The issue of Trafficking
Trafficking showed up for the governmental plan after stress off feminists and you will new national women’s coverage institution. In the first place, feminine had been trafficked from The southern area of Asia (significantly Thailand while the Philippines), Latin America (Columbia together with Dominican Republic and you can Africa (Ghana); following the fall of your own Berlin Wall surface, exchange paths moved on so you can Central and you can East Europe. Political requires was basically identifying the fresh new offense much more broadly in order to facilitate prosecution and you will improving the penalty away from five to six decades, so that offenders would-be stored within the remand infant custody. The latest posts about penal code on the individual trafficking was in fact revised inside 1993, with a very accurate concept of the brand new offence and better punishment having traffickers (Outshoorn 2004a: 195). New blogs have been presented in a beneficial gender-natural method, and you can trafficking remained identified as forcing a man on prostitution.
In the parliamentary debates on trafficking around that period, foreign women were portrayed as victims of unscrupulous traffickers tricked into prostitution. This framing was tied into a discourse about the divide between the rich and poor countries: female prostitutes from the ‘Third World’ were driven by poverty. Gradually, a more insidious edge crept into this discourse when Christian Democrats in parliament linked trafficking to illegal migration, opening a space for ‘false’ victims, who used the loopholes in the law to work illegally as a prostitute in the Netherlands (HTK, 1991–1992, TK 81, pp. 4994, 4995, e time they also started to argue that all women from non-EU countries working in the sex industry were victims of forced prostitution. Therefore in their view, the best remedy to stop trafficking was to prevent non-EU women from working in the Dutch sex industry in the first place. This reasoning eradicated the figure of a woman migrant deciding to work as a sex worker in the West and who might make use of intermediaries to enter the country-with her consent. But then she was ‘illegal’ and ought to be deported.
Successive cabinets continued to refuse work permits on similar grounds, also arguing there was no national interest at stake which normally justifies extending work permits to non-EU persons. They were backed by a recurring majority in parliament; the parliamentary records show many references to the fear of foreign prostitutes entering the country which would subvert immigration policies. The fear resurfaced in the memorandum to the bill to lift the brothel ban, as one of the aims of the bill was to halt ‘the stream of foreign prostitutes’ (HTK 1996–97, 25437 (Opheffing Algemeen Bordeelverbod), no. 3 (Memorie van Toelichting), 1 July 1997, p. 13). The refusal to grant work permits was also generally justified by the aim of stopping the trafficking of women; permits would encourage traffickers to transport women into the country.
Kinds of Sex Experts
Then utilization of the work triggered the development of zero lower than four kinds of prostitutes. First and foremost, there is the ethnically undefined Dutch double escort Salzburg sex employee who willingly decides to be hired during the prostitution which can be the new bearer out-of municipal and you will public legal rights. Secondly, you will find the fresh prostitutes off their European union places that will flow freely in-and-out of one’s Netherlands and you can are employed in brand new sex globe. These kinds split into a few groups adopting the accession to your Eu of Baltic Claims, Poland, Hungary, the brand new Czech Republic and you may Slovakia when you look at the 2004, while making a third group exactly who are only able to legitimately act as prostitutes once they was in fact independent sex workers rather than professionals. For the 2007, sex professionals about the brand new Eu participants were recognized into an enthusiastic equivalent footing towards the elderly European union member specialists, nevertheless the third classification are today filled up with sex professionals out-of Bulgaria and you can Romania when each other places joined the latest European union in this exact same 12 months. Like their predecessors, this type of ladies are permitted to behave as independent sex pros, but to date a lot less employees.
