Bernadette Resurreccion
Asian Institute of Technology
Article: Migration in the Greater Mekong Subregion: A Background Paper for the 4th Greater Mekong Subregion Development Dialogue, Beijing, 5th May 2009
Federico Soda, Regional Programme Officer, International Organization for Migration (IOM)
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The topic of the lecture and article was migration; a complex, multi-faceted issue. The article gave a clear and logical overview of the topic as it relates to the Mekong Region. Areas discussed included:
- the causes of migration – both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ effects
- the benefits and costs to sender and destination communities
- key migration flows – rural-rural and rural-urban, and transnational
- types of migrant – regular and irregular
- the distinction between smuggled and trafficked migrants
- and the various threats faced by migrants.
The key issues are broadly the same throughout the world:
- migrants do jobs the locals are not particularly interested in
- irregular migrants are at great risk of abuse and exploitation by unscrupulous employers (passports are routinely confiscated, safety regulations ignored, e.g. the Morecambe Bay cockling tragedy with the death of 23 Chinese migrants - this is near where I grew up and all locals know of the dangers of the sands)
- harassment by locals (which may be semi-official, e.g., the RELA corps volunteers in Malaysia)
- and problems with access to health and education services for migrants and their children.
While some generalizations can be made regarding the different experiences of regular and irregular migrants, and male and female migrants, I feel generalizations are somewhat problematic. The reality of migration is different for each individual.
It might also be worth asking why the stay-at-homes are seen as ‘doing the right thing’ and migrants as somehow suspect; people have been moving since the days of human life as hunters and gatherers.
A part of the lecture addressed the question of trafficking and women sex workers; to what extent sex workers are trafficked.
Definition of trafficking: “The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of… … the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability … … for the purpose of exploitation.” UN Convention, quoted in Soda p4.
As prostitution is per se an exploitative relationship, it meets the definition of trafficking given above. The issue should not be whether sex workers - be they $10 a trick ‘working girls’, temporary wives, women looking after Finnish male tourists on their annual sunshine holiday, or rent boys - are trafficked or not (either in a defined legal sense or with a broader interpretation) but whether they are exploited.
The claim that viewing prostitution as exploitative denies women agency is, in my opinion, wrong. Working as a whore, be it howsoever euphemistically described, is not a free choice; it is a choice borne out of a lack of choices. Freedom of choice is constrained by poverty, drug addiction, social exclusion including attitudes to divorcees and single mothers, workplace power structures (sleeping your way to promotion, as seen in the fashion and film industries), and objectification of women. Young girls and boys do not aspire to be prostitutes; nor are there vocational qualifications for prostitutes; nor are positions for prostitutes openly advertised as such in ‘situations vacant’ columns.
The nature of prostitution is such that it has close links to criminality – money laundering and tax evasion, corruption (of police and other authorities), failure to meet health and safety regulations, amongst others.
The claim in the lecture that mass media imagery of the ideal woman is responsible for female sex workers being seen as trafficked victims I found questionable. Mass media imagery of men as macho hunks does not make a male nurse be viewed as a victim. But maybe I misunderstood something.
The lecturer stated that anti-trafficking policies, inspired by concerns about sex workers, have had the effect of reducing women’s migration possibilities. This is understandable because the policies target irregular migration, which is the main form of female (and male) migration in the region. It should be noted that anti-terrorism security initiatives have probably had the same effect on irregular male migration.
To conclude, migration has great benefits for both sender and destination communities; exploitation is wrong, be it of locals or migrants.
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