The difficulty of Trafficking
Trafficking showed up into the governmental plan once pressure regarding feminists and you can the new federal ladies’ policy company. To begin with, women was basically trafficked out of The southern part of China (rather Thailand and Philippines), Latin The usa (Columbia and Dominican Republic and you can Africa (Ghana); adopting the fall of your own Berlin Wall, trading routes shifted so you’re able to Main and you can East Europe. Political demands have been determining new offence significantly more generally to assists prosecution and you may increasing the punishment of five to six years, with the intention that offenders will be kept when you look at the remand infant custody. The blogs in the penal code on the person trafficking was changed during the 1993, that have an even more particular definition of new offense and better punishment to have traffickers (Outshoorn 2004a: 195). The newest content was in fact presented inside an effective gender-natural means, and trafficking stayed identified as forcing one to the 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.
Types of Sex Specialists
Then utilization of the fresh new act resulted in the development off no below five types of prostitutes. First, you have the ethnically undefined Dutch sex employee which voluntarily decides to be hired during the prostitution which is the newest bearer of civil and societal legal rights. Subsequently, you will find the fresh prostitutes from other European union nations who will circulate freely in and out of Netherlands and you may work with the fresh new sex business. These kinds split into a couple groups following accession into European union of one’s Baltic Claims, Poland, Hungary, the newest Czech Republic and Slovakia inside 2004, to make a third group who could only legally act as prostitutes if they have been separate sex professionals and not team. Within the 2007, sex workers from the this new European union professionals was basically approved to best site your an enthusiastic equal footing towards earlier Eu member professionals, nevertheless 3rd class are today filled up with sex specialists from Bulgaria and you will Romania when one another places joined brand new European union where same 12 months. Just like their predecessors, such women can be allowed to work as independent sex gurus, but up until now not as employees.
