{"id":6224,"date":"2011-11-11T20:39:21","date_gmt":"2011-11-12T03:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/?p=6224"},"modified":"2011-11-12T13:16:03","modified_gmt":"2011-11-12T20:16:03","slug":"evidence-based-trafficking-policy-sociologist-gives-state-department-an-f","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sexuality\/2011\/11\/11\/evidence-based-trafficking-policy-sociologist-gives-state-department-an-f\/","title":{"rendered":"Evidence-based trafficking policy?: Sociologist gives State Department an “F”"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Obama administration took office on Jan. 1, 2009, many scientists and scholars were hopeful that empirical evidence would play a greater role in defining a range of domestic and international policies, ranging from justifications for war, to global warming, to sex education, to policies about human trafficking. The hope was that the administration would turn away from making decisions that were rooted in ideological agendas and make decisions that were informed more directly by reliable empirical data. To some extent, this has been the case. [E.G.: see the State Department’s (remarkable) response to evidence of human rights violations against people in the sex trade<\/a>].<\/p>\n

However, when it comes to directly criticizing the State Department about its international policies — even using solid empirical data — \u00a0it is probably inevitable that the State Department machine will kick into defense mode. And this is what is happening now in response to\u00a0Rhacel Salazar Parre\u00f1as, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, for her book\u00a0Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo <\/em>which is\u00a0based on her ethnographic research with bar hostesses in Tokyo. The State Department argues that women who are similar to those Parre\u00f1as included in her study need to be “rescued.”\u00a0Parre\u00f1as’ research suggests otherwise, and adds to the mounting evidence which indicates that calls for “rescuing” adult women are simplistic, not based in reliable evidence, and are ultimately harmful to the women who allegedly “need” to be “rescued.”<\/p>\n

Parre\u00f1as’\u00a0more complicated and empirically-grounded analysis puts a wet blanket on widespread popular discourse about “sex trafficking” — a “victim\/rescue” narrative that many critical feminist, human rights, and labor scholars critique as a colonialist, patronizing, (ironically) sexualizing fantasy of White Knights swooping in to rescue helpless women. Parre\u00f1as’ work\u00a0also provides yet another push to the State Department — and other all parties interested in alleviating human trafficking — to ground their approaches in rigorous data collection, as well as analysis that addresses labor and migrant rights in the context of global economic inequalities.<\/p>\n

See below for Nina Ayoub’s story which briefly summarizes Parre\u00f1as’ findings and the State Department’s response:<\/p>\n

———<\/p>\n

\n

Scholar\u2019s Views Rile State Department<\/h1>\n

November 10, 2011,\u00a09:00 pm<\/p>\n

By\u00a0Nina Ayoub<\/a><\/p>\n

The author of a new scholarly book from Stanford University Press has become the target of criticism from an unusual source: the U.S. Department of State.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, Rhacel Salazar Parre\u00f1as, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, has received media attention for\u00a0Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo, <\/em>a book about Filipina women working as bar hostesses in the Japanese capital. Bloomberg News ran\u00a0excerpts<\/a> of her work. She was called the \u201cliterary lovechild of Barbara Ehrenreich and Naomi Wolf\u201d by\u00a0Z\u00f3calo Public Square,<\/a> which said the book will \u201cinspire indignation for reasons you didn\u2019t expect.\u201d Parre\u00f1as also was\u00a0interviewed <\/a>onThe World,<\/em> a program of Public Radio International. Following that broadcast, the State Department asked\u2014essentially\u2014for equal time.<\/p>\n

The issue? Parre\u00f1as was highly critical of the ways in which State Department policies on international sex trafficking characterize the women who are the focus of her book, minimizing, she says, their individual agency as migrant laborers, and seeking to \u201crescue\u201d them and regulate their lives in ways that Parre\u00f1as argues may leave them worse off.<\/p>\n

On November 4, Alison Kiehl Friedman, deputy director of the State Department\u2019s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons was\u00a0interviewed <\/a>on\u00a0The World<\/em> to \u201cclarify U.S. policy on sex trafficking.\u201d She told the host that \u201cwe agree with Dr. Parre\u00f1as that there is exploitation inherent in what is going on, and we agree that not all the people there are trafficking victims. And we agree that there needs to be more done to get unscrupulous labor recruiters out of the system and better protect migration flows. Where we disagree is that somebody can go in, have a personal experience for a couple of months, and categorically say these people weren\u2019t sex-trafficking victims, and somehow calling some of them sex-trafficking victims is worse than ignoring their exploitation and trying to address it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an e-mail interview,\u00a0The Chronicle<\/em> asked Parre\u00f1as for her response. Is she surprised at the public attention her research is getting from the State Department?<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cAs a scholar who is committed to \u2018public sociology,\u2019 that is, sociology that aims to transcend the academy and reach a wider audience, I couldn\u2019t be anything but pleased that policy implementers have given attention to my work,\u201d she writes. \u201cUnfortunately, they seemed to have also misinterpreted the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parre\u00f1as adds: \u201cI do wish that the U.S. State Department gave greater attention to the evidence-based research on human trafficking by scholars such as myself, and others including the anthropologist\u00a0Denise Brennan,<\/a> the legal scholar Dina Haynes, and the anthropologist\u00a0Tiantian Zheng.\u201d<\/a> The department does not, she charges. Instead, they \u201cinsist on making unsubstantiated claims on human trafficking.\u201d<\/p>\n

What the sociologist is chiefly calling \u201cunsubstantiated\u201d is the\u00a0Trafficking in Persons Report,<\/em> which the State Department describes as its \u201cprincipal diplomatic tool to engage foreign governments\u201d on the subject. She is critical of the State Department, she says, for not fully accounting for its methods, as well as for its informants and sources. \u201cThe\u00a0TIP Report<\/em> would get an F if it were a\u00a0 social-science-research project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parre\u00f1as says she is fairly sure that her critics at the agency have not yet read her book. \u201cOtherwise, they would not be able to dismiss my methodology as \u2018having a personal experience for a couple of months.\u2019\u201d she writes. As a qualitative sociologist, she used a varied set of methods, including \u201cin-depth interviews with hostesses, brokers, club owners; participant-observation both as a customer (in nine clubs) and as a hostess (in one club primarily); archival research; and interviews with government representatives in both Japan and the Philippines. I spent not just \u2018a couple of months\u2019 but a total of 11 non-continuous months in Tokyo to conduct my project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike Friedman and the\u00a0TIP Report,<\/em> she says, \u201call the claims that I have made about the situation of hostesses\u2014a group they say are \u2018forced into prostitution\u2019\u2014are based on evidence, i.e., concrete interviews with migrant Filipina hostesses who I made sure represented a diverse group.\u201d The women included \u201cthose who are college educated and those who are high-school dropouts; some work in high-end bars and others in low-end bars; some undress in the club where they work and others never sit next to a customer at a club when at work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking on the radio of the Filipina hostesses, Friedman, the State Department official, used an analogy she said her boss was fond of. \u201cI think that focusing on how they got there and whether there was any initial consent to travel is really beside the point,\u201d she told\u00a0The World.<\/em> \u201cIt\u2019s almost like criminalizing driving to the bank robbery, but not the bank robbery itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her e-mail to\u00a0The Chronicle,<\/em> Parre\u00f1as counters: \u201cAs I explicitly described in the interview, the work of hostesses is not prostitution. Instead, the work is to flirt professionally with customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friedman, notes Parre\u00f1as, \u201csaid we should not focus on how one gets to commit a robbery, but to focus on the robbery. This statement just goes to show that she chooses not to consider the circumstances of people\u2019s lives and the particular needs that arise out of those circumstances.<\/p>\n

In the case of hostesses, she says, \u201cthese women are often from the poorest of the poor in the Philippines. We cannot understand why they do hostess work unless we consider the structural contexts that have shaped their lives.\u201d Those who prefer they not become hostesses, she says, should work on easing the structural inequalities that limited their choices and made hostess work the best of bad options.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut let us say I agree with Friedman\u2019s boss,\u201d she adds. \u201cLet us look at the act of bank robbery. Let us disregard how they got there. In this case, we would look at the act of hostess work. We would actually see that the work is not prostitution but professional flirtation. Professional flirting could be performed in a variety of ways\u2014via showing acts of care such as spoon feeding sensually, dancing on stage (clothed or unclothed), singing, verbal teasing. I would ask Friedman\u2014what is wrong with professional flirting? What is so different between professional flirting and working as a waitress in Hooters?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I would say let us look at the act of \u2018bank robbery\u2019 or the act of \u2018hostess work.\u2019 If we were going to do it accurately, we would actually rely on evidence to know the specifics of that \u2018bank robbery.\u2019 We would perhaps realize that the robber walked away with three pieces of mint candy from the bank and not wads of cash. If one looks at the\u00a0TIP Report,<\/em>one sees that the U.S. Department of State provides no evidence related to working conditions. So it is questionable if they know anything about the \u2018bank robber.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Commenting on Friedman\u2019s statement that \u201ccompelled service is frequently misidentified as consent,\u201d Parre\u00f1as says that the official is \u201ccloaking the problem of human trafficking. She is looking at the surface and not the structure.\u201d Most migrant workers, she says, are not free laborers. They are often guest workers whose legal residency binds them to a sponsoring employer. This leaves them in a highly unequal relationship of dependency. This, she writes, would apply to farm workers in North Carolina, non-immigrant-visa domestic workers in Washington, D.C.; likewise, domestic workers in Singapore, or the\u00a0kafala<\/em> system in the United Arab Emirates, or au pairs in Denmark, or migrant teachers in Baltimore.<\/p>\n

\u201cEminent scholars such as Carole Vance and Ann Jordan have expressed their puzzlement over the obsession of the U.S. State Department on sex workers as well as their conflation of sex trafficking and prostitution,\u201d says Parre\u00f1as. She says that the department\u2019s \u201cover-obsession with finding \u2018prostitutes\u2019 who are \u2018sex trafficked\u2019\u201d has led them to misidentify migrant Filipina hostesses. \u201cHostess work is not a euphemism for prostitution,\u201d says Parre\u00f1as. Yet, she claims, the U.S. Department of State, \u201cwithout evidence,\u201d misidentifies the hostesses as not just prostitutes but women \u201cforced into prostitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

This misidentification is a \u201csetback,\u201d she argues, \u201cbecause it has eliminated the jobs of tens of thousands of women, many of whom are now living in poverty in the Philippines.\u201d This shift, the book indicates, occurred when Japan changed its visa policies on \u201cFilipina entertainers\u201d in a way that conformed with U.S. preferences. The scholar also cites the research of her Ph.D. student Maria Hwang at Brown University, where Parre\u00f1as taught before going to the University of Southern California. Hwang has found a sizeable number of Filipina hostesses displaced from Tokyo working as migrant sex workers in Hong Kong. Hwang\u2019s research, says Parre\u00f1as, shows us that \u201cfalsely rescuing them from prostitution has actually forced them into prostitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her student\u2019s finding \u201ctells us that it is very important that the U.S. Department of State only provide evidence-based research in their reports. Not having evidence-based research could backfire on them in more ways than one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parre\u00f1as will continue her research on migrant labor. She says she is preparing a second edition of her 2001 book,\u00a0Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work <\/em>(Stanford), which compared Filipina migrant domestic workers in Rome and Los Angeles. She is conducting new research in both cities to update their situations. She also has a new project that will compare the experiences of domestic workers whose legal residency in a country binds them to a citizen sponsor employer, meaning \u201cthat they cannot quit their job unless they are willing to be deported.\u201d She will compare domestic workers in that situation in Denmark, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

———<\/p>\n

Original story posted here:\u00a0http:\/\/chronicle.com\/blogs\/pageview\/scholars-views-rile-state department\/29694?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en<\/a><\/p>\n

See also human rights law professor Ann Jordan’s prolific scholarship on this issue, including her article here:\u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/www.fpif.org\/articles\/sex_trafficking_the_abolitionist_fallacy<\/a><\/p>\n

Other related Sexuality & Society<\/em> stories:<\/p>\n