Tampering with the Sex of ‘Angels’: Migrant Male Minors and Young Adults Selling Sex in the EU

Abstract

This article draws on the findings of two recent studies on the migration experiences of migrant male minors and young adults in the European Union, with a specific focus on their involvement in sex work. I use original research material to deconstruct North-centric understandings of minors selling sex as coinciding with ‘child exploitation’. Contrary to current hegemonic ‘one fits all’ narratives of ‘trafficking’ and victimisation, the article shows how experiences of exploitation must be read within the cultural and social realities of the subjects directly involved. Migration and the other bodily practices which male migrant minors and young adults engage in, including selling sex, can be seen as embodied forms of resistance against the restrictions imposed on their mobilities across national, moral, age and sexuality boundaries. At the same time, migrating and selling sex are ways to comply with the commodified imperatives of globalised neoliberal moral economies, within which economic success is inscribed as an absolute priority.