Product Description
This groundbreaking book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work; that migrants who sell sex are passive victims; and that the multitude of people out to save them are… More >>
Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
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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.
Rating: 5 / 5
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.
Rating: 5 / 5
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.
Rating: 4 / 5