for decades migrants and sex workers
have been fighting for labor rights for
safety through decriminalization and the
right recite and simply to be hard for
sex workers it’s finally beginning to
feel like that might happen but for
migrants sex workers like me the
situation is a little more nuanced I’m a
member of the sex worker advocacy and
resistance movement an organization led
by sex workers nationwide campaigning
for the rights and safety of everyone
who sells sex this is a pivotal time for
us because right now we are at a turning
point for policy change on prostitution
our current law in the UK forces outdoor
sex workers into a cycle of
criminalization and indoor sex workers
into working alone rather than together
for safety other factors such as tenancy
agreements that prohibit sex work
University contracts it justified the
expulsion of student sex workers and the
results of austerity that lead to people
doing sex work in the first place all
add up to create a dangerous environment
for sex workers in the UK many agree
that the law has to change and several
inquiries and campaigns have launched a
head of government intent to change the
law the question on everyone’s minds is
overwhelmingly sex workers say the best
legal model for them is
decriminalization they point to New
Zealand’s policy since 2003 buying and
selling sex has been legal and sex work
is legally regarded as work this has
produced great results like workers
reporting improved working conditions
and safety but there is a glaring
problem with this law as it stands it’s
still illegal to sell sex if you’re a
migrant the justification for this
generally comes from concerns by human
trafficking these are concerns that are
leading many in the UK to oppose
decriminalization of sex work altogether
most understand trafficking to mean
violent coercion into some form of
labour
this is a Paloma protocol the
internationally accepted definition of
trafficking it defines trafficking is
having someone coerced or forced into
travel for the purposes of exploitation
in the UK the modern slavery Act does
not require that a person facilitating
the transportation of another person use
force coercion or deception meaning that
under this definition consent is
irrelevant the trafficker doesn’t have
to be involved in the exploitation of
the person but they ought to know
whether they will be exploited
practically this means that any sex
worker who has traveled to or within the
UK with any support from someone that
knew about their work is trafficked
technically giving a friend a lift there
brought the brothel shift constitutes
sex trafficking this may just seem like
a technicality but it has a huge impact
no matter how small there is illegal
conflation of violence sex trafficking
involuntary sex work many sex workers
particularly migrants are regarded as
trafficked sex workers regardless of
what degree of choice they had in
entering the industry and no difference
is made between migrants coerced into
sex work by a third party and migrants
coerced by their economic circumstance
because of this sex trafficking is
conflated with consensual sex work
leading to dangerously inflated numbers
in 2007 a former Foreign Office minister
stated that according to home office
research there were 25,000 sex slaves
currently working in Britain the actual
number on the report Hughes or Frankie
was three thousand eight hundred and
twelve the researchers said that even
this lower figure should be treated with
great caution but surely enough that
figure has been repeated again and again
its inflated statistics like these which
were used by governments in the media to
justify anti sex work measures from
stigma related news articles to arrests
and deportations there is no evidence
suggest that any of these measures does
reduce instances of sex trafficking but
that doesn’t really seem to be the goal
measures taken through these sex
trafficking and exploitation inevitably
target those working willingly and in
many cases this is the objective let’s
look at one recent example sex workers
are increasingly moving from street and
brothel based work to advertising and
finding clients online as any sex worker
will tell you a popular way of working
is to run short term accommodation to
work from for a few days weeks or months
recently police in the UK reported an
uptrend in this form of sex work which
they dubbed pop-up brothels a sign of
widespread sex trafficking they fled to
a moral panic in the media with
headlines like these I rented out my
home the tenants turned into a brothel
part-time landlords beware shortly after
an all-party parliamentary group
released an inquiry giving the
recommendations to government to
criminalize website sex workers used to
advertise to criminalize buying sex and
to issue guidance for landlords on
preventing sexual exploitation
throughout the report nowhere is a
distinction made between sex work and
sex trafficking they’re treated the same
the group did make one good
recommendation to decriminalize selling
sex outdoors they signalled that current
laws criminalizing this through
detrimental to those working on the
street but other recommendations
threaten sex worker lives and all under
the guise of stopping exploitation so
let’s look at why that is recommendation
1 refers to a recent US policy change
falsus esther was introduced earlier
this year as a law intending to curb sex
trafficking since its introduction u.s.
sex workers are widely reporting the
devastating effects on their income and
safety many have been forced into street
work where there exists no barrier
between the worker and the client where
there is no time screen details against
dangerous client lists and even websites
containing these lists have been taken
down alongside
networks of sex workers giving each
other
safety tips and support try to imagine
it advertising online puts a barrier
between you and the client I like on the
street sessions don’t happen
straightaway you’ve got time to sculpt
out clients without disclosing your
location that’s time to agree on
services time to check his details
against databases of dangerous clients
the spire gives you time to change your
mind or rearrange now one day you wake
up to find that your ad has been shut
down what do you do where do you go we
don’t have to do a thought experiment we
can look at what actually happened sex
worker advocacy groups in the u.s.
reported eight deaths in the first week
that since the law was introduced and
many more missing that was in the first
week and it’s now been 36 some have been
able to claw back and build resources
shared in private networks and in person
but not all sex because I’ve accessed
communities like those and especially
not new migrants recommendation T is
referring to the criminalization of the
client known as the Nordic model sex
workers say that criminalizing clients
comes with a Marriot of problems
including deterring clients from giving
sex workers their personal details that
can be used to screen them for safety in
every country that has taken this policy
on sex workers have reported a dramatic
increase in violence the Republic of
Ireland introduced the law in 2017
since then reported incidences violent
crime have increased by 50% the Nordic
model tries to tackle the demand of
prostitution but it doesn’t address the
reasons the people decide to wait to
begin with to earn money as poverty goes
up so does prostitution benefit
sanctions bedroom taxes tuition fee
Rises and more criminalizing our clients
or making our harder for us to find them
doesn’t address any of those issues the
Nordic model doesn’t get rid of the sex
industry
it makes more
dangerous recommendation 3 is about
making life as a sex worker even tougher
there are already widespread reports of
landlords evicting sex workers
especially a fear for migrants in the
wake of the hostile environment policy
there have even been instances of sex
workers who don’t work from home being
threatened with eviction so what might
this guidance for landlords look like
you might already be familiar with the
call for members of the public to spot
the signs of sex trafficking hotel and
service apartment staff are encouraged
to pay particular attention to female
customers with foreign ID staff and
sexual health clinics are being asked
like data on sex workers and their
whereabouts to hand police Student Union
staff are being asked to encourage their
students to inform police about known
buildings that sex workers might be
working or living in and on a corporate
level more and more businesses are being
encouraged to attend anti trafficking
awareness courses where they are taught
about the criteria
identified by well-known and he tracking
organizations this criteria is often
vague defining signs of sex trafficking
as boned females or groups to females
living at a single residence with the
lack of furnishing with male visitors or
who appear to have a large income and it
also draws particular attention to
Eastern European women this criteria is
just as easily applied to any migrant
sex worker who has not been coerced into
the industry or to migrant women who are
not sex workers at all in the time of
the government’s hostile environment
these measures contribute to an
atmosphere of suspicion and animosity in
communities where many migrants already
feel alienated and safe so what happens
in the UK when trafficking is suspected
the main way that the Home Office
attempts to crack down on sex
trafficking is through brothel raids the
law defines a brothel as a residence
from which two or more sex workers work
meaning that many of these raids take
place in sex workers own homes
braids are terrifying and often
humiliating experiences with hiring
effects these so-called rescue missions
involve sex workers having their phones
and ironing seized being handcuffed and
dragged into the view of the media
waiting outside to being deported even
in the cases that don’t result in those
consequences raids often attract so much
attention that sex workers can feel
exposed and alienated from their
communities the largest anti trafficking
operation carried out by police forces
in the country has come in two parts
Operation pentameter in 2006 and
pentameter t in 2008 data taken from the
report produced by the UK human
trafficking centre revealed that from
822 raids there were only 15
prosecutions for trafficking and two of
those were women originally rescued as
sex trafficking victims the shadow home
secretary warned that the 2012 Olympics
would be a magnet for sex traffickers
again an expensive police crackdown
yielded no trafficking victims what it
did manage to do was display sex workers
from their local boroughs taking them
away from both established safety
networks and outreach services a decade
ago a research project on sex workers in
London found that 13% of female
interviewees but they had been subject
varying levels of exploitation and only
six percent felt that they had been
deceived and forest into selling sex
police raids are northing in the past
devastating raids in Soho made headlines
in 2013 and said 2016 and raised in
Swindon call media attention in 2017 in
2018 the English collective of
prostitutes were made aware of police
raids being conducted in brothels across
the UK under the guise of welfare checks
during these raids police were seizing
the identity documentation of sex
workers they determined to be migrants
they refused to give them back unless
the worker could produce a ticket back
to the country of origin most sex
workers you could ask will know someone
that has been or having themselves
impacted by a raid these don’t always
take place in brothels police have been
known to rate premises the only one
sex workers working from based purely on
reports that prostitution is happening
there no distinction is made between
concerns of human trafficking and
instances of sex workers working of
their own volition leading to a
widespread fear of law enforcement
particularly intensified for migrants
and there is a significant lack of
material support for migrant sex workers
who are coerced into sex work they have
little to no access to support to escape
the industry as there is no access to
public funds poor access to asylum and
they’re not applicable for legal aid or
Victim Compensation most fearfully being
discovered particularly in brothels can
lead to detention instead they need to
rely on groups like anti trafficking
NGOs that often move them from sex
trafficking into what is essentially a
different form of trafficking like
working in sweatshops for a
significantly less pay the groups often
shame and infantilize the women
punishing them if they don’t wish to
nowhere in the law is there anything set
up to support trafficked persons once
they are located and this is also the
case for traffic people in industries
other than the sex industry you have
nowhere to go once their employers are
shut down and arrested they often have
no choice but to reenter the
exploitative industry they were rescued
from due to financial need and then
there’s immigration law sex work is not
considered legitimate enough to render
migrant sex workers eligible for
residency or citizenship leaving migrant
sex workers in a state of limbo until
they enter a socially acceptable
industry earning what the government
deemed to be enough money classifying
sex workers illegitimate due to its
stigma only these migrants scrambling
for ways to retain the right to reside
until 2021 migrants coming from the
European Economic Area have to abide by
their treaty rights the state that in
order to stay here they have to meet one
of the following criteria employed
self-employed student job seeker or
dependent on the UK or qualified ETA
national it is unclear whether sex work
is considered legitimate income for the
self-employed criteria many states don’t
see sex work is legitimate
self-employment meaning that deportation
eea migrants as possible if they are
found to be breaking their treaty rights
this means that sex workers are living
in a constant state of fear these are in
law these aren’t easy laws to navigate
and some migrant sex workers report not
even having known that they were working
illegally until they were served their
deportation notice for British sex
workers sex work is regarded as
legitimate income and workers are
required to register with HMRC and pay
tax but even if the register is
self-employed there seems to be a
different rule for migrants with
initiatives like Operation Nexus
classifying sex workers are high harm
form of criminal activity but only for
migrants Eastern European sex workers in
London banded together to speak out
against this operation after many of
them were served with deportation
notices including one women of full-time
education post brexit all new EEA
migrants to the UK will have to meet
more stringent criteria which regard sex
work has entirely legitimate making the
gap between the British and migrant sex
workers even wider so decriminalization
is necessary for the safety of sex
workers to allow sex workers to unionize
to allow sex workers Tory together to
make reporting violence easier bringing
the industry out of the shadows means
that vulnerable people the entra sex
work aren’t left with criminal records
preventing them from gaining further
employment and sex workers can access
services like health care freely it is
ultimately the first stepping stone to a
world that doesn’t stigmatize sex work
acknowledges it as legitimate and
reaches out to vulnerable people in the
industry with that infantilizing them or
sex workers as a whole in New Zealand
some authorities turn a blind eye to
Migron sex workers but they’re unstable
legal status still leave some
susceptible to threats and exploitation
by clients and brothel managers to
brothel Rays and eviction to having to
keep things underground for fear of
deportation
it’s a two-tier system one population
illegal and one not among many slogans
used in the sex workers rights movement
one you might have heard is nothing
about us without us
the principles to include sex workers
don’t write or debate about us with our
impure inclusion challenge notions of
the trafficking method of raids is risky
and be critical of measures that set out
to protect people by pensively targeting
them and calls for solidarity labor
rights improved working conditions and
the full decriminalization of sex work
don’t forget about us nothing about us without us includes migrant State
have been fighting for labor rights for
safety through decriminalization and the
right recite and simply to be hard for
sex workers it’s finally beginning to
feel like that might happen but for
migrants sex workers like me the
situation is a little more nuanced I’m a
member of the sex worker advocacy and
resistance movement an organization led
by sex workers nationwide campaigning
for the rights and safety of everyone
who sells sex this is a pivotal time for
us because right now we are at a turning
point for policy change on prostitution
our current law in the UK forces outdoor
sex workers into a cycle of
criminalization and indoor sex workers
into working alone rather than together
for safety other factors such as tenancy
agreements that prohibit sex work
University contracts it justified the
expulsion of student sex workers and the
results of austerity that lead to people
doing sex work in the first place all
add up to create a dangerous environment
for sex workers in the UK many agree
that the law has to change and several
inquiries and campaigns have launched a
head of government intent to change the
law the question on everyone’s minds is
overwhelmingly sex workers say the best
legal model for them is
decriminalization they point to New
Zealand’s policy since 2003 buying and
selling sex has been legal and sex work
is legally regarded as work this has
produced great results like workers
reporting improved working conditions
and safety but there is a glaring
problem with this law as it stands it’s
still illegal to sell sex if you’re a
migrant the justification for this
generally comes from concerns by human
trafficking these are concerns that are
leading many in the UK to oppose
decriminalization of sex work altogether
most understand trafficking to mean
violent coercion into some form of
labour
this is a Paloma protocol the
internationally accepted definition of
trafficking it defines trafficking is
having someone coerced or forced into
travel for the purposes of exploitation
in the UK the modern slavery Act does
not require that a person facilitating
the transportation of another person use
force coercion or deception meaning that
under this definition consent is
irrelevant the trafficker doesn’t have
to be involved in the exploitation of
the person but they ought to know
whether they will be exploited
practically this means that any sex
worker who has traveled to or within the
UK with any support from someone that
knew about their work is trafficked
technically giving a friend a lift there
brought the brothel shift constitutes
sex trafficking this may just seem like
a technicality but it has a huge impact
no matter how small there is illegal
conflation of violence sex trafficking
involuntary sex work many sex workers
particularly migrants are regarded as
trafficked sex workers regardless of
what degree of choice they had in
entering the industry and no difference
is made between migrants coerced into
sex work by a third party and migrants
coerced by their economic circumstance
because of this sex trafficking is
conflated with consensual sex work
leading to dangerously inflated numbers
in 2007 a former Foreign Office minister
stated that according to home office
research there were 25,000 sex slaves
currently working in Britain the actual
number on the report Hughes or Frankie
was three thousand eight hundred and
twelve the researchers said that even
this lower figure should be treated with
great caution but surely enough that
figure has been repeated again and again
its inflated statistics like these which
were used by governments in the media to
justify anti sex work measures from
stigma related news articles to arrests
and deportations there is no evidence
suggest that any of these measures does
reduce instances of sex trafficking but
that doesn’t really seem to be the goal
measures taken through these sex
trafficking and exploitation inevitably
target those working willingly and in
many cases this is the objective let’s
look at one recent example sex workers
are increasingly moving from street and
brothel based work to advertising and
finding clients online as any sex worker
will tell you a popular way of working
is to run short term accommodation to
work from for a few days weeks or months
recently police in the UK reported an
uptrend in this form of sex work which
they dubbed pop-up brothels a sign of
widespread sex trafficking they fled to
a moral panic in the media with
headlines like these I rented out my
home the tenants turned into a brothel
part-time landlords beware shortly after
an all-party parliamentary group
released an inquiry giving the
recommendations to government to
criminalize website sex workers used to
advertise to criminalize buying sex and
to issue guidance for landlords on
preventing sexual exploitation
throughout the report nowhere is a
distinction made between sex work and
sex trafficking they’re treated the same
the group did make one good
recommendation to decriminalize selling
sex outdoors they signalled that current
laws criminalizing this through
detrimental to those working on the
street but other recommendations
threaten sex worker lives and all under
the guise of stopping exploitation so
let’s look at why that is recommendation
1 refers to a recent US policy change
falsus esther was introduced earlier
this year as a law intending to curb sex
trafficking since its introduction u.s.
sex workers are widely reporting the
devastating effects on their income and
safety many have been forced into street
work where there exists no barrier
between the worker and the client where
there is no time screen details against
dangerous client lists and even websites
containing these lists have been taken
down alongside
networks of sex workers giving each
other
safety tips and support try to imagine
it advertising online puts a barrier
between you and the client I like on the
street sessions don’t happen
straightaway you’ve got time to sculpt
out clients without disclosing your
location that’s time to agree on
services time to check his details
against databases of dangerous clients
the spire gives you time to change your
mind or rearrange now one day you wake
up to find that your ad has been shut
down what do you do where do you go we
don’t have to do a thought experiment we
can look at what actually happened sex
worker advocacy groups in the u.s.
reported eight deaths in the first week
that since the law was introduced and
many more missing that was in the first
week and it’s now been 36 some have been
able to claw back and build resources
shared in private networks and in person
but not all sex because I’ve accessed
communities like those and especially
not new migrants recommendation T is
referring to the criminalization of the
client known as the Nordic model sex
workers say that criminalizing clients
comes with a Marriot of problems
including deterring clients from giving
sex workers their personal details that
can be used to screen them for safety in
every country that has taken this policy
on sex workers have reported a dramatic
increase in violence the Republic of
Ireland introduced the law in 2017
since then reported incidences violent
crime have increased by 50% the Nordic
model tries to tackle the demand of
prostitution but it doesn’t address the
reasons the people decide to wait to
begin with to earn money as poverty goes
up so does prostitution benefit
sanctions bedroom taxes tuition fee
Rises and more criminalizing our clients
or making our harder for us to find them
doesn’t address any of those issues the
Nordic model doesn’t get rid of the sex
industry
it makes more
dangerous recommendation 3 is about
making life as a sex worker even tougher
there are already widespread reports of
landlords evicting sex workers
especially a fear for migrants in the
wake of the hostile environment policy
there have even been instances of sex
workers who don’t work from home being
threatened with eviction so what might
this guidance for landlords look like
you might already be familiar with the
call for members of the public to spot
the signs of sex trafficking hotel and
service apartment staff are encouraged
to pay particular attention to female
customers with foreign ID staff and
sexual health clinics are being asked
like data on sex workers and their
whereabouts to hand police Student Union
staff are being asked to encourage their
students to inform police about known
buildings that sex workers might be
working or living in and on a corporate
level more and more businesses are being
encouraged to attend anti trafficking
awareness courses where they are taught
about the criteria
identified by well-known and he tracking
organizations this criteria is often
vague defining signs of sex trafficking
as boned females or groups to females
living at a single residence with the
lack of furnishing with male visitors or
who appear to have a large income and it
also draws particular attention to
Eastern European women this criteria is
just as easily applied to any migrant
sex worker who has not been coerced into
the industry or to migrant women who are
not sex workers at all in the time of
the government’s hostile environment
these measures contribute to an
atmosphere of suspicion and animosity in
communities where many migrants already
feel alienated and safe so what happens
in the UK when trafficking is suspected
the main way that the Home Office
attempts to crack down on sex
trafficking is through brothel raids the
law defines a brothel as a residence
from which two or more sex workers work
meaning that many of these raids take
place in sex workers own homes
braids are terrifying and often
humiliating experiences with hiring
effects these so-called rescue missions
involve sex workers having their phones
and ironing seized being handcuffed and
dragged into the view of the media
waiting outside to being deported even
in the cases that don’t result in those
consequences raids often attract so much
attention that sex workers can feel
exposed and alienated from their
communities the largest anti trafficking
operation carried out by police forces
in the country has come in two parts
Operation pentameter in 2006 and
pentameter t in 2008 data taken from the
report produced by the UK human
trafficking centre revealed that from
822 raids there were only 15
prosecutions for trafficking and two of
those were women originally rescued as
sex trafficking victims the shadow home
secretary warned that the 2012 Olympics
would be a magnet for sex traffickers
again an expensive police crackdown
yielded no trafficking victims what it
did manage to do was display sex workers
from their local boroughs taking them
away from both established safety
networks and outreach services a decade
ago a research project on sex workers in
London found that 13% of female
interviewees but they had been subject
varying levels of exploitation and only
six percent felt that they had been
deceived and forest into selling sex
police raids are northing in the past
devastating raids in Soho made headlines
in 2013 and said 2016 and raised in
Swindon call media attention in 2017 in
2018 the English collective of
prostitutes were made aware of police
raids being conducted in brothels across
the UK under the guise of welfare checks
during these raids police were seizing
the identity documentation of sex
workers they determined to be migrants
they refused to give them back unless
the worker could produce a ticket back
to the country of origin most sex
workers you could ask will know someone
that has been or having themselves
impacted by a raid these don’t always
take place in brothels police have been
known to rate premises the only one
sex workers working from based purely on
reports that prostitution is happening
there no distinction is made between
concerns of human trafficking and
instances of sex workers working of
their own volition leading to a
widespread fear of law enforcement
particularly intensified for migrants
and there is a significant lack of
material support for migrant sex workers
who are coerced into sex work they have
little to no access to support to escape
the industry as there is no access to
public funds poor access to asylum and
they’re not applicable for legal aid or
Victim Compensation most fearfully being
discovered particularly in brothels can
lead to detention instead they need to
rely on groups like anti trafficking
NGOs that often move them from sex
trafficking into what is essentially a
different form of trafficking like
working in sweatshops for a
significantly less pay the groups often
shame and infantilize the women
punishing them if they don’t wish to
nowhere in the law is there anything set
up to support trafficked persons once
they are located and this is also the
case for traffic people in industries
other than the sex industry you have
nowhere to go once their employers are
shut down and arrested they often have
no choice but to reenter the
exploitative industry they were rescued
from due to financial need and then
there’s immigration law sex work is not
considered legitimate enough to render
migrant sex workers eligible for
residency or citizenship leaving migrant
sex workers in a state of limbo until
they enter a socially acceptable
industry earning what the government
deemed to be enough money classifying
sex workers illegitimate due to its
stigma only these migrants scrambling
for ways to retain the right to reside
until 2021 migrants coming from the
European Economic Area have to abide by
their treaty rights the state that in
order to stay here they have to meet one
of the following criteria employed
self-employed student job seeker or
dependent on the UK or qualified ETA
national it is unclear whether sex work
is considered legitimate income for the
self-employed criteria many states don’t
see sex work is legitimate
self-employment meaning that deportation
eea migrants as possible if they are
found to be breaking their treaty rights
this means that sex workers are living
in a constant state of fear these are in
law these aren’t easy laws to navigate
and some migrant sex workers report not
even having known that they were working
illegally until they were served their
deportation notice for British sex
workers sex work is regarded as
legitimate income and workers are
required to register with HMRC and pay
tax but even if the register is
self-employed there seems to be a
different rule for migrants with
initiatives like Operation Nexus
classifying sex workers are high harm
form of criminal activity but only for
migrants Eastern European sex workers in
London banded together to speak out
against this operation after many of
them were served with deportation
notices including one women of full-time
education post brexit all new EEA
migrants to the UK will have to meet
more stringent criteria which regard sex
work has entirely legitimate making the
gap between the British and migrant sex
workers even wider so decriminalization
is necessary for the safety of sex
workers to allow sex workers to unionize
to allow sex workers Tory together to
make reporting violence easier bringing
the industry out of the shadows means
that vulnerable people the entra sex
work aren’t left with criminal records
preventing them from gaining further
employment and sex workers can access
services like health care freely it is
ultimately the first stepping stone to a
world that doesn’t stigmatize sex work
acknowledges it as legitimate and
reaches out to vulnerable people in the
industry with that infantilizing them or
sex workers as a whole in New Zealand
some authorities turn a blind eye to
Migron sex workers but they’re unstable
legal status still leave some
susceptible to threats and exploitation
by clients and brothel managers to
brothel Rays and eviction to having to
keep things underground for fear of
deportation
it’s a two-tier system one population
illegal and one not among many slogans
used in the sex workers rights movement
one you might have heard is nothing
about us without us
the principles to include sex workers
don’t write or debate about us with our
impure inclusion challenge notions of
the trafficking method of raids is risky
and be critical of measures that set out
to protect people by pensively targeting
them and calls for solidarity labor
rights improved working conditions and
the full decriminalization of sex work
don’t forget about us nothing about us without us includes migrant State
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