Photo provided by author. All rights reserved.
Mainstream anti-trafficking and abolitionist discourses construct the image of the victim by channelling ‘white slavery’ myths. Eastern European women (along with other women from the ex-peripheries of global capital) are attributed a central role in these dominant narratives. Apart from the restrictions faced by most migrants from the former ‘eastern bloc’ in so-called developed states, eastern European migrant sex workers encounter even tougher barriers when attempting to access legal forms of work in the heavily yet faultily regulated sex industries of western countries. Even when legally residing and working, simply owning a Romanian or Russian passport can make female sex workers the target of rescue, detention, and re-socialisation and/or deportation programmes implemented by governmental agencies and carceral NGOs.
