Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
to experience what they perceive as authentic forms of tourism (Konrad 1982; Hall and
McArthur 1996).
INSIGHT: Trafficking, sex tourism and slavery
Mobility is an integral part of the process of globalisation. However, one of the more
unsavoury aspects of mobility is the extent to which there has been an increase in the
extent of trafficking in women and children, often as sex workers. According to Human
Rights Watch (1999), a United States based non-government organisation, 'Trafficking,
the illegal and highly profitable transport and sale of human beings across or within
international borders for the purpose of exploiting their labor, is a human rights abuse
with global dimensions', with many thousands of women and girls around the world
being lured, abducted or sold into forced prostitution, forced labour, domestic service, or
involuntary marriage. Trafficking is therefore closely related to the wider issue of sexual
slavery (Matsui 1999). Indeed, K.Barry (1984:40) argues that 'female sexual slavery is
present in ALL situations where women or girls cannot change the immediate conditions
of their existence; where regardless of how they got into those conditions they cannot get
out; and where they are subject to sexual violence and exploitation'. Nevertheless, Barry
does point to the significance of the exploitation that the loss of individual control brings
in many situations where prostitution exists.
Many well-publicised media accounts of sex tourism in Thailand in particular have
noted the extent to which women and girls have been bonded into prostitution, often
through agents and brothel owners making loans or payments to relatives (e.g.
see Bishop and Robinson 1998; Matsui 1999). However, the selling of women into
prostitution is not isolated to Thailand: it is a global phenomenon in which the female
body is objectified into a commodity to be bought and sold. It is the (ill)logical extent of
the objectification of labour in which not only are humans seen purely as a unit of sexual
labour which is under the control of their 'owner', but also it represents the denial of self
of one human by another (Ryan and Hall 2001). Indeed, in South East Asia much of the
demand for sex tourism is through intra-regional travel or from domestic travellers, with
many of the border regions being areas in which brothels and other illegal activities are
concentrated.
The Executive Director of the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch
argues that the number of persons trafficked each year is impossible to determine, but it is
clearly a large-scale problem, with estimates ranging from hundreds of thousands to
millions of victims worldwide (Ralph 2000). The International Organization for
Migration has reported on cases of trafficking in South East Asia, East Asia, South Asia,
the Middle East, Europe, South America, Central America and North America. For
example, the US State Department estimates that each year, 50,000-100,000 women and
children are trafficked into the United States. Many women are trafficked to work in
brothels, about half are trafficked into bonded sweatshop labour or domestic servitude.
Once in the United States, the women who work in brothels typically are rotated from
city to city to evade law enforcement, keep the women disoriented and give clients fresh
faces (Rosenfried 1997). In her testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations, Ralph (2000) reported that, 'in August 1999, a trafficking ring was broken up
in Atlanta
Georgia that authorities believe was responsible for transporting up to 1000
