For Those Who Want Statistics
There's little point in trying to divide this industry by country, and if there are still characteristics typical to particular places, there are many more that are shared by all. European markets enjoy high-quality telecommunications and transport networks as well as the incomplete but still extensive policy of 'open borders'. Everyone agrees that the sex industry has grown impressively, but quantifying it is difficult: What it is that has to be counted, exactly? The income of sex-business owners? The number of people employed in all jobs related to the industry [ie, the person who takes you to the place by taxi, the person who takes care of your car, the person who brings your drink, the person who watches the door, the person who accepts your money, the person who cleans the place]? Shouldn't one also include those who produce the necessary 'tools' of the trade such as clothing, makeup, hair products and wigs, drinks, food, cigarettes and condoms? Any why not include the lawyers who arrange contracts and closings and every kind of permit, the accountants, the doctors who perform check-ups on the employees and those who rent rooms by the hour?
The International Labour Office (ILO) has published statistics on Thailand which indicate that of a total of 104,262 employees in 7,759 establishments where sexual services could be bought, 64,886 people sold these services while 39,376 were 'support personnel', a term which includes owners, managers and go-betweens/procurers. More than a third of the employees then were not sex workers but they live on the industry (Lim 1998).
The usual statistics count only the number of sex workers, but these are scarcely trustworthy or comparable data. Given the 'irregular', criminalised, undocumented or stigmatised nature of the industry, each project of counting prostitutes has counted a different way. For example, one cannot compare the statistic "23% (412) and 14% (117) of women with visas to work as dancers in Switzerland were from the Dominican Republic and Brazil" (International Office of Migrations) with that of "75% of foreign prostitutes in Germany are from Latin America and the Caribbean" (AGISRA [Arbeitsgemeinschaft Gegen Internationale Sexuelle und Rassistische Ausbeutung]). One cannot even compare their methods of counting.
A study by the TAMPEP project (Transnational AIDS/STD Prevention Among Migrant Prostitutes in Europe Project) offers statistics on the percentages of migrants among prostitutes in European countries. The numbers are very schematic, since they come from participating projects that have not used the same methodology for counting, that don't all have the same type of contact with prostitution (many know only street workers, or only people who use certain health services), who don't speak all the languages necessary to communicate with all the migrants or who operate only in big cities. Also, it's accepted that asking a migrant persona details about his life does not assure a true response. On top of all that, since the lifestyle of these migrants is to move a lot, counting them by country is of temporary usefulness.
The statistics of the percentage of migrants among prostitute populations are: 90% in Italy, 25% in Sweden and Norway, 85% in Austria, 62% in the north of Germany and 32% in the south, 68% in Holland and 45% in Belgium. The Spanish number, 50%, includes only street prostitution in Madrid (Tampep 1999). Since 1997, when the last study of this kind was done, the percentage of migrants in the sex industry has increased in all European countries.
Labour Proposals Related to the Sex Industry
The report published by the ILO in 1998 (The Sex Sector) recommends the inclusion of sex businesses in official government accountings. The ILO believes that this would mean enormous contributions to regional and national economies in terms of taxes and sales of permits, but also that it is the only way to improve the situation of those who are employed as sex workers. If governments recognise the sex sector, they will be obliged to extend labour rights and protections to the people who work in it. In the case of the four countries of the report (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand), this recognition would improve the lives of between 800,000 and a million people who receive payment for sexual services.
Although the ILO report is based on research in Southeast Asia, it cautions that these countries, far from having a worse problem with prostitution, are 'illustrative' of a global phenomenon. The ILO's proposal is pragmatic. Nowadays, Holland is the country which pays most attention to the matter of 'legalisation' of sex businesses, in search of the situation which does least harm to employees. Holland's new law permits and regulates the functioning of brothels in the same way as other businesses, with the goals of legalising the organisation of voluntary prostitution and increasing the penalisation of the organisation of involuntary prostitution (via violence, force, coercion or fraud and with minors). Since the law allows the details to be decided by municipalities, there may be differences from place to place. The situation is thus improving for thousands of sex workers-but not for migrants without work permits, who continue working without labour protections.
Although Germany has a system in which sex workers 'register', work legally and pay taxes, they do not receive normal benefits such as social security. Germany is now in the process of changing over to a model such as the Dutch, in which prostitution will be recognised as work so that the workers can receive labour rights and equal treatment before the law.
'Abolitionist' proposals do not have the intention of improving the labour situation of prostitutes. The new Swedish law criminalises the client, tending to push him to seek sexual services in less visible spaces. As happens with police raids, when the business goes into hiding, workers run more risks.
Systems of 'sanitary regulation' usually concentrate on enforcing medical checkups and tests of workers, stigmatising them as 'sources of contagion' of sexually transmitted diseases. Some regions of Germany still impose frequent checkups. I do not call such 'labour'-related, because it has been clear for two hundred years that the goal of this type of regulation is not to care for the health of the worker. On the contrary, it blames him for illnesses that can never be transmitted without the participation of two persons-one of these, the client.
References and Some Readings That Discuss Labour Aspects of Prostitution
Allison, Anne. 1994. Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Anarfi, John K. 1998. "Migrations and tourism: Ghanaian women and prostitution in Côte d'Ivoire." In Global Sex Workers, K. Kempadoo y J. Doezema, eds. New York: Routledge.
Anti-Slavery International. 1996. Redefining Prostitution as Sex Work on the International Agenda. London: Anti-Slavery International. COIN. 1996. La industria del sexo por dentro. Santo Domingo RD: COIN (Centro de Orientación e Investigación Integral).
Delacoste, Frédérique and Alexander, Priscilla, eds. 1987. Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry. San Francisco: Cleis Press.
Fog Olwig, Karen. 1993. Global Culture, Island Identity: Continuity and Change in the Afro-Caribbean Community of Nevis. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Gálvez, T. and Todaro, R. 1985. Yo trabajo así…en casa particular. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones CEM.
Georges, Eugenia. 1990. The Making of a Transnational Community: Migration, Development, and Cultural Change in the Dominican Republic. New York: Columbia University Press.
Grasmuck, Sherri and Pessar, Patricia R. 1991. Between Two Islands: Dominican International Migration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Guarnizo, Luís. 1994. "Los dominicanyorks: The Making of a Binational Society." In Annals, AAPSS, 533, May.
Hall, Stuart. 1997. "The Local and the Global in Culture." In Globalization and the World System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, A. King, ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hanson, Jody. 1998. "Sex Tourism as Work in New Zealand: A Discussion with Kiwi Prostitutes." En Pacific Rim Tourism, M. Oppermann, ed. Oxon UK: CAB.
Hart, Angie. 1998. Buying and Selling Power: Anthropological Reflections on Prostitution in Spain. Boulder CO: Westview Press.
Hernández Velasco, Irene. 1996. "Un millón de hombres al día va de prostitutas." El Mundo, 27 December [Sociedad 26].
Kempadoo, Kamala and Doezema, Jo. 1998. Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition. New York: Routledge.
Kulick, Don. 1998. Travesti: Sex, Gender and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lim, Lin Lean, ed. 1998. The Sex Sector: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia. Geneva: International Labour Organisation.
McClintock, Anne, ed. 1993. Social Text Winter [37].
Murray, Alison. 1991. No Money, No Honey: A Study of Street Traders and Prostitutes in Jakarta. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nowak, Anna. 1999. "Political Transformation in Poland: the Rise of Sex Work." Research for Sex Work, 2:9-11.[ Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit]
Occupational Health and Safety Code of Practice for the Sexual Services Industry in the ACT (Australia). 1999.
Oppermann, Martin, ed. 1998. Sex Tourism and Prostitution: Aspects of Leisure, Recreation, and Work. Cammeray NSW: Cognizant Communication Corporation.
Pernía, Nury. 1999. "Trabajadoras y Trabajadores Sexuales de Latinoamérica y el Caribe." Para Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, Geneva, 21 June 1999.
Prieur, Annick. 1998. Mema's House, México City: On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sassen, Saskia. 1998. Globalization and its Discontents. New York: The New Press.
Schifter, Jacobo. 1997. La casa de Lila: un estudio sobre la prostitución masculina. San José CR: ILPES (Instituto Latinoamericano de Prevención y Educación en Salud).
Seabrook, Jeremy. 1999. Love in a Different Climate: Men who have sex with men in India. London: Verso.
Sinclair, Thea, ed. 1997. Gender, Work, Tourism. London: Routledge
Skrobanek, Siriporn, Boonpakdee, Nataya and Jantateero, Chutima. 1997. The Traffic in Women: Human Realities of the International Sex Trade. London: Zed Books.
Tabet, Paola. 1989. "I'm the Meat, I'm the Knife: Sexual Service, Migration and Repression in Some African Societies". In A Vindication of the Rights of Whores G. Pheterson ed. Seattle WN: Seal Press.
TAMPEP. 1999. Health, Migration and SexWork: The Experience of Tampep. Amsterdam: Mr A de Graaf Stichting.
Truong, Thanh-Dam. 1990. Sex, Money and Morality: Prostitution and Tourism in Southeast Asia. London: Zed Books.
White, Luise. 1990. The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Laura Mª Agustín
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