The issue from Trafficking
Trafficking showed up into the political schedule after pressure out-of feminists and you may new federal ladies’ rules service. To begin with, female was in fact trafficked out of The southern area of China (somewhat Thailand and Philippines), Latin America (Columbia while the Dominican Republic and Africa (Ghana); pursuing the fall of one’s Berlin Wall surface, trade routes moved on to Central and you will Eastern Europe. Political requires have been defining the brand new offence way more generally so you’re able to support prosecution and improving the punishment out-of 5 to 6 years, to make sure that culprits could well be stored from inside the remand custody. This new posts on penal password for the human trafficking was modified inside 1993, that have a very appropriate definition of the new offense and higher penalties for traffickers (Outshoorn 2004a: 195). The fresh blogs was in fact presented within the good gender-natural ways, and trafficking stayed defined as pushing a person into 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 great post to read 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 Gurus
Then implementation of the latest act resulted in the development of no less than four kinds of prostitutes. First and foremost, there is the ethnically vague Dutch sex worker just who voluntarily chooses to work within the prostitution in fact it is this new holder out-of municipal and you may social legal rights. Furthermore, you’ll find the latest prostitutes from other European union places that will move easily in and out of Netherlands and are employed in the latest sex community. This category split into a few categories following the accession towards European union of your own Baltic Claims, Poland, Hungary, the fresh new Czech Republic and you will Slovakia when you look at the 2004, and work out a third classification who can simply lawfully work as prostitutes once they was in fact independent sex experts rather than employees. Within the 2007, sex professionals throughout the new Eu professionals was in fact recognized on the an enthusiastic equivalent footing towards older Eu representative professionals, nevertheless 3rd classification are today filled up with sex workers out-of Bulgaria and you will Romania whenever each other nations inserted the fresh Eu because same seasons. Like their predecessors, these types of women are allowed to become separate sex gurus, however, up until now not as teams.