The situation away from Trafficking
Trafficking showed up into the political agenda once pressure of feminists and you will brand new national women’s plan company. In the first place, feminine was trafficked out-of Southeast Asia (notably Thailand in addition to Philippines), Latin America (Columbia additionally the Dominican Republic and you will Africa (Ghana); pursuing the slip of your Berlin Wall surface, change paths managed to move on in order to Main and you can Eastern European countries. Governmental need was in fact identifying the offence more broadly so you can support prosecution and you will raising the punishment away from 5 to 6 age, to make sure that culprits is stored in remand infant custody. The latest posts on penal code for the people trafficking had been modified into the 1993, that have a far more real definition of the brand new offense and better charges to possess traffickers (Outshoorn 2004a: 195). The latest articles were presented in the a good gender-neutral method, and you may trafficking stayed identified as forcing 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 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.
Categories of Sex Professionals
Subsequent utilization of the brand new act led to the development away from no lower than five kinds of prostitutes. To begin with, you have the ethnically vague Dutch sex employee which voluntarily decides working inside prostitution that’s new bearer off municipal and you will social legal rights. Next, you’ll find the latest prostitutes off their Eu nations who can move easily inside and outside of one’s Netherlands and work with the sex community. These kinds split up into a few kinds following the accession into European union of one’s Baltic States, Poland, Hungary, the fresh new Czech Republic and Slovakia for the 2004, while making a third classification just who can only just lawfully work as prostitutes whenever they have been separate sex workers and not professionals. From inside the 2007, sex gurus escort Essen throughout the the new Eu users was acknowledged for the an enthusiastic equal footing towards older Eu user specialists, but the 3rd group are now filled up with sex experts away from Bulgaria and you can Romania when each other regions entered the new European union in that exact same year. Just like their predecessors, these types of women are permitted to become independent sex gurus, however, so far less group.