Desde y frente a “la prostituta”: Resistance of Sex Workers at the Mexican Southern Border

• In Event: Sex(ualized) Work

Abstract

Human trafficking, especially of women and children, is object of strong campaigns against human rights violations. By the United Nations (UN), governments, medias, NGO and academics, human trafficking is often portrayed as 21st Century’s slave trade: “the modern slavery”. However, many feminist scholars and activists have argued in favour of a more nuanced understanding of this complex phenomenon. They have pointed out the multiple negative effects of this discourse, especially for the women and men involved in the global sex trade. They also noted how discourses on trafficking ignore the agency of subjects and reduce the explanation for violence towards women to a single monolithic argument. Furthermore it reinforces conservative moral agendas on ‘prostitution’, and encourages anti-immigration policies.

This paper outline some reflections on how, in the context of the Southern border of Mexico, sex workers face these negative effects. I will explain the everyday practices of resistance that sex workers develop against the multiple structures of power that oppress them. I understand structure and agency not as dichotomous variables but rather as multifaceted and interrelated phenomena. My argument states that through these actions sex workers use and manipulate, at least momentarily, the systems of power to obtain some benefits. I have classified these actions in two kind of practices: 1) the use of "the prostitute”, which means the manipulations of this subjectivity and the benefits derived from it; and 2) the use of other systems that allows sex workers to face the negative effects of being identified as "prostitutes".

Author

• Laura Aguirre Hernández, Freie Universität Berlin