The Geography of Sex Work in the United Arab Emirates - Geographies of Privilege - page 12

thesexindustry,arenotimaginedastraffickedwithinthediscoursethatpaintstheimage
of a woman, victimized by her own circumstances. Most recently, this image has taken
on a postcolonial, racialized dimension: women from the developing world, willing to
take extreme measures in the face of dire poverty, make the “irrational” choice to ex-
pose themselves to risky migratory methods and partners (e.g., Bales 1999; Kara 2009;
Hughes1979;Barry1996).Individuals, particularly womenfromtheglobal south,have
been scripted in the trafficking framework as duped, or “victims of their global south-
ness” (Shah 2011), a phrase that paints these women as lacking in agency.
Kemala Kempadoo astutely points out that the types of racism that function both
within sex work and in framing sex work take two forms: that of “racisms embedded
in structures and desires within specific local industries (i.e. the fact that the demand
for sex workers for example in Dubai is based on their race/ethnicity) and that of
culturalimperialismrefractedthroughinternationaldiscoursesonprostitution”(Kempa-
doo 2005). Kempadoo and Mohanty go on to note that this second type of racism is less
obvious, yet more dangerous. It has become embedded in neo-liberal feminist discourse
about non-Western women who are, according to Kathleen Barry, in desperate need of
“saving” (Barry 1996).
Thusthesenon-Westernwomenwhomigrate,possiblytoengageinsexwork,orwho
employ transactional sex as a survival or supplemental strategy and may or may not be
exploited or trafficked, are constructed as lacking agency and are bearers of a distinctly
unmodern subjectivity. The developmentalist logic framing this image, which operates
from a position of privilege, excludes the space for self-representation by women from
the developing world, and this absence is then cited as evidence of their helplessness
and inferiority in comparison to Western female counterparts.
The human trafficking rhetoric, as explicated through policies such as the U.S. Traf-
ficking in Persons Report (TIP),aglobalscorecardrankingnationsthroughouttheworld
according to their perceived responses to trafficking, calls for commercial sex work
to be acted on by the state, often in conjunction with EuroAmerican development ef-
forts (U.S. Department of State, 2001). As others have noted (see Soderlund 2002;
Agustín 2008; Bernstein 2010), a “rescue industry” has been crafted whereby members
ofthedevelopedworldmobilize effortstoostensibly“rescue” or“save”“trafficked wo-
men”—usuallyinthedevelopingworld—contributingtotheproductionofwhatLongva
has called an “ethnocracy” (Longva 1995). A few examples of “rescue” efforts 16 that
have their origins in the United States but now work to “save women” in countries
aroundtheworldincludetheInternationalJusticeMission(IJM)aswellastheCoalition
Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) whose mission is to “work internationally to
combat sexual exploitation in all its forms, especially prostitution and trafficking in wo-
men and children, in particular girls ( www.catwinternational.org ). Evident in this mis-