In the past decade the growing global concern with human trafficking — particularly of women and children into prostitution — has been matched by an outpouring of policy and research reports about the phenomenon. Most generally, the research community has been divided between those who agree that trafficking is a problem that needs to be taken seriously and those who argue that trafficking is a moral panic largely constituted through the biases of governments and the anti-prostitution lobby. These debates are politically contentious, hinging primarily on the former's understanding of prostitution as exploitation, and the latter's claim that prostitution should be considered a form of labour.
Sverre Molland's book is an example of an increasingly sophisticated body of research that aims to move beyond this predictable and increasingly counterproductive divide. In a promising move, he compares the sex trade and the work of anti-trafficking organisations in the borderlands between Laos and Thailand. In order to grasp the complexities of the contemporary interest in trafficking as an ethical problem, it is critical, Molland argues, to focus not only on the sex trade, but also on the groups that lead the struggle against trafficking. The backdrop of the book is the author's initial experience of having worked as an adviser for an anti-trafficking program in Laos for several years and his subsequent doctoral research in anthropology.
Molland has an excellent grasp of the academic literature and policy concerning human trafficking and he spends the first part of the book carefully considering the discourse and multiple meanings and consequences of the term. The second and main ethnographic part of the book deals explicitly with the sex trade in Laos and Thailand. After a discussion of patron–client relations and kinship obligations in Southeast Asia, the stage is set for a move beyond the conceptualisation of agency that divides ‘victims’ from ‘perpetrators’, and which characterises trafficking discourse. We are introduced to a number of women working in bars and brothels on both sides of the border. Molland shows — in contrast to the general understanding within the anti-trafficking community — that most traffickers are not external perpetrators, but often prostitutes who are part of the same social networks as the women they recruit. A key paradox thus emerges: ‘the trafficker embodies the very exploitative situation she leads others into’ (p. 205). Paying close attention to the stories of women through ethnographic studies of bars and brothels, Molland not only illustrates how the distinction between trafficking and voluntary migration is nearly impossible to map onto the realities that he faces on the ground, but also more interestingly, that deception is rarely calculated in long-term market terms but are rather circumstantial or opportunistic. In line with the demands of success associated with familial obligations, it is the end-result of migration that is critical in ethical terms for the migrant rather than the question of whether entry into prostitution was voluntary or deceptive.
The third and final part of the book turns to anti-trafficking groups in the Mekong. Molland offers a brief history of anti-trafficking in the region and the evolving relationship with the Lao state. Using a series of case studies from his fieldwork on the sex trade, he approaches anti-traffickers hoping to discuss the process of victim identification. Molland tries to make sense of the radical disjuncture between the process of victim identification in anti-trafficking training manuals and the complex forms of recruitment that he encountered in his research on the sex trade. In keeping with the development sector's focus on cause–effect relationships and coherent narratives, Molland argues that anti-traffickers are less concerned in engaging with complex realities than with finding cases that fit the realities they are constructing.
Molland's main argument in comparing traffickers and anti-traffickers is that both are acting in terms of what Sartre called ‘bad faith’; that is they deny their own agency and complicity in their actions. While recruitment within the sex trade depends on the displacement of concerns with deception by the recruiters themselves, anti-trafficking depends on avoiding complex realities and focusing on simplistic program models. One effect of this is that the worlds of trafficking and anti-trafficking in an important sense have little to do with one another.
Molland's book is an excellent contribution to the critical literature on human trafficking. His approach and attempt to find a new angle from which to conceptualise trafficking is salutary. I would have liked to learn more about the anti-traffickers, however. Unlike those engaged in the sex trade we learn very little about the anti-traffickers — their careers, hopes, and social networks — despite the fact that the author had been a part of this world. Molland takes great care in developing a proper tone in his book. Although he is clearly critical of anti-trafficking programs and policy, he remains respectful of the work that his former colleagues are engaged in, while carefully attempting to understand the organisation of the sex trade. This tone allows Molland to move beyond the contentious divide that characterises ongoing debates concerning trafficking. From this perspective, this book will be of interest to a broad readership that should include not only academics and students in fields such as anthropology, gender studies, development studies, and Asian studies, but also among activists and policymakers who are concerned with reflecting upon the world in which they act.
