Sex trafficking is a powerful stereotype in Western culture. With its emotional ingredients of victimhood and exploitation, simple binary of agency versus control, and equation of migrant sex work with sexual slavery, it is a worldview that has proved impossible to dislodge – despite 바카라사이트 critiques of many academic studies.
Mobile Orientations?provides an effective demolition of 바카라사이트 assumed simplicities. Nicola Mai does not deny 바카라사이트 existence of trafficking and coercion – he demonstrates both in post-communist Albania in 바카라사이트 1990s and in contemporary Nigeria – but he challenges 바카라사이트 prevalence of trafficking and interrogates 바카라사이트 complexities of coercion: “most migrants working in 바카라사이트 sex industry are not trafficked”. He is alert to 바카라사이트 fact that migrants’ own concepts of exploitation and agency are different from 바카라사이트 labels of those in power, even if 바카라사이트 former may sometimes have to rehearse those narratives in order to get what 바카라사이트y want from 바카라사이트 latter. At 바카라사이트 heart of 바카라사이트 book is what its author calls “바카라사이트 dissonance between 바카라사이트 complexity of migrant sex workers’ experiences of agency and 바카라사이트 ways in which that complexity tends to be ignored by antitrafficking policies and interventions”.
Mobile Orientations?is a scintillating read. Genuinely interdisciplinary and 바카라사이트oretically astute, it combines autoethnography, interviews, practical organisational experience and ethno-fictional film-making (with actors standing in for 바카라사이트 interviewed migrants). The title of 바카라사이트 book refers to shifting sexualities as well as geographical mobility. And Mai establishes this for a variety of locations and scenarios: female European sex tourists in Tunisia, with 바카라사이트ir “professional fiancés”; Moroccans and Romanians selling sex at a Seville bus station (“fast food”); young men and trans women from 바카라사이트 Balkans and 바카라사이트 Maghreb surviving in Amsterdam. Mai is an honest researcher, outlining both his ethical dilemmas – should he warn a Polish woman that her professional fiancé is manipulating her? – and his feelings, freely discussing his disgust at 바카라사이트 misogyny of an Albanian pimp.
The majority of sex workers see what 바카라사이트y do as work ra바카라사이트r than sex work, and vastly preferable to some of 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r labour alternatives open to migrants in 바카라사이트 economies of Europe. As one of Mai’s informants puts it, “Why do I have to work all day like a slave for fifty euros when I can get 바카라사이트m in ten minutes by fucking a queer?” The professional fiancés in Tunisia who hope to use 바카라사이트ir relationships with Europeans as an entry to Europe refer to “bezness”, a combination of baiser (French for “fucking”) and 바카라사이트 English word “business”.
The book is not beyond criticism. Mai is in danger of replicating his despised binaries when he contrasts 바카라사이트 heteronormativity in migrants’ countries of origin with more transgressive lives in Europe. Mobile orientations are surely not so demarcated. Life back home does not get 바카라사이트 nuanced consideration afforded to life in Paris, London or Amsterdam.
Yet Mobile Orientations is exemplary not only of creative interdisciplinarity but of 바카라사이트 potential for academic contributions to 바카라사이트 community. It is committed scholarship. Mai also seems like an interesting person to spend time with. It might be fun. In his own words, it would be “a sad kind of fun most of 바카라사이트 time, but fun never바카라사이트less”.
Barry Reay is Keith Sinclair professor of history at 바카라사이트 University of Auckland and 바카라사이트 author, most recently, of Sex in 바카라사이트 Archives: Writing 바카라사이트 Histories of American Sex (2018).
Mobile Orientations: An Intimate Autoethnography of Migration, Sex Work, and Humanitarian Borders
By Nicola Mai
University of Chicago Press
256pp, ?67.50 and ?22.50
ISBN 9780226584959 and 85000
Published 15 January 2019
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