Scarlet Alliance Brings Sex Worker Migration To Canberra

Abstract

Sex work is work.... Travel is dream of sex workers. I think it not only dream of sex workers.... It is a dream, it means it is like, they can make money to support their family, but they can't money to go to holiday, because there is no money to go on holiday, they work in Thailand, but they have not enough money to get family getting better - just for survive and little bit of support. But when they see some worker goes to overseas, not just only Australia, they go to America... when they come back, this family have a good life, have a big house, have some fulung, husband, come to support them, they think, I want to go overseas. Me too. When I am in Thailand first time.... I think 'One day I think I want to go overseas.'... My cousin she come to Australia, and she always support us. We are big family, and I think, I need to help her to support my family, and I need to have good life for my family, I going to come to Australia.2 Globalisation has created an internationalised labour force who visualise themselves within an international market. Migrant sex workers are a subset of this labour force, their patterns of migration correlating with general migration trends and their motivations similar to those of other international workers, such as a favourable exchange rate in the destination country or changes to visa accessibility. Sex worker migration can also be influenced by sex industry trends and policing practices in their home countries, where the prospect of violent raids and criminal charges may encourage sex workers to seek a safer working environment elsewhere. Examples of this include Hong Kong police keeping migrant sex workers in public cages in June 2005.3 2006 raids in southern China resulted in over 100 Chinese sex workers and clients being publicly shamed on the streets of Shenzhen.4 In 2004 red light districts in South Korea were closed down, and more recently police arrested over twenty thousand sex workers and clients in massive raids of businesses where sex work took place.5 Australia has a legal or decriminalised sex industry which offers sex workers a legal workplace, in contrast to their home country. Unfortunately, the arrests, public shaming and media spectacle these sex workers were hoping to escape have become a characteristic of Australian anti-trafficking efforts in recent years. High profile brothel raids by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the Australian Federal Police have increased particularly in Sydney and Melbourne, which the media are routinely invited to attend. Immigration officials have, in group settings, requested that sex workers one by one show their passports and visa status, thus exposing their real names and birth places in an environment where confidentiality and non-disclosure is the norm. The interviews are documented and photographed by the media and the sex workers' identities subsequently revealed through the press6. In a recent raid, a section of Crown Street in Surry Hills, Sydney, was cordoned off by police tape and vehicles on the footpath. Journalists were permitted to photograph the sex workers as they were led from the brothel by Immigration Officials, with only a towel around their heads to attempt to hide their identity7. Most of the sex workers involved in these raids are ultimately found to have been working lawfully with no evidence of trafficking or slavery. This approach is in stark contrast to that which occurs in suspected trafficking or exploitation cases in other industries. There has been no comprehensive evaluation of the Australian response to trafficking to date, nor have sex workers been adequately consulted about the extent of trafficking in the Australian sex industry. As is often the case in sex industry debate, sex workers' voices are the last to be heard and their expert opinions least likely to be validated. This general lack of understanding of migrant sex work issues, coupled with unprecedented media attention, has led to an abundance of myths and misunderstanding about trafficking and sexual servitude in Australia. …