Sexual Economies, Love and Human Trafficking – new conceptual issues^*

Abstract

In this text I comment on recent discussions about sexual economies, human trafficking and the relationship between these problematics, considering new questions that are raised in the debate about them. I dialog with other articles published in this issue of the Cadernos Pagu, considering the results of studies conducted in Brazil and other Latin American countries. My comments focus on two issues that arose in the dialog between this work and the articles of Christian Groess Gren, Marcia Anita Sprandel, Kamala Kempadoo and Amalia Cabezas published in this volume. I first refer to the analytical possibilities and the limits of concepts such as sexual economies and sex markets. A second question relates to forms of governmentality articulated in the regimes for fighting human trafficking that affect these exchanges, particularly sexual work. The question is, in the fifteen years since the enactment of the Palermo Protocol, the most important supranational legal instrument related to this crime, what new issues appear in the analysis of these regimes and of their effects on sexual and economic exchanges?

Sex Markets; Sexual Economies; Human Trafficking

Resumo

Neste texto realizo alguns comentários sobre as recentes discussões relativas às economias sexuais, ao tráfico de pessoas e à relação entre essas problemáticas, levando em conta novas questões que se delineiam no debate sobre elas. Neles dialogo com textos publicados neste número dos Cadernos Pagu, considerando resultados de pesquisas realizadas no Brasil e em outros países da América Latina. Meus comentários estão alinhavados em torno de duas questões que surgem no diálogo entre essa produção e os artigos de Christian Groess-Green, Marcia Anita Sprandel, Kamala Kempadoo e Amalia Cabezas publicados neste volume. Refiro-me, em primeiro lugar, às possibilidades analíticas e às limitações de noções como economias sexuais e mercados do sexo. Uma segunda questão remete às formas de governamentalidade articuladas nos regimes de combate ao tráfico de pessoas que afetam esses intercâmbios, particularmente o trabalho sexual. A pergunta é, nos quinze anos transcorridos a partir da promulgação do Protocolo de Palermo,o mais importante dispositivo legal supranacional relativo a esse crime, que novas questões se delineiam na análise desses regimes e de seus efeitos nas trocas sexuais e econômicas?

Mercados do Sexo; Economias Sexuais; Tráfico de Pessoas

In this paper I comment on recent discussions about sexual economies, human trafficking and the relationship between these problematics, considering new questions that have been delineated in the debates. I dialog with some articles published in this issue of Cadernos Pagu, considering results of studies conducted in Brazil and other Latin American countries and points raised in various collective discussions, particularly at the workshops “Sexual Economies and Human Trafficking”¹ and “Transits, Crime and Borders: Gender, human trafficking and sex markets in Brazil”² held at Unicamp in 2014 and 2015, and in the working group “Can the Subalterns Speak?”,³ at the Mercosur Anthropology Meeting in Montevideo, in 2015. This debate is tied to the formation of a broad network of researchers who are involved in critical studies about these issues, with whose authors I have had the privilege to work with over various years and to whom I am immensely grateful.

My comments focus on two questions that arose in the dialog between this analysis and the articles published in this volume by Christian Groess-Green, Marcia Anita Sprandel, Kamala Kempadoo and Amalia Cabezas. I first refer to the analytical possibilities and the limitations of concepts such as sexual economies and sex markets. After nearly two decades of a renewal and an impressive increase in socio-anthropological production that analyzes sexual and economic exchanges, the degree to which these concepts contribute to the analysis of these exchanges should be examined.

A second question relates to the forms of governmentality articulated in the regimes for fighting human trafficking that affect these exchanges, particularly sexual work. When I refer to these regimes, I am considering the constellation of policies, norms, discourses, knowledge and laws about human trafficking formulated in the interlinking of supranational, transnational, national and local dimensions. The question is, in the fifteen years that have passed since the enactment of the Palermo Protocol,⁴ the most important supranational legal measure related to this crime, what new issues are delineated in the analysis of these regimes and their effects on sexual and economic exchanges?

Sex markets or sexual economies?

The concepts of sex markets and of sexual economies were formulated in analyses of sexual and economic exchanges that locate these exchanges in the broad realm of material and symbolic exchanges through which the social life is organized. What is the difference between the two?

In Brazil, the concept of sex markets has been disseminated and understood as an insertion in the interplay of supply and demand of sex and sensuality, which leads to a dual problematization: the questioning of the necessary tie of prostitution with the notion of the sex industry and the reduction of the vast range of economic and sexual exchanges to prostitution (Piscitelli, 2005). The first problematization is anchored in the perception of the diversified characteristics of sexual work in the country, where prostitution is frequently related to a more artisanal than industrial idea of work. The second questioning is associated to the fact that the supply and demand for sex and sensuality are often related to social and economic exchanges that are not considered prostitution by the people involved in them and that are part of the sociality of various social sectors in different parts of the country.

This concept of sex markets was based on a broad sense of market, in the sense attributed to it by Bourdieu. The concept is not reduced to a market economy, to the organization of social relations that are constitutive of the productive sphere or to the realm where consumption takes place. Far from this, it relates to the vast terrain of the material and symbolic exchanges through which social life is organized. This broader idea of market helps to recognize that sex markets involve not only exchanges characterized as “commerce”, but also other exchanges that are not conceived as such and can even be considered as gifts (Piscitelli; Assis; Olivar, 2011).

This formulation presents analytical possibilities for considering the different “scales” at which prostitution takes place and is particularly fertile for the analysis of sexual work together with other exchanges, including modalities of exchanges that should not be confused with prostitution. These involve situations in which sex is exchanged for different goods, including presents, clothes, cell phones, travel, rent payments, medical bills, visits to a hair salon, food purchases, exchanges that are frequently conceived in Brazil, in empiric terms, as “help” (Piscitelli, 2011) and relate to what various authors denominate as transactional sex (Hunter, 2010; Kempadoo, 2004; Cabezas, 2009).

Moreover, in studies conducted in Brazil, the formulation of the sex markets led to a reflection about social relations that are intimately linked to sexual and economic exchanges, but which go beyond them. I refer to kinship, which – in the form of obligations associated to family relations, to support for children, siblings, mothers and at times, also to conjugality – is part of the broader universe in which these exchanges are inserted (Olivar, 2013; Tedesco, 2008; Fonseca, 2004). Finally, the notion of sex markets was developed along theoretical lines informed by feminist perspectives, considering the distributions of inequalities of power that permeate these exchanges and their expression in the articulation between gender and other categories of differentiation, race, class, age and nationality. In this theoretical framework, studies that work with this notion consider the subalternizations and the stigma that mark participation in these exchanges, without leaving aside the dimensions of the agenda that are opened by these exchanges (Blanchette; Silva, 2010; Cantalice, 2016).

The concept of sexual economies, which is particularly present in the international literature, shares various aspects that are present in the formulation of sex markets that have been disseminated in Brazil. I refer particularly to the attempts to locate the sexual and economic exchanges in the broader social universes which they are part of. Nevertheless, among studies about sexual economies, there is no agreement about the content of this notion or about the scope of these universes.

Elizabeth Bernstein (2014) considers that the term sexual economies relates to the exchange of sex for money in the most literal sense, but also to the ways through which sexual circulations are critical to other economic projects, including humanitarianism, tourism, policing and border control. Other authors use the term in a more restricted sense, considering sexual exchanges as the universe of exchanges of sex for money. Nevertheless, it involves a broad universe of exchanges, including marriage (Cabezas, 2009; Cole, 2014).

In the latter perspectives, a significant portion of the authors use the concept of sexual economies, problematizing aspects of the idea of transactional (heterosexual) sex, one of the main categories used to analyze sexual and economic exchanges that are distinguished from prostitution. In some cases they question the fusion of transactional sex with sexual work as does part of the literature about these exchanges. Others problematize the differential flows of power that permeate these exchanges and also the individualist character attributed to the notion of transactional sex.

Amalia Cabezas (2009) offers an example of the first questioning. The author turns to the notion of sexual economies in her analysis of international heterosexual tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, highlighting the importance of the affections that permeate the sexual and economic transactions between local people and foreign tourists. Referring to “sexual and affectionate economies”, Cabezas includes in them what she calls “tactical sex” as well as marriages. She uses the idea of tactical sex to emphasize the emotional dimension present in sexual and economic exchanges that are contingent and temporary, and in which are present pleasure, companionship and friendship. These characteristics lead Cabezas to question the identification of these exchanges with the concept of sexual work because she affirms that these new forms of practices do not fit into the existing categories of commercial sexual work, such as prostitution, nor do they produce subjectivities that relate to the exercise of sexual work.

Groess-Green (2013) problematizes the concept of transactional sex on other grounds. Based on his ethnography of relationships among women of Mozambique and foreigners, tourists or “expats” (migrants from “wealthy countries”), he questions the concept of transactional sex, considering that it highlights the commercialization of feminine sexuality, ignoring the power of feminine eroticism and how this power is related to kinships, the dynamics of gender and the moralities present in these exchanges. According to Groess-Green, the concept of transactional sex overemphasizes short-term transactions, ignoring that these exchanges are part of broader moral economies of exchange. In the case he studied, these economies involve the redistribution of economic resources among different generations of women of kinship groups. He opts for the concept of sexual economies, considering that it allows rejecting the individualistic presumption present in the idea of transactional sex and locates the sexual and economic exchanges on broader planes (Groess-Green, 2014).

Sharing these questionings of the idea of transactional sex, I would like to call attention to another dimension of this notion that I find to be problematic: how it has contributed to exoticizing “Others”. The category of transactional sex has been nearly exclusively used to allude to sexual and economic exchanges in “poor” countries, considered “non-Western” – and I find that Brazil is frequently attributed to this location in the international literature. In a body of knowledge in which only people of some “poor” and sexualized countries are linked to these exchanges, the notion of transactional sex participates in the tracing of ethno-sexual borders (Nagel, 2000) which are part of the construction of global hierarchies between nations, and at times, also internal to countries, when the sexualization/racialization marks certain social classes and ethnicities.⁵

Groes-Green (2014 and in this volume) seeks to resolve the problems raised by the notion of transactional sex by following a particular analytical route. Considering how the migratory trajectories of young women from Mozambique towards Europe are shaped by relationships with older, white men and also by obligations to feminine networks of kinship groups, the author analyzes these exchanges by considering theories of exchange, turning to the concept of patronage. He locates this notion in the realm of a morality of exchanges that encompasses economic and social ties, but also sexual favors, caring, love and kinship obligations marked by gender. Groess-Gren considers that in the context he studied, the concept of patronage applies to the exchanges between these young women and their partners and also to exchanges with members of the kinship network, although some exchanges are guided by different moralities.

The socio-historic and anthropological analyses about political and economic organization in Brazil has worked with various categories associated to the concept of patronage: “coronelism, mandonism, clientelism” (Avelino Filho, 1994; Leal, 2012; Carvalho, 1997). In these studies, clientelism refers to relations between a patron and client that, conceived as systems of asymmetric personal exchange, relate to redistributive processes outside the state and formal economic institutions.

Clientelism, which is intimately associated to forms of operating kinship groups, has been considered as an organizational principle in the country. In a social world perceived to be marked by a mixture of “public” and “private” dimensions, clientelism is understood to affect various dimensions of social life, including patterns of matrimonial alliances and sexual and economic exchanges outside of marriage. Nevertheless, studies consider that clientelism has declined since the first decade of the twentieth century, with the expansion of the economic and political arenas (Kuznesof, 1988). This decline, connected to democratization and the expansion of public policies, would have intensified in the past decades of this century, with the progressive inclusion of various areas of the country in the national economy and with the expansion of government programs aimed at social inclusion.

Some authors consider, however, that in Brazil, given the persistence of intense class inequalities marked by race and gender, and despite the growing separation between the public and private spheres, social status and personal relations continue to be relevant in the perception of people and in the redistribution of resources (Matta, 1978). Linda Rebhun (1999) shows this importance in contexts in which the private and public dimensions of social life intertwine, in her analysis of alterations in the formations of couples in Caruaru in the early 1990s, where the language of affections is triggered to allude to moral and emotional ties, and to loyalties and obligations produced at these intersections. Rebhun shows how love and the lack of this sentiment are triggered in references to the lack of concern of local politicians for the population of the city and also to changes in the standards of courtship and marriage. She argues that the use of this language to allude to both dimensions of social life makes sense in a context like the one she studied, which is organized around an ambiguous economy, in which the dissemination of money and credit coexist with the relevance of hierarchical personal ties.

The “ambiguous economies” partially mark the experiences of many Brazilian women who I studied in circuits of sexual tourism in Northeastern Brazil and in migratory contexts in southern Europe, in which they offered sexual services, often in a situation as irregular migrants (Piscitelli, 2013). Nevertheless, the idea of clientelism is not entirely suitable for these experiences. Most of these women had access to jobs without the mediation of “patrons” and those who lived in Brazil, had access to government programs. Some of them had clear notions of rights, developed through their relations with organizations of prostitutes and migrants. The jobs, however, were considered to be poorly paid and the social programs perceived as insufficient to meet their needs and their desires. To “improve life”, gain access to luxury goods and to make viable migratory projects that often involve redistributions of resources to their families, they recreated, in their intimate relations, the “tradition” of hierarchical sexual and economic exchanges. Nevertheless, these exchanges, which involve loyalties, obligations and reciprocity, were frequently limited to this sphere of life.

In terms of studies involving Brazilian men and women, however, one aspect of Groess-Green’s analytical perspective is particularly relevant: that is to seriously consider how the economic and sexual exchanges are part of moral economies of exchange. These moral economies are clearly delineated in studies in Brazil that show how the idea of “help” operates, involving people in hetero- and homosexual relations, protagonized by men, women and transvestites (Passamani, 2015; Padovani, 2015; Teixeira, 2011; Goulart, 2011).

I am calling attention to the fact that various analyses about sexual and economic exchanges conducted in Brazil, working with experience near concepts (Geertz, 1974), as is the case of “help”, analyzed in a “sex markets” approach, avoid the analytical problems linked to the idea of transactional sex that lead various authors to work with the concept of sexual economies. At these points, the two concepts, sex markets and sexual economies, are analogous. Nevertheless, the latter notion offers greater analytical yield in another sense: when it strives to understand the sexual and economic exchanges that lead to marriage.

The analyses of these exchanges allow perceiving the main problem with the concept of sex markets. It is not entirely satisfactory, not because it relates to an idea of “market economy” or “commerce” – as I observed in the previous pages, it was not considered in this way in Brazil. The issue is that the concept of sex markets is anchored in a separation between sex markets and marriage markets, which was delineated by Bourdieu and his disciples, and which is problematized by the analysis of the sexual and economic exchanges that lead to marriage.

Nearly three decades ago, using as a reference French society of the 1970s, which appeared to be closed and marked strongly by differences between social classes, Alain Desroisières (1978) outlined distinctions between these markets, following lines analogous to Bourdieu’s formulations about matrimonial strategies. According to Desroisières, the markets for sex and marriage are not independent, but they do not coincide. He affirms that the relations situated in the sex markets are exterior to marriage: guided by libido and by interpersonal relations, they follow laws different than those that guide marriage. The latter is the legal form of a type of socially approved relationship that is distinct from the transgressive nature of the sex markets. And, in a context in which an accumulation of material and symbolic capital allows masculine access to the sexuality of a larger number of women, for men of the lower classes, with fewer economic and social resources, marriage is the only means of access to feminine sexuality.

Since the 1990s, and particularly in the realm of the transnationalization of these markets, however, the borders between them appear to be diluted. This dissolution is not banal, because it involves the eruption of transgression in the realm of the matrimonial markets. I refer to the incorporation of the libido in marriage in conjunction with the challenge to homogamic and homochromatic norms, when marriage unites people in unequal situations in terms of the structural positions of their countries of origin, social class and access to documentation, which are affected by differentiated processes of racialization, associated to the intense eroticization of people located in a position of inferiority.

In relation to this point, the notion of sexual economies offers a fertile perspective, given that far from separating the markets of sex and marriage, it allows exploring how these exchanges articulate both these markets. In this sense, Jennifer Cole’s (2009) conceptualization of sexual economies is particularly interesting. Cole uses this notion in her analysis of sexual/affectionate trajectories of women from Madagascar who marry Europeans, alluding to the intimate ties between economic exchanges, sex, affection and power, particularly at moments and contexts in which sexuality becomes a relevant resource for obtaining economic and social capital for people of different social classes, in and outside of marriage (Cole, 2009; 2014).

This understanding allows thinking of sexual economies as part of daily economies, in the sense attributed to them by Narotsky and Besnier (2014). It involves how common people subsist daily, what they do to live better, to provide help between generations and to distribute and redistribute resources. The authors use a broad notion of economy that involves all the processes through which life is sustained, going beyond the market and purely material relations, to include strategies that involve relations of care, circulations of affection and networks of reciprocity. According to the authors, the idea of daily economies allows considering what people do to live and why – and in this way a moral dimension of economy is present. It allows considering the reasons and affections that lead people to make decisions of an economic type, which are rarely only of an economic type, because they are inserted and anchored in multiple moral obligations. Thus, the idea of sexual economies as part of daily economies contributes to thinking of the relationships contemplated in the various ethnographies about economic and sexual exchanges produced in Brazil, including those that lead to marriage.

Love and sexual economies

In some recent meetings and workshops, the notion of sexual economies was problematized for being perceived as linked to a certain over emphasis on economic factors. Nicole Constable (2009) offers some important considerations about this issue. Analyzing anthropological studies that involve the commodification of intimacy in the realm of globalization, Constable observes that this commodification should not be an analytical end, but a starting point for the analyses of social relations marked by gender, cultural meanings, social inequalities and transformations in these aspects. Constable calls attention to the risks associated to the notion of commodification because, although it offers a route for illuminating the power relations inherent to a variety of intimate relations, it can over emphasize the political and economic factors, hiding the multiplicity of power relations and the potentially liberating and transformative aspects of intimate subjectivities.

According to Constable, one way to resolve this danger is to explore how the commercialization of intimate relations is understood by those who are involved in them. In this sense, she considers that love, its historic meanings, its construction, its performance and its authenticity are promising fields of research. For Constable, the most valuable aspect of future studies resides in the possibility to illuminate the articulation between old presumptions about kinship and social relations in the realm of increasingly global and mobile contexts mediated by technology. The idea is that globalization, beyond its problematic aspects, also offers opportunities to define new modalities of relations and to redefine spaces, meanings and expressions of intimacy that can transform and transgress conventional spaces and norms of gender.

In relation to this point, anthropological studies that consider how affections interlink with sexual and economic exchanges marked by inequalities in transnational spaces are instigating. This literature includes various positions. Valerio Simoni (2012) highlights some of the possibilities indicated by Constable, exploring the relational possibilities of love. In his analysis of sexual and romantic relations between Cubans and foreign visitors, Simoni observes that for the participants in these transnational encounters love can open routes for people to be together in ways that they perceive as opportunities to share social worlds, not determined by material concerns and structural inequalities. Maria Tornquist (2013) recognizes these possibilities, but affirms that it is far from evident how intimacy and romance operate in a globalized world. Reflecting on the racialized dynamics marked by gender found in “tango tourism” in Buenos Aires, Tornquist observes that these relationships can express a radical resistance to racial orders of social segregation and to dominant presumptions of power relations, when material goods and promises of a better life are exchanged for intimacy.

The latter possibility is emphasized by Brennan (2007) in her analysis of the relations between extremely poor women in the Dominican Republic and foreign tourists. Brennan relates love to strategic “performances” through which women obtain the maximum resources possible from their boyfriends/lovers, in processes that do not challenge the existing gender codes. In a more productive line in analytical terms, Sealing Cheng (2010) shows how the two possibilities analyzed by Tornquist can be present in a single context, but in different moments of the relationships. Cheng rejects the idea that “performativities of love” do not have consequences for the emotional subjectivities of the people involved in these relationships.

Analyzing the constructions of love between Philippine sexual workers and U.S. soldiers in clubs in South Korea, Cheng retains the idea of performance of intimacy, but shows how in the “game of love”, it can be exceeded at any moment. According to the author, love always potentially goes beyond its performativity and has subjective consequences that cannot be foreseen by the “players”, and can even be converted into “true love”. Considering the junctions between love and political economy, kinship, gender and sexuality in a transnational space and considering the interplay of forces, inequalities and tensions between family obligations and individual desires, Cheng explores how romantic love offers a language for the construction of the self. In the name of “love”, the women whom she studied creatively confront constrictions and negotiate different scales of trasnational disciplinary regimes – of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, state/nation and global capital. In this context, love appears as an integral aspect in the negotiations of the power relations in a transnational place and also in the process of production of the transnational individual. Cheng refers to love as a “weapon of the poor”: the people she interviews use symbols and rhetoric of love as a moral mark for negotiating their subordination and pursuing their projects. In this sense, according to the author, love operates as a form of agency.

This group of readings offers paths for considering the place occupied by love in sexual economies. Nevertheless, the articulations between these economies and affections and even the limits of the concept of sexual economies are open to questionings that can only be responded to with future studies. What resources can ideas such as “love as a weapon of the poor” offer for considering relationships involving men and women of social classes, positionings and localizations that are distant from the idea of “poverty”? And what are the frontiers of sexual economies?

The concept of sexual economies, like all concepts, has been formulated and re-elaborated in specific academic contexts. In a significant portion of socio-anthropological studies, this notion focuses on the analysis of sexual and economic exchanges involving “Others”, usually poor people from the “Global South”. Perhaps the limits of this notion can be delineated based on studies that, using more diversified case studies, consider sexual and economic exchanges that involve members of different social classes and particularly white men and women of these classes of the “Global North”.

Transnational regimes for combatting human trafficking: “national” and “local” actions

Considering the articulations between sexual economies and human trafficking, I raise the second central question of this text: how are sexual and economic exchanges that are part of these economies, particularly sexual labor, affected by the forms of governmentality articulated through the regimes for combatting human trafficking? The texts by Marcia Sprandel, Kamala Kempadoo and Amalia Cabezas published in this issue of Cadernos Pagu show these effects, in various manners, pointing to conceptual and legal questions that broaden the debate. The contributions of these articles acquire meaning, placing them in a dialog with the growing body of critical readings about these regimes.

Using as a reference the dissemination of regimes for fighting human trafficking in various parts of the world, these readings raise some important issues. The first of them is that the expansion of these regimes, anchored in a language of human rights protection, has stimulated actions that help repress migration and fight prostitution, even in countries in which it is not illegal. Meanwhile, the expansion of these regimes has provided little protection to people considered victims of this crime.

Over the years, the negative aspects of the fight against human trafficking have frequently been considered to be “collateral damage”, a term that refers to the adverse impacts on individual rights and liberties of measures taken in the name of this fight. The collateral damages have been perceived as the result of not placing the victims at the center of the responses to fighting human trafficking (Gallagher, 2015). Perhaps the most significant aspect of the recent criticisms is to consider that a human rights focus has been ineffective for neutralizing the problematic aspects present in the Palermo Protocol that cause these problems (Wijers, 2015). The reason is that the Palermo Protocol contains an apparent tension between fighting crime and irregular migration and protection for victims. Nevertheless, this tension is only apparent, because this legal disposition is eminently repressive, guided by interests of securitization (Castilho, 2015).

A second point raised in these readings is the fragility of a significant portion of the studies about human trafficking (Juhu, 2012), which combine data based on different definitions of this crime and replicate statistics about the number of cases of human trafficking, with no empiric basis, with the political proposal of calling attention to the problematic (Blanchette; Silva, 2012). A third point refers to the distance between the formulators of policies for fighting human trafficking and the beneficiaries of these policies, which is often the result of a limited willingness to hear the people at whom they are destined (Juhu, 2012; Piscitelli, 2013).

Finally, the fourth point relates to the importance of considering the influence of the Palermo Protocol on the production of regional and local measures for fighting human trafficking. These measures, including national laws, are considered to be the locus with the greatest potential for generating creative or repressive measures in the field of this effort, for which reason some authors believe that it is urgent to pay attention to the “domestic” national/local contexts (Bhabba, 2015). At this level it would be possible to perceive how the regimes for fighting human trafficking are disseminated through the “expansionist creep” of the definitions of this crime (Gallagher, 2015). This term is used to refer to the movements through which the conceptualizations of human trafficking expand beyond the intentions of the drafters of the Palermo Protocol, even its broadest objectives, and come to include other problematics, such as adoptions outside of certain ethical parameters, mendicancy, forced involvement in criminal activities, the use of people in armed conflicts, kidnappings for purposes of extortion or political terrorism.

Final considerations

In concluding this text, I offer two observations about the issues it has contemplated and about the works it has commented on. The body of socio-anthropological studies about sex markets and sexual economies has expanded notably. A growing analytical complexity is perceptible in these studies, which raises new questions associated to the challenges presented by the empiric material about contexts in different parts of the world. The critical studies of the regimes for fighting human trafficking have had an analogous development, triggered at times by people who conduct studies focused on one or another problematics and on the articulation between them. These studies reveal new questionings, formulated in attempts to articulate between the various planes and scales on which these regimes operate, and to offer elements for thinking about integration of the regimes for fighting this crime among countries with different migratory policies, cross border flows, legal models related to prostitution and conceptions of forced labor, in which positions about moralities, national security and humanitarianisms often do not coincide.

The growing theoretical and methodological developments in these fields of study, however, are not necessarily accompanied by a greater effectiveness in the intervention in the political arena. Sharing a commitment to the rights of the people with whom we work and a recognition of their opportunities for agency in the different activities in which they are engaged in search of a better future, the question that is still raised for those of us who study these problematics is what paths to take to counter the negative effects of these regimes.

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• 1
  Held at Unicamp, at the Encontro Repensando Gênero e Feminismos - Pagu 20 anos, [Rethinking Gender and Femnisms Encounter – Pagu 20 years] coordinated by José Miguel Olivar, Susanne Hoffman and myself, with the participation of Aline Tavares; Amalia Cabezas; Ana Paula da Silva; Paula Luna; Anna Paula Araujo; Antonia Pedroso de Lima; Bruna Bumachar; Carol Delgado Carolina Branco; Cecilia Varela; Christian Groes-Green; Claudia Fonseca; Fernanda Leão; Flavia Teixeira; Iara Beleli; Kamala Kempadoo; Larissa Pelucio; Laura Lowenkron; Laura Murray; Natalia Corazza; Paula Togni; Santiago Morcillo and Thaddeus Blanchette.
• 2
  Meeting coordinated by Laura Lowenkron and myself, at the conclusion of the project of the same name, supported by CNPq, completed in 2015 (Piscitelli and Lowenkron, 2015). Researchers partcipating in the project included Adriana Piscitelli (2015); Laura Lowenkron (2015); Jose Miguel Olivar (2015); Susanne Hoffman (2015); Aline Tavares (2015); Paula Luna (2015) and the speakers: Iara Beleli, Adriana Vianna; Ana Paula Silva; Bela Bianco; Ela Wiecko de Castilho; Fernando Rabossi; Flávia Teixeira; Gabriel Feltran; Geraldo Andrello; Giralda Seyferth; Jania Aquino; Letícia Tedesco; Lindomar Albuquerque; Maia Sprandel; Parry Scott; Thaddeus Banchette. Some of these issues were also discussed in the course “Sexual Economies: Affections, normatizations, regulations”, given by Susanne Hoffman and myself in 2015 in the program at Unicamp, attended by students of this university and USP, to whom I am grateful for the discussions.
• 3
  Organized by Flávia Teixeira, Cecilia Varela and Ela Wiecko de Castilho.
• 4
  Additional protocol to the United Nations convention to combat transnational organized crime related to prevention, repression and punishment of human trafficking, in particular women and children, drafted in 2000.
• 5
  Concerning the Brazilian literature that contemplates sexual and economic exchanges, the risk of reiterating these borders on a national scale, and thus sexualizing/rationalizing the lower classes has been neutralized in recent analyses about hetero and homosexual exchanges. These studies show how these practices are disseminated in various social classes, in different parts of Brazil (Araujo, 2015; Piscitelli, 2007; Passamani, 2015).
• 6
  I refer to capillarization in the sense of circulation through decentralized flows of power that disseminate in the social fabric.
• 7
  For more information about this project see note 4 of this article.
• 8
  These foci looked at the dynamics of the regimes for fighting human trafficking in the Jardim Itatinga neighborhood, the location of a zone of prostitution in Campinas, São Paulo State (Tavares, 2015); Fortaleza, one of the host cities of the World Cup (Luna Sales, 2015); Tabatinga, a city on the border with Colombia and Peru, which is the target of concerns about circulation at the borders, in the Amazon (Olivar, 2015); Altamira, a city in Pará State, close to the construction of the mega-hydroelectric dam Belo Monte (Piscitelli, 2015); São Gabriel da Cachoeira, a city with a predominantly indigenous population (Olivar, 2015b) and with pedagogical activities that are part of this regime (Hoffman, 2015).
• 9
  Concerning this point it is interesting to make a comparison with the Brazilian case analyzed by Lowenkron (2015), when agents linked to security forces admitted that technically, certain women can be “victims” of human trafficking, according to the characterization of the Palermo Protocol. Nevertheless, at the same time, when this involves certain women, sexualized, this completely distances them from the idea of victims.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  2016

History

• Received
  07 June 2016
• Accepted
  21 July 2016