 Italy's State-Driven Movement..............................................................1338 The Politics of Trafficking................................................................144Notes........................................................................................157References...................................................................................189Index........................................................................................209

Chapter One

Introduction

[T]here is a regular trade in young girls who are bought and sold, imported and exported, to and from the ports and cities of Europe.... It will naturally occur to remark that such a traffic involves slavery.... The business is an international trade, kept up very much by the movement of girls from one country to another, and in a very large number of cases the movement [does not have] the nature of emigration, or free voluntary movement of adults, but of export, that is, movement of persons under stress of fear or fraud, often minors incapable of consent. -P. Bunting

We want to destroy this traffic. Well, a traffic consists of three parts; first, there is the supply; second, there are the traffickers; and third, there must be a demand.... [E]verything that can be done ... to improve women's position ... will cut off the supply.... [S]trike at the supply, strike at the traffickers, but strike also at the demand for the victims. -Henry J. Wilson

THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN AND GIRLS FOR PROSTITUTION has captured the attention of academics, activists, politicians, and reporters around the world, spurring an energetic movement to help those involved in the international sex trade. As the introductory quotes suggest, women and girls may be moved across borders into situations of coercive prostitution tantamount to slavery. What may surprise those who think of trafficking as a recent phenomenon, however, is that the introductory quotes are actually from reformers at an international anti-trafficking congress in 1899.

It was well over a century ago, amid increasing globalization and the rise of nation-building and imperialism, that the emergence of traffic in women and girls for prostitution alarmed reformers and state officials in European and other countries throughout the world. They formed anti-trafficking committees within countries and worked to incorporate anti-trafficking activities first into the League of Nations and then into the United Nations. They also developed a variety of international anti-trafficking accords from 1904 through 1949, before the movement began to lose momentum. Trafficking was actually the first women's issue taken up in international accords, well before other issues that were advocated during the same period, including suffrage, education, and married women's citizenship.

This book traces the construction and diffusion of the first anti-trafficking movement from its beginnings in Great Britain to key European countries, including the Netherlands, France, and Italy, where local anti-trafficking movements varied in their agendas and in their successes. Initially conceived of as a global humanitarian effort to protect women from sexual exploitation, the movement's international feminist-inspired vision failed to achieve its universal goal. Instead, in both international settings and in local areas, it gradually gave way to nationalist concerns about protecting states from certain groups of "undesirable" migrants and led to increased social control of women.

Why did the movement lose its original vision and turn against the very women it sought to protect? The core theme and argument of this book is that the movement was limited by the central role of women's sexual labor in both nation/state- and empire-building. State officials sought to defend and preserve their right to maintain and regulate prostitution in metropolitan and colonial areas in support of militaries and migrant laborers, and as a means of maintaining ethnic hierarchies. They were able to do so largely because the international voluntary associations who initiated the first anti-trafficking movement were divided in their approaches to prostitution, in their views about the proper role of state involvement in sexual relations, and in their imperial and national biases.

Using archival and secondary historical sources, the first part of the book examines the overall development of the movement as it was promoted by two key international voluntary associations that competed to define the issue of trafficking in both international settings, such as at the League of Nations, and local areas. One of the associations, composed of emerging feminist groups, challenged state sovereignty in matters of prostitution; the other, which was organized by purity reformers, sought to reinforce that sovereignty. This broad level of analysis from a global vantage point allows us to see the workings of international governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and the often contradictory outcomes of humanitarian efforts in international governance. The anti-trafficking movement ended up reinforcing rather than challenging state power as state officials selectively used reforms as mechanisms to realize their own interests in maintaining and controlling women's mobility and sexual labor.

This process was mediated to some degree by the interactions of voluntary associations and state officials in particular locales, and by the importance of women's sexual labor in empire-building. In the second part of the book I highlight the efforts of the international voluntary associations in specific countries where their relative influence, along with the perceived importance of prostitution to nation-building and imperial projects, led to differences between specific anti-trafficking projects in the Netherlands, France, and Italy. Only the Netherlands applied anti-trafficking measures throughout its territories and addressed the traffic in non-European women. Officials in France, in contrast, sought to maintain the state's right to permit immigrant women in state-regulated prostitution and refused to apply anti-trafficking measures in colonial areas. In Italy, state officials used the issue of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804762945
• ISBN 13: 9780804762946
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 231
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar