In this paper, I track how social actors in the city of Chennai in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu contested the boundaries of thirunangai identity, the preferred Tamil term for transgender women. Using a framework derived from linguistic and economic anthropology, I show how gendered personhood is a contingent outcome of the value and meaning given to migrations and economic exchanges, where migration makes new gendered subjectivities possible while curtailing others. I offer a queer analysis of migration, highlighting how social womanhood is a contingent achievement and a contested status, split along axes of class, caste, religion, language, cis- or transgenderhood, and so forth. Not all persons socially categorised as women marry, migrate or labour in the same way, and gender is never a singular or isolated axis of differentiation.
{"title":"The Thirunangai Promise: Gender as a contingent outcome of migration and economic exchange","authors":"Shakthi Nataraj","doi":"10.14197/atr.201222194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.201222194","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I track how social actors in the city of Chennai in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu contested the boundaries of thirunangai identity, the preferred Tamil term for transgender women. Using a framework derived from linguistic and economic anthropology, I show how gendered personhood is a contingent outcome of the value and meaning given to migrations and economic exchanges, where migration makes new gendered subjectivities possible while curtailing others. I offer a queer analysis of migration, highlighting how social womanhood is a contingent achievement and a contested status, split along axes of class, caste, religion, language, cis- or transgenderhood, and so forth. Not all persons socially categorised as women marry, migrate or labour in the same way, and gender is never a singular or isolated axis of differentiation. ","PeriodicalId":43972,"journal":{"name":"Anti-Trafficking Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41359430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this short paper, we apply a queer lens to challenge the current parameters of protracted refugee situations (PRS), as outlined in international legal instruments, by drawing on stories of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Philippines affected by the Zamboanga Siege in 2013. We argue that PRS is not a status that displaced individuals transition in and out of, and that the reliance on nation-states to implement international protections can exacerbate the already tenuous situations of IDPs. The perception of prolonged displacement lingers well beyond traditional durable solutions of return, local integration, and resettlement, shaping IDPs’ longing for home.
{"title":"Queering Protracted Displacement: Lessons from Internally Displaced Persons in the Philippines","authors":"R. Quintero, A. Hari","doi":"10.14197/atr.201222199","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.201222199","url":null,"abstract":"In this short paper, we apply a queer lens to challenge the current parameters of protracted refugee situations (PRS), as outlined in international legal instruments, by drawing on stories of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Philippines affected by the Zamboanga Siege in 2013. We argue that PRS is not a status that displaced individuals transition in and out of, and that the reliance on nation-states to implement international protections can exacerbate the already tenuous situations of IDPs. The perception of prolonged displacement lingers well beyond traditional durable solutions of return, local integration, and resettlement, shaping IDPs’ longing for home.","PeriodicalId":43972,"journal":{"name":"Anti-Trafficking Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45484688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article provides an analysis of the Russian asylum system with a specific focus on its treatment of LGBTQ asylum seekers. I analysed existing literature on the Russian asylum system and examined asylum decisions from first-instance and second-instance immigration authorities and appeal decisions issued by the Basmanny district court of Moscow and the Moscow city court. While there seems to be no unified approach as to whether LGBTQ asylum seekers constitute a particular social group in the sense of the UN Refugee Convention, there is a consistent trend of refusing international protection to LGBTQ asylum seekers at all levels. The relevant bodies either ignore the systematic persecution LGBTQ persons face in the countries of origin or simply dismiss the arguments put forward by the applicants and conclude that there is no proof of the existence of personal risks in case of return. Such an approach further pushes the applicants into a semi-underground existence.
{"title":"‘Not A Sufficient Reason’: LGBTQ asylum seekers in the Russian asylum system","authors":"Ekaterina Rosolovskaya","doi":"10.14197/atr.201222197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.201222197","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides an analysis of the Russian asylum system with a specific focus on its treatment of LGBTQ asylum seekers. I analysed existing literature on the Russian asylum system and examined asylum decisions from first-instance and second-instance immigration authorities and appeal decisions issued by the Basmanny district court of Moscow and the Moscow city court. While there seems to be no unified approach as to whether LGBTQ asylum seekers constitute a particular social group in the sense of the UN Refugee Convention, there is a consistent trend of refusing international protection to LGBTQ asylum seekers at all levels. The relevant bodies either ignore the systematic persecution LGBTQ persons face in the countries of origin or simply dismiss the arguments put forward by the applicants and conclude that there is no proof of the existence of personal risks in case of return. Such an approach further pushes the applicants into a semi-underground existence.","PeriodicalId":43972,"journal":{"name":"Anti-Trafficking Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41715299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The image of a young, victimised woman bound and gagged for implied sexual exploitation persists in the imagination, promotional material, and reports of the anti-trafficking sector. She is presented as the ‘ideal’ victim, and while people who have experienced this undoubtedly exist, many victim accounts deviate from this prescriptive path. Why then does the image of a universal, ideal victim endure? This paper argues that the idealised subject of contemporary trafficking law is not merely a symptom of uncritical representation, but intrinsic to the formation of anti-trafficking law. Often feminised, she becomes a tool for maintaining heteronormative and white nationalism, but one which never existed beyond her confines of anti-trafficking law. To unearth her production, I present a queer genealogy of the human trafficking subject from British campaigns against white slavery in the late nineteenth century to contemporary law. A queer reading of this history demonstrates that rather than preceding laws, the ideal victim serves to personify cultural anxiety over race and gender housed in anti-trafficking policy. This is essential because without contending with this history and restrictive definition of victimhood, it would be impossible for current trafficking law in developed countries to adequately protect LGBTQ+ and irregular migrants who often do not conform to idealised forms of victimhood. Furthermore, a critical analysis of the ideal victim is essential to moving away from a hierarchical evaluation of victimhood altogether.
{"title":"Why the ‘Ideal Victim’ Persists: Queering representations of victimhood in human trafficking discourse","authors":"Anna Forringer-Beal","doi":"10.14197/atr.201222196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.201222196","url":null,"abstract":"The image of a young, victimised woman bound and gagged for implied sexual exploitation persists in the imagination, promotional material, and reports of the anti-trafficking sector. She is presented as the ‘ideal’ victim, and while people who have experienced this undoubtedly exist, many victim accounts deviate from this prescriptive path. Why then does the image of a universal, ideal victim endure? This paper argues that the idealised subject of contemporary trafficking law is not merely a symptom of uncritical representation, but intrinsic to the formation of anti-trafficking law. Often feminised, she becomes a tool for maintaining heteronormative and white nationalism, but one which never existed beyond her confines of anti-trafficking law. To unearth her production, I present a queer genealogy of the human trafficking subject from British campaigns against white slavery in the late nineteenth century to contemporary law. A queer reading of this history demonstrates that rather than preceding laws, the ideal victim serves to personify cultural anxiety over race and gender housed in anti-trafficking policy. This is essential because without contending with this history and restrictive definition of victimhood, it would be impossible for current trafficking law in developed countries to adequately protect LGBTQ+ and irregular migrants who often do not conform to idealised forms of victimhood. Furthermore, a critical analysis of the ideal victim is essential to moving away from a hierarchical evaluation of victimhood altogether.","PeriodicalId":43972,"journal":{"name":"Anti-Trafficking Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49157814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article introduces a special issue of Anti-Trafficking Review that bridges the fields of queer, migration, and critical trafficking studies by examining the implications of heightened juridical recognition of sexual orientation and gender identity for debates on migration, sex work, and human trafficking. The issue proceeds from the insight that, as the legibility of queer and trans* (i.e., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and all non-binary and non-heteronormative forms of sexuality and gender identity) moves forward, it appears to de-emphasise the explicit connections that sexuality- and gender-based social movements have historically drawn between identity, governance, and material survival. In emphasising questions of survival, this issue both recuperates queer and non-cisnormative subjects within debates on transactional sex, and shows how a queer theoretical sensibility can offer new insights for established critiques in the field.
{"title":"Editorial: Thinking with Migration, Sexuality, Gender Identity, and Transactional Sex","authors":"Svati P. Shah","doi":"10.14197/atr.201222191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.201222191","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces a special issue of Anti-Trafficking Review that bridges the fields of queer, migration, and critical trafficking studies by examining the implications of heightened juridical recognition of sexual orientation and gender identity for debates on migration, sex work, and human trafficking. The issue proceeds from the insight that, as the legibility of queer and trans* (i.e., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and all non-binary and non-heteronormative forms of sexuality and gender identity) moves forward, it appears to de-emphasise the explicit connections that sexuality- and gender-based social movements have historically drawn between identity, governance, and material survival. In emphasising questions of survival, this issue both recuperates queer and non-cisnormative subjects within debates on transactional sex, and shows how a queer theoretical sensibility can offer new insights for established critiques in the field.","PeriodicalId":43972,"journal":{"name":"Anti-Trafficking Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47879274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this interview, the author speaks with Queer Sex Workers Initiative for Refugees: a Nairobi-based grassroots service-provision and advocacy group formed by queer refugees in Kenya who are engaged in sex work. The interview explores the question of how queer identity experiences interact with the policing of borders, labour issues, and refugee status. It teases out the ramifications of the compounding factors of migration and criminalisation of sex work and gender diversity, across borders, to show how these produce discrimination, loss of livelihood, and vulnerability to violence.
{"title":"Queerness, Sex Work, and Refugee Status in Nairobi: A conversation with Queer Sex Workers Initiative for Refugees","authors":"Subha Wijesiriwardena","doi":"10.14197/atr.2012221911","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.2012221911","url":null,"abstract":"In this interview, the author speaks with Queer Sex Workers Initiative for Refugees: a Nairobi-based grassroots service-provision and advocacy group formed by queer refugees in Kenya who are engaged in sex work. The interview explores the question of how queer identity experiences interact with the policing of borders, labour issues, and refugee status. It teases out the ramifications of the compounding factors of migration and criminalisation of sex work and gender diversity, across borders, to show how these produce discrimination, loss of livelihood, and vulnerability to violence.","PeriodicalId":43972,"journal":{"name":"Anti-Trafficking Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46394733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Boys and LGBTQ youth, especially those who go missing from home, have recently started to appear in mainstream anti-trafficking discourse as a group of children who are peculiarly vulnerable to human trafficking. This paper reports findings from research with Jamaicans who experienced various forms of violence and exploitation as children. Our data is consistent with the claim that boys and LGBTQ Jamaicans are amongst those who experience forms of violence and exploitation that policy makers often discuss under the heading ‘sex trafficking’. However, the same data also challenges the conceptual binaries used to frame assumptions about ‘sex trafficking’ as a significant threat to Jamaican youth and informs assumptions about missing children as victims of trafficking. In this way, the paper provides empirical support for criticisms of the turn towards including boys and LGBTQ youth as victims of ‘sex trafficking’, and of dominant discourse on ‘child trafficking’ more generally.
{"title":"Missing, Presumed Trafficked: Towards non-binary understandings of ‘wayward’ youth in Jamaica","authors":"Jacqueline Taylor, J. Davidson","doi":"10.14197/atr.201222192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.201222192","url":null,"abstract":"Boys and LGBTQ youth, especially those who go missing from home, have recently started to appear in mainstream anti-trafficking discourse as a group of children who are peculiarly vulnerable to human trafficking. This paper reports findings from research with Jamaicans who experienced various forms of violence and exploitation as children. Our data is consistent with the claim that boys and LGBTQ Jamaicans are amongst those who experience forms of violence and exploitation that policy makers often discuss under the heading ‘sex trafficking’. However, the same data also challenges the conceptual binaries used to frame assumptions about ‘sex trafficking’ as a significant threat to Jamaican youth and informs assumptions about missing children as victims of trafficking. In this way, the paper provides empirical support for criticisms of the turn towards including boys and LGBTQ youth as victims of ‘sex trafficking’, and of dominant discourse on ‘child trafficking’ more generally.","PeriodicalId":43972,"journal":{"name":"Anti-Trafficking Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48180457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This short article contributes to the growing scholarship on the complex ways sexual orientation and gender identity impact people’s experiences of migration, informal labour, and sex work. Drawing on surveys and interviews with twelve trans Venezuelan asylum seekers and undocumented migrants in Brazil and six key informant interviews with sex workers, trans activists, and humanitarian and NGO staff, this short article asks: How has COVID-19 affected the livelihoods of trans Venezuelan asylum seekers and undocumented migrants?
{"title":"‘They Kill Us Trans Women’: Migration, informal labour, and sex work among trans Venezuelan asylum seekers and undocumented migrants in Brazil during COVID-19","authors":"Yvonne Su, T. Valiquette","doi":"10.14197/atr.201222198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.201222198","url":null,"abstract":"This short article contributes to the growing scholarship on the complex ways sexual orientation and gender identity impact people’s experiences of migration, informal labour, and sex work. Drawing on surveys and interviews with twelve trans Venezuelan asylum seekers and undocumented migrants in Brazil and six key informant interviews with sex workers, trans activists, and humanitarian and NGO staff, this short article asks: How has COVID-19 affected the livelihoods of trans Venezuelan asylum seekers and undocumented migrants?","PeriodicalId":43972,"journal":{"name":"Anti-Trafficking Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45850857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This short article describes the co-creative production process of the film CAER—a collaboration between a researcher/film director and the Colectivo Intercultural TRANSgrediendo: a collective of migrant Latinx trans people in Queens, New York. It shows how the filmmaking process was guided by the concerns of the community, whose members co-wrote the script and took an active part in editing the raw material. The collaboration was born out of the shared belief that communities impacted by policies need to own the terms of their representation.
{"title":"CAER: Co-creating a Collaborative Documentary about the Lives and Rights of Trans Latinx People Working in the Sex Industry in Queens, NYC","authors":"Nicola Mai, Liaam Winslet","doi":"10.14197/atr.2012221910","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.2012221910","url":null,"abstract":"This short article describes the co-creative production process of the film CAER—a collaboration between a researcher/film director and the Colectivo Intercultural TRANSgrediendo: a collective of migrant Latinx trans people in Queens, New York. It shows how the filmmaking process was guided by the concerns of the community, whose members co-wrote the script and took an active part in editing the raw material. The collaboration was born out of the shared belief that communities impacted by policies need to own the terms of their representation.","PeriodicalId":43972,"journal":{"name":"Anti-Trafficking Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48472635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article unpacks practices of collaboration and community-building among sex workers in Athens, weaving them with an analysis of labour and illegalisation. In the field, cis and trans, local and migrant workers alike pointed to the pervasive material realities of harm, exploitation, and devaluation as inseparable from the multiple processes of illegalisation and dispossession to which they were subjected. They also demonstrated their own grassroots strategies to deal with these realities. Such practices are examined as concrete efforts of collectivities to survive together through diffuse forms of (state) violence. Nevertheless, the article shows that ‘community’ is by no means straightforward, harmonious, or free from instrumentalism, but situated within a multiplicity of relationships of support, collaboration, subjection, exploitation, obligation, and bondage between sex workers, migrants, and various brokers and gatekeepers. In tracing the connections forged between people occupying multiple positions as informal (sexual) labourers, migrants, and queers, sexuality and gender emerge as inextricable from class, and community as inseparable from political economy.
{"title":"Workers, Migrants, and Queers: The political economy of community among illegalised sex workers in Athens","authors":"Valentini Sampethai","doi":"10.14197/atr.201222193","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.201222193","url":null,"abstract":"This article unpacks practices of collaboration and community-building among sex workers in Athens, weaving them with an analysis of labour and illegalisation. In the field, cis and trans, local and migrant workers alike pointed to the pervasive material realities of harm, exploitation, and devaluation as inseparable from the multiple processes of illegalisation and dispossession to which they were subjected. They also demonstrated their own grassroots strategies to deal with these realities. Such practices are examined as concrete efforts of collectivities to survive together through diffuse forms of (state) violence. Nevertheless, the article shows that ‘community’ is by no means straightforward, harmonious, or free from instrumentalism, but situated within a multiplicity of relationships of support, collaboration, subjection, exploitation, obligation, and bondage between sex workers, migrants, and various brokers and gatekeepers. In tracing the connections forged between people occupying multiple positions as informal (sexual) labourers, migrants, and queers, sexuality and gender emerge as inextricable from class, and community as inseparable from political economy.","PeriodicalId":43972,"journal":{"name":"Anti-Trafficking Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49362323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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