Counter-trafficking policy and immigrant rights in Turkey.

• Author: Nawyn, Stephanie J.
• Position: COMMENTARY - Report

Introduction

Empirical Studies of Human Trafficking

The concept of human trafficking has evolved in both scholarship and activist/policy realms to mean very different things, leading to confusion if not properly specified. The United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (commonly known as the Palermo Protocol) defines human trafficking as:

... the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. (1) While this definition includes the exploitation of many different kinds of labor, social service and advocacy organizations as well as many policy makers emphasize trafficking that involves sex work. Many anti-trafficking non-governmental organizations (NGOs) define any exchange of sexual services for money as inherently coercive, and thus always a form of trafficking. Agustin has called the collective activities of these NGOs "the rescue industry" because of the emphasis on "rescuing" mostly women and girls from sex work under the assumption that they could never consent to such work and are physically (rather than economically) unable to leave. (2) Not only does this assumption negate the agency for adult women who define their participation in sex work as voluntary, (3) it complicates the identification of women (and men) who are truly coerced, defrauded or forced into sex work. Empirical studies of sex workers that explore a range of possible trafficking situations frequently find far fewer trafficking victims than either advocacy or policy groups predict. (4) Moreover, as more empirical attention has been paid to sex trafficking, other forms of labor trafficking have been understudied. (5)

With regards to the involvement of international migrants in sex work, governments have a long history of instituting measures to more closely regulate the migration of women into entertain venues suspected of engaging in prostitution. (6) Parrenas' study of Filipina nightclub hostesses in Tokyo illustrated the counter-intuitiveness of this strategy. (7) She found, contrary to the Japanese government's assertion that this employment sector was highly vulnerable to trafficking, that no women had been coerced or deceived into taking their jobs. However, because of migration-related debt and the lack of control over work visas, many were unable to leave exploitative arrangements. Andrijasevic's study of Eastern European migrant women working in the sex industry in Italy also demonstrated how exploitation was intertwined with state regulatory regimes that produce opportunities for women migrants to be exploited. (8)

We argue that the conceptualization of human trafficking as "modern day slavery" involving primarily sexual exploitation is at the heart of flawed counter-trafficking policy. Therefore, we suggest that it is more useful to think of the phenomenon within the framework of labor exploitation. Through this lens, we can examine the exploitation of migrants working in various industries without distinguishing trafficking for sexual services from other types of labor trafficking. It can also explain why many migrants who are victims of trafficking would not want to go to the police or leave their trafficking situation. Finally, using a labor exploitation framework can help produce better policies that will avoid further victimization of trafficked people and the creation of new mechanisms of social control that actually facilitate trafficking. A labor exploitation framework involves the following characteristics:

1. Relative economic deprivation, in which migrating for work opportunities involves more potential benefits than costs compared to employment opportunities in the home community.

2. Fear and/or hostility towards law enforcement due to illegal migration status or illegal employment.

3. Potential for improving one's situation with greater experience in the labor market; thus, with more experience workers can transition from a highly exploitative labor situation to improved situations.

By examining counter-trafficking polices through a labor exploitation framework, our data illustrate the need to think beyond law enforcement-only strategies for mitigating human trafficking.

Trafficking in Turkey

Since the inception of the Republic, the Turkish state has strictly regulated prostitution, primarily in the interest of public health. (9) Prostitution remains legal in Turkey today, but sex workers and brothels must have government-issued permits and worker permits are limited...