Many people are selling sex because of relative

deprivation rather than absolute poverty. An

undocumented number of young women from Asia’s
middle classes are now selling sex – often on a part time
basis - to supplement salaries or to provide extra money
while they are in education. Anecdotal evidence
suggests that these part time sex workers are attracting
business away from traditional sex work venues and full
time workers.

Contentious debates over sex work in the region have done a great injustice to many
sex workers and those who are held in sexual slavery because it creates an artificial
dualism of passive victim versus the sex worker who exercises agency. Most sex
workers in the lower ranks of the industry are victims of many kinds of social and
economic injustice and it is inaccurate and patronising to exaggerate their degree of
agency and their power to negotiate with clients and the management of the industry.
Some sex workers profit well from their work but the sex trade, as a whole is
exploitative of the women and men who work within it.

Trafficking, migration and the links with crime

The conflation of trafficking and migration and the muddling of definitions have
obscured the fact that many sex workers are increasingly mobile and will migrate in
search of work. There are increasingly complex regional linkages throughout Asia
that are expressed in terms of economics, trade, population movements and sexual
networks. This phenomenon is apparent, for example, in the Mekong Delta, the
‘Golden Triangle' island, Southeast Asia, and the Indo-Nepal border.

The financial rewards of elite and middle-income prostitution have also encouraged
sex works from outside the region to migrate to Asia. It is possible, for example to
find highly visible sex workers from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
working in clubs, bars and hotels throughout both poor and affluent Asia.

In most Asian countries prostitution is illegal. The sex industry is regulated by legal
codes, social custom and organised crime. These factors determine the type and form
of sex work. They also penalise the sex worker in different forms: either by punishing
workers with imprisonment or fines, stigmatising and shaming them, or economically
exploiting them. Organised crime reaps enormous profits from the sex industry. In
more developed Asia the forces of poverty bring many girls and young women into
trafficking networks and agents. Within cities, organized crime is heavily involved in
the sex trade. And throughout Asia police forces are often involved in the sex market.

Sex Work in Asia 7