Dangerous Labor

MIGRANT WORKERS AND SEX WORKERS

In her office in a run-down neighborhood in Los Angeles, an organizer with a migrants' rights organization was worried. They were getting more calls every day. With the recession and recent anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona, migrant communities were rattled. Fear was palpable. Those living on a razor's edge were losing their minimum-wage jobs or having their hours scaled back, falling behind on rent, and getting evicted. Those working, the organizer explained, "tolerate all kinds of abuses to keep their jobs; they don't complain. They don't complain about terrible housing conditions either." Fearful of getting deported, they keep quiet and hold on.

* * *

At a press conference at a community center in Washington, D.C., a collaborative team of researchers reported that the D.C. police were targeting anyone who "looked" like a sex worker. Racial minorities, transgender individuals, anyone wearing certain kinds of clothes or walking in certain areas of town were being harassed (with verbal slurs, physical battering, and sexual assault) and arrested. They recounted what they heard throughout Washington: "We can't work—or even just walk—safely in our neighborhoods."

* * *

The story the organizer in Los Angeles tells—of worry, vulnerability, exploitation, and poverty—is one told by migrants' rights organizers around the United States. An organizer in the Washington, D.C., area tells of domestic workers who fear that their employers would fire them if they know the women attend domestic workers' rights meetings. A day laborer organizer in Virginia explains that he has never met a worker who has not been cheated by an employer. Farmworker activists in California tell of foremen sexually assaulting women workers, widespread wage theft, and regular exposure to pesticides.

The story the community researchers in Washington tell of danger at every turn is similar to what sex worker rights activists and researchers have heard throughout the United States. Seeking to "end demand" for prostitution as a strategy to end trafficking, antiprostitution forces have engaged in an all-out attack on anyone presumed to be in sex work. In the name of "rescuing" trafficking victims, those who choose to work in the sex sector—both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals—have been incarcerated (and deported in the case of undocumented migrants). Justified as saving women from coercion in the sex sector, the "rescues" themselves can be coercive and push already vulnerable workers further underground.

Two Communities under Attack: Migrants and Sex Workers

At first glance, these two communities—low-wage migrants (undocumented and documented) and workers in the sex sector (undocumented and documented)—may seem to have little in common. Yet both communities labor at the margins of legality, and thus both constantly face the possibility of arrest and incarceration. Those who lack legal status in the United States also face the possibility of deportation. Both communities have experienced targeted raids and arrests. Both have been trying to labor undetected. And both face great risks if they report abuses that either they or their coworkers experience.

This chapter focuses on the immigration and sexual politics shaping antitrafficking policy in the United States. I examine the fallout of antiimmigrant and antiprostitution policies on vulnerable workers and, ultimately, on the effectiveness of antitrafficking work. With local policies (such as 287(g) agreements and "secure communities" programs) and statewide legislation (such as in Arizona and Alabama) targeting undocumented migrants and coercive rescues occurring in all kinds of sex sector venues (massage parlors, dance clubs, brothels) and in public spaces, workers are unlikely to report any level of exploitation. The hyperscrutiny of the sex sector, meanwhile, often has eclipsed efforts to expose exploitation in other labor sectors. In common parlance trafficking has become synonymous with prostitution. Forced labor is simply invisible, overshadowed by the dominant discourse of sex trafficking. The reality of migrant exploitation, however, is all around us. With migrants often performing some of the most low-paying, insecure, and dangerous jobs throughout both rural and urban United States, their precarious labor is an essential element in today's economy. Low-wage migrants do work that is ubiquitous: picking crops, washing restaurant dishes, building houses, and taking care of children. But since undocumented migration is a political hot button, the link to forced labor is ignored. Instead, those who control the terms of debate, images, policies, and resource allocation focus exclusively on trafficking-as-sex trafficking. The failure to enforce labor laws and to protect the rights of all workers—including undocumented migrants and those working in the sex sector—creates the conditions that allow forced labor to flourish.

This chapter is divided into two sections: the assault on migrants in section I and the assault on sex workers in section II. While the rest of the book focuses on life in and after forced labor, section I examines the less abusive—but more widespread—exploitative practices that characterize many work sites where migrants labor. I highlight a number of factors that prevent exploited migrants from seeking help from community-based organizations or law enforcement to underscore how unlikely it is for extremely exploited workers to do so. Section II continues to explore this connection between vulnerable communities' fear of law enforcement, silence about abuse, and the paltry number of T visas issued. I argue that the conflation of trafficking with sex trafficking, particularly during the George W. Bush administration, resulted in a myopic focus on exploitation in only one labor sector: the sex sector. In the process, exploited workers in other labor sectors have gone unassisted and sex workers have become more vulnerable, with their livelihood under attack in the fight against trafficking.

I. THE ASSAULT ON MIGRANTS

Almost Trafficking

The story of living and laboring precariously in Los Angeles that opens this chapter—and the abuses that stem from this precariousness—is a recurring tale in the political economy of migrant labor. To understand cases of extreme abuse—trafficking into forced labor—we first need to understand the forms of abuse that happen every day in places where migrants work and live. Migrants stay quiet about this everyday exploitation. Employers and landlords try to get away with all they can. They are able to do so, in large part, because of workers' and tenants' undocumented status (or visa status that ties them to one employer). These...