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Email: jlorder@jhupress.jhu.edu. Manuscripts and other editorial correspondence should be addressed to: Editor, Journal of Women’s History, Department of History, University of Oklahoma, 455 West Lindsey Street, DAHT 403A, Norman, OK 73019-2004. Visit us on the web at: http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/ Vol. 33 No. 4 Winter 2021 ©2021 Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 33 No. 4 Editorial Staff Sandie Holguín University of Oklahoma Jennifer J. Davis University of Oklahoma Book Review Editor Jennifer Holland University of Oklahoma Managing Editors Gaby Báez Leah HannahCarginZinn University of Oklahoma Tanya Szafranski, Book Review Assistant University of Oklahoma Founder Christie Farnham Founding Editors Christie Farnham and Joan Hoff Editors Emeritae Christie Farnham Joan Hoff Leila J. Rupp Donna J. Guy Jean ElisaLeighAntoinetteAllmanBurtonAnnWheelerCamiscioli Jean H. Quataert Board of Trustees Erin Chapman President Elyssa Faison Secretary Mary Frederickson Treasurer

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Contents 5 Contents Editorial NotE: SpEcial iSSuE: MigratioN, SEx, aNd iNtiMatE labor Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite Introduction to the Issue Trafficking, A Useless Category of Historical Analysis / 7 Eva Payne Deportation as Rescue: White Slaves, Women Reformers, and the US Bureau of Immigration / 40 Julia T. Martínez The League of Nations, Prostitution, and the Deportation of Chinese Women from Interwar Manila / 67 Sandy F. Chang Intimate Itinerancy: Sex, Work, and Chinese Women in Colonial Malaya’s Brothel Economy, 1870s–1930s / 92 Caroline Séquin Marie Piquemal, the “Colonial Madam”: Brothel Prostitution, Migration, and the Making of Whiteness in Interwar Dakar / 118 Pamela J. Fuentes “White Slavery” and Cabarets: Mexican Artists in Panama in the 1940s/ 142 Anna Dobrowolska “Everyone Dreams About Leaving”: Debates on Human Trafficking in State-Socialist Poland/ 168 Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García (In)Decent Work: Sex and the ILO/ 194 Book Reviews Nicole Bourbonnais Contraception and Reproduction in Global Conversation / 222 Trent MacNamara. Birth Control and American Modernity: A History of Popular Ideas; Cassia Roth. A Miscarriage of Justice: Women’s Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil; Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci. Contraceptive Diplomacy: Reproductive Politics and Imperial Ambitions in the United States and Japan; Brianna Theobald. Repro duction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century. Kimberly D. McKee Mixed-Race Adoptees and Transnational Adoption / 231 Kori A. Graves. A War Born Family: African American Adoption in the Wake of the Korean War; Allison Varzally. Children of Reunion: Vietnamese Adoptions and the Politics of Family Migrations; Susie Woo. Framed by War: Korean Children and Women at the Crossroads of US Empire.

Carol Sheriff Warring Women / 238 Thavolia Glymph. The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation; Shelby Harriel. Behind the Rifle: Women Soldiers in Civil War Mississippi; Jessica Ziparo, This Grand Experiment: When Women Entered the Federal Workforce in Civil War-Era Washington, D.C. Contributors / 245 Acknowledgement of Reviewers /248 Notice to Contributors / 250 The Journal of Women’s History disclaims any responsibility or liability for statements of fact or opinion expressed by contributors. Cover Art: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Art & Architecture Collection, The New York Public Library. “Arabesques: étoffe conservée au musée ‘Utrecht (XIVe. siècle)” New York Public Library Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/ items/510d47d9-673a-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Trafficking, like the term “white slavery” that preceded it and “modern slavery” that has overtaken it in some political discourse, is a historically contingent concept; it is a moving signifier that hides as much as it reveals.1

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite,

hen we first sat down to propose this Special Issue, the question of what to call it was foremost in our minds. Eventually, we settled on “Migration, Sex, and Intimate Labor,” which we felt captured the nexus of phenomena we wanted authors to explore while avoiding the troubling term “trafficking” which we—initially jokingly—had taken to referring to as a “useless category of historical analysis” (with apologies to Joan Scott).

Special Issue Guest Editors

Introduction to the Issue: Trafficking, a Useless Category of Historical Analysis?

Editorial Note Special Issue: Migration, Sex, and Intimate Labor

At times, “trafficking” signified the illegal movement of people organized by third parties, but the term was also used more vaguely before modern border control and immigration law defined such crimes. Some people who used the term deployed it to directly refer to coercion, others used it as a term that simply described both the consensual and non-consensual movement of women labeled “prostitutes” (or to define such movement as inherently non-consensual). “Trafficking” in international law was a term applied to the illicit movement of people, but was also (especially by the early twentieth century) used to describe the illegal movement of arms, drugs, and art. The malleability of the term in the past can also be found in the present. While organizations and states continue to use “trafficking” as a normative category of law and experience, its precise definition and parameters remain blurry and imprecise. It is this very imprecision that allows states and others to deploy the specter of “trafficking” to enact laws and policies against migration and sex work that focus on criminalization (of migration, of sex work) and rarely address the actual exploitation or harm at hand. This strategic use of the concept has a long history, which forms one of the key themes of this historiographical review. In this extended introduction to the Special Issue, we want to reflect upon the vibrant and growing field of scholarship on the history of traffick ing that, in one way or another, grapples with these terms while attempting to understand the structures, cultures, laws, and lived experiences that underlay them in different times and places. We begin by examining this Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 33 No. 4, 7–39.

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These campaigns against state regulation, as early historians of prosti tution noted, quickly made the connection between state-regulated systems

Prostitution, “White Slavery,” and the Racialized Other Despite the contemporary academic and political drive to reimagine trafficking beyond the sex trade and (for certain policy makers) to rebrand this complex nexus of migration, work, and exploitation “modern slavery,” it remains the case that the majority of historical scholarship on trafficking has emerged out of histories of sexual labor and prostitution.

scholarship’s roots in work on women’s prostitution in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and move on to explore particular flashpoints within this historiography: the places where trafficking, used in any normative sense, grows increasingly difficult to pin down and explain. Caught up within racialized concepts of migration, belonging, and citizenship; complex ideas about gender, sex, and labor; and troubling analogies of enslavement, trafficking’s history as a term, one could argue, has little useful explanatory power, other than the way it reveals the socio-political contexts in which it was deployed. The articles in this special issue cover the period roughly between 1880 and 1980, taking us from the late nineteenth century, when concepts of trafficking and exploited prostitution were first being articulated and codified, to the late twentieth century and the resurgence of “traffick ing” as a subject of concern during a period of geopolitical upheaval and increased migration. This special issue showcases some of the newest work on migration, sex, and intimate labor, and in their own way, all the articles complicate the terms we use to articulate these phenomena not only in the past, but also in the present.

Much of the earliest serious historical scholarship from the 1980s and early 1990s examined the history of prostitution’s regulation by nineteenthand early twentieth-century states. This regulation took various forms, but usually involved registering suspected prostitutes and licensing premises and stipulating the places they could operate, and always involved the medical surveillance—through compulsory examination and treatment, and often through incarceration—of women who sold sex. These early histori ans of prostitution examined the structure of these regulated systems and the experiences of women subjected to them, but most of all they explored the late-nineteenth century campaigns that called for their abolition. The state, these campaigners claimed, was infringing on the rights of women and simultaneously “licensing vice.” As historians have ably shown, these campaigns intertwined with the wider women’s movement, and with internationalism, radical liberalism, socialism, and anti-statism, as well as with older, more conservative movements for “moral reform.”

In the late nineteenth century, a series of shocking exposés in Britain, including the famous newspaper scandal called “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon,” which appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette in1885, high lighted how state regulation and the low age of consent encouraged the widespread sexual exploitation of very young girls in prostitution. In this period, anti-regulationist campaigners turned more explicitly to questions of exploited and migrant prostitution, which had begun to be labeled “white slavery,” especially by a growing popular press. “White slavery” or “the traffic in women and children,” as it was sometimes contemporaneously called, had by the early twentieth century taken on the characteristics of a widespread, international moral panic: filling the pages of newspapers, the plots of dime novels, and the reels of early films. By the early 2000s, historians had grown very interested in this moral panic and its underlying realities, and a rich scholarship on the subject began to develop.

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 9 and the exploitation of women within prostitution through force, coercion, and fraud, which often involved the migration of women within and across state borders. The work of Donna J. Guy and Edward Bristow examined the interplay between state regulation in the Americas, and the growing concern about the “traffic” in poor Jewish women from Europe to work in legalized brothels in Buenos Aires.

3 As scholarship on the state control of prostitution began to grow, historians such as Philippa Levine and Stephen Legg became interested in regulation within empires.4 Other historians, such as Anne Summers, explored the transnational nature of mid-to-late nineteenth-century anti-regulationist campaigns.

From their very inception, and as historians of the discursive use of “white slavery” and “trafficking” demonstrate, these terms were malleable, complex, and entangled with racialized and moralized conceptualizations of gender, work, citizenship, and sexuality. In some cases, “white slavery” was used as a synonym for prostitution itself; in other cases, it was used to refer specifically to exploitation; in still others, it referred to migrant prostitution and “prostitutes” who crossed borders. And while some, mostly feminist, anti-trafficking campaigners demanded an end to the state regulation that they believed fueled “the infamous traffic,” others, mostly conservative moral reformers, felt that an alliance with pro-regulationists was necessary to stop the greater crime of trafficking.7

Historians like Rachel Schrieber, Brian Donovan, and Rachael Attwood have tried to make sense of trafficking as a political discourse, a media phenomenon, and a cultural script, and they have uncovered the racialized, sexualized, and gendered meanings of “trafficking” and “white slavery” in the early twentieth century. This theme in the scholarship is one of the richest and most well-developed areas of trafficking history.8

At other times, as Rachel Attwood’s work shows, it was the exploita tion of white British women within the brothels of the Continent that was dubbed “white slavery,” signaling the way in which the British imagina tion continued to racialize its nearest European neighbors, especially the French.

The term “white slavery” had always been deeply racialized, used especially in the early modern period and the eighteenth century to de scribe the kidnap and enslavement (imagined or real) of white people in North Africa and the Americas.

The racializing power of the term “white slavery” is further compli cated because, at the time of its inception in the early twentieth century as a

Journal of Women ’s History10 Winter

Peck diligently and carefully demonstrates the way the term began to shift, to become sexual ized, feminized, and synonymous with the exploitation of white women in prostitution—or with prostitution itself—by the early twentieth century, a process that happened in transnational conversation especially between the United States and Britain.9 Jessica R. Pliley, meanwhile, takes this further and examines how these discourses functioned to make invisible the sexual exploitation of Black women in the US.10

Gunther Peck’s work examines the terms’ particular salience in the nineteenth-century United States, where people used it initially to denote the “wage slavery” of white American workers in the shadow of the recent end of chattel slavery (and to tacitly erase the ongoing exploitation of free Black American workers).

11 The rich scholarship on “white slavery” and trafficking in these contexts demonstrates how these discourses manifested anxieties over maintaining the optics of white supremacy (the idea of white superiority upon which rested the moral authority of empire), and over racial mixing. As Philip Howell has shown, fears about “white slavery” were operating alongside surviv ing and strictly racially segregated forms of state and colonial regulation.

At still other times, the term could be used in Britain to describe the exploited prostitution of non-white women, despite the obvious cogni tive dissonance this caused. In France, the traite des blanches [trade in white women] was similarly racialized through the specter of white French women selling sex in notorious sites of empire but equally applied to the problem at home where white men constituted the vast majority of the clientele. It was a similar story in Argentina, where la trata de blancas [trade in white women] usually referred to the organized, and exploited, prostitution of an ethnically diverse group of women by a similarly diverse group of men, especially among Jewish migrants.

In Britain, which had discursively distanced itself from the history and practice of slavery by the early twentieth century, the term continued to hark back to real and imagined forms of white kidnap and exploitation within the empire, and particularly the sexualized dangers white women were thought to encounter when they traveled to these imperial spaces.

16 Officials’ concern with “white slavery” also rendered other forms of trafficking and the victimization of women of color nearly invisible in con temporary discourse and policy. Historians are beginning to uncover these elisions and bring global majority voices into the frame. Julia Martínez, Kazuhiro Oharazeki, Sandy F. Chang, and others have explored trafficking within the context of East Asia and the Pacific, while Francesca Biancani, Johan Mathew, Caroline Séquin, and Liat Kozma’s work examines traffick ing and sex work in Africa and the Middle East.17

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 11 term related to prostitution, it was Jews whom journalists and anti-traffick ing campaigners most often imagined to be engaged in it.

The German term especially encourages us to explore the sexualization and feminization of the concept of what we now call “trafficking,” and the importance of the troublesome and malleable concept of “girlhood.” Since the 1880s, it was concern over girls, that is, young, unmarried women that fueled the panic over white slavery and the anti-trafficking movement. These “girls” were moving around the world more than they ever had before,

15 The “infamous traffic” of Jewish women by Jewish men to South America, North America, Africa, and the Middle East was the most common way in which people understood trafficking. This stereotype was caught up within widespread discourses of anti-Semitism and helped to construct an understanding of Jewish traffickers as operating within an organized, international cabal. But at the same time, this discourse highlighted the victimhood—the “white slavery”—of Jewish women. As Mir Yarfitz evocatively puts it in his recent book Impure Migration, “white slavery” discourse “whitened” Jewish women and “darkened” Jewish men. Ultimately, as this example ably shows, the discourse of white slavery did not just reflect but also created new under standings of race.

“White slavery” is undeniably a racialized term, but it was racialized in specific ways at specific times and places. It was deployed within dis courses of xenophobia, nativism, and anti-Semitism, but also within the antiAsian racism of the “yellow peril,” and within narratives of anti-Blackness (particularly in the United States).18 The term was borrowed, re-used, and cross-fertilized, to create complex meanings attached both to the concept of racialized “whiteness” but also the “whiteness” of sexual purity. Indeed, in many places, the term for the traffic in women and children in prostitution made no reference to whiteness at all. In German the term was mädchenhan del [traffic in girls], and in Russian it was torgovlia zhenshchinami [trading in women]. The Chinese used the term banu [white slavery] infrequently; but widely discussed the term fànmài fānù, which translates to the “illegal sale of women and girls.”19 Of course, the lack of reference to “whiteness” or to “slavery” did not signify an absence of racialization in these cases, but that, through these terms, racialization functioned in different ways.

These new freedoms and mobilities came with widespread anxiety about “protecting” such young women from the dangers of modern life, as well as from their own lack of discipline and sexual continence. Even as the global economy was hungry for the labor of women, western, and arguably global, culture was growing increasingly panicked about their independence and mobility. The “white slavery” panic of the early twentieth century cen tered on the idea of the missing daughter: the young woman or girl who left home for work and romance only to disappear, duped into prostitution by pimps and imprisoned in hidden urban brothels. These women, who were increasingly beyond what many thought to be the benign control of the home, the family, and social institutions, were seen as both threatened and threatening. On the one hand, they were presented as the idealized victims of monstrous criminals; on the other—particularly when they did not fit the image of white, innocent, respectable young women—they were depicted as undesirable migrants, “morally insane” girls, and dangerous criminals themselves.21

Trafficking, Internationalism, and Transnational History

However trafficking was named and defined, it is clear that migrant and/or exploited prostitution emerged as one of the most pressing inter national issues in the two decades before the First World War. The scandals about “the traffic in women and girls” that appeared in global newspapers in the 1880s inspired the development of an “anti-trafficking” movement. The first of these organizations was the International Abolitionist Federa tion (IAF). It had grown directly out of the campaigns against regulated prostitution, but by the 1890s, had merged the cause of anti-trafficking and anti-regulationism together, and saw both through an anti-statist, feminist, and liberal lens, paying special attention to women’s rights. But the International Bureau for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (or IB) soon eclipsed the IAF. The IB was, in essence, the anti-trafficking arm of the National Vigilance Association, a social purity organization founded in Britain in the aftermath of the Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon Scandal and the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1885, arguably Britain’s first anti-trafficking law.

working in more diverse industries, marrying later, and were increasingly seen as independent and active consumers. Women and girls supplied not only the labor for many globalizing industries but also the reproductive labor surrounding them: cleaning and caring for middle-class families as well as miners and canal diggers, selling sex to soldiers, and providing accommodation and companionship to working men in growing cities.

Journal of Women ’s History12 Winter

That anti-trafficking became a social issue of international significance is evidenced by its specific inclusion within the Treaty of Versailles and the establishment of the League of Nations. As per the treaty’s stipulation, a special Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children was set up in 1919, tasked with assessing the scale and nature of trafficking, and developing potential international and national solutions. Early histories of these endeavors were largely positivist, placing anti-trafficking within a wider context of international humanitarianism after the First World War.23 Subsequent assessments of anti-trafficking within the League have taken a significantly more critical view. As Pliley, Magaly Rodríguez García, Stephanie Limoncelli, and others have shown, the early divisions within anti-trafficking were soon playing out on the international stage; between those willing to work with regulationists if it meant better controlling the movements and behavior of “prostitutes,” and those who saw regulation as the primary cause of trafficking and refused to countenance “laws of exception” directed against women in the name of preventing trafficking.24

As the work of Rachel Attwood, Julia Laite, and Lucy Bland has shown, the IB—led by their moralizing secretary William Coote—was the domi nant force in international anti-trafficking movements for the next several decades, and married this cause to others, including anti-pornography, the censoring of indecent performances, and other purity crusades. Crucially for the story of trafficking, Coote and the IB supported migration restrictions on “foreign prostitutes” in the name of anti-trafficking, and were even will ing to ally themselves with regulationists who advocated for legal brothels with strict immigration controls.

In 1924, the Advisory Board, with the financial support of the Rock efeller Foundation, commissioned an investigation that would determine the extent and nature of “the international traffic in women.” Led by a prominent American physician who was involved in the interwar “social hygiene” movement, the investigation sent nine undercover investigators to major world cities and other key sites in western Europe, Africa, South America, and North America to interview officials and organizations, as well as pimps, traffickers, brothel keepers, and women who sold sex. The notes of one of the investigators—Paul Kinsie—have been compiled into a critical sourcebook by Jean-Michel Chaumont, Magaly Rodríguez García, and Paul Servais.

25 As Chaumont argues in his earlier work, this investiga tion and the subsequent report it produced was an exercise in influential myth-making about trafficking, and many historians have critiqued the research methodologies and evidentiary bases of the report’s claims.

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite

2021 13

Nonetheless, the report did contain some meaningful assertions that ran counter to expectations. Trafficking, it claimed, was just as common within a nation’s borders as across them, which suggested that tackling it

By the 1930s, the Advisory Committee had lost much of its indepen dence, and the feminist influence on its mandate waned even further. Femi nists argued against suggestions that women be barred from leaving their countries without the permission of their father, husband, or the state, and campaigned against measures to compulsorily repatriate all foreign women found working in brothels. While the first did not become official policy (though it was practiced in certain countries), the latter—in the harsher form of deportation—is now common practice around the world. Many initiatives of the anti-trafficking movement paused with the outbreak of the Second World War and the subsequent collapse of the League of Nations. The same is true of the historiography: the vast major ity of work on trafficking remains concentrated in the years between 1880 and 1945. Post-war histories of trafficking—as a concept and as a social phenomenon—are just beginning to emerge. In the case of trafficking on the international stage, historians Philippa Hetherington and Sonja Dolinsek have found both change and continuity, as the UN began to struggle with the issue of trafficking and exploited prostitution on the road to and from the drafting of the 1949 Convention Against the Trafficking in Persons.28

As these works show, the historiography of trafficking has contributed immensely to wider understandings of the history of internationalism. As one of the very first issues around which “internationalists” rallied, anti-

Journal of Women ’s History14 Winter was not simply a question of border control. Moreover, in contrast to the moral panic about “white slavery,” the majority of women who were traf ficked into prostitution abroad had already been selling sex. The offence, then, was not in luring “innocent” women into the sex industry, but in de frauding women who sold sex as to the conditions of their work. In other words, sex trafficking looked very similar to all other forms of coercive labor practices.27 These findings, however revelatory, had little impact on international or national approaches to the problem.

The League’s Advisory Committee also changed the word the interna tional humanitarian and legal community used to describe the phenomena with which they were concerned, namely, sexual exploitation and women’s migration for sexual labor. They recognized that the term “white slavery” ignored how the issue of exploited or coerced migrant prostitution affected non-white women as well. After some debate, the Advisory Committee of ficially chose the term “the traffic in women and children.” The change in terminology did little to alter the racialized underpinnings of anti-trafficking policies, which remained primarily concerned with the victimhood of white women. But changing “white slavery” to a less-sensationalized term more in keeping with the language of international humanitarianism, helped to naturalize the concept of trafficking for decades to come—even if those who used it were no closer to delineating its actual meaning.

34 Southern and Eastern Europe were a different context again, as states coped with the pressures of international campaigns and the realities of their messy borderlands and cosmopolitan urban spaces.

Anti-trafficking campaigns were certainly a global phenomenon, connected to wider trends of globalization and global feminism in particular. Traffick ing and migrant prostitution followed established migration networks and routes and was facilitated by the commercial interests of globally engaged employment agencies, and the multinational industries of mining, transport, manufacturing, and entertainment.30

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 15 trafficking movements helped to build the wider structure and culture of both political and humanitarian internationalism.29 But the historiography of trafficking is also transnational and global, and encapsulates the chal lenges and possibilities of these overlapping scalar and thematic frames.

As Eva Payne, in this issue and elsewhere, Peck, and Pliley demon strate, US and British anti-trafficking initiatives looked to each other—rather than to international organizations—when they developed their laws and policies.

35 Russia and its contiguous empire and sphere of influence is another case, as Philippa Hetherington argues, opting to respond to trafficking fears through controlling out-migration—which, as Anna Dobrowolska shows in this special issue—echoed down the century and informed policy in post-war socialist Eastern Europe.

Ultimately, however, it is the term “transnational” that we and other historians of trafficking find the most accurate to describe the history of the concept and the phenomenon, because of the way in which it involved exchanges—of ideas, people, and money—between countries that operated beyond and below the level of the state. While trafficking was of course a fundamental concern of early internationalists, and legal frameworks were often born out of the formal and informal mandates of internationalism, laws and policies changed according to other kinds of geopolitical and national concerns. As Pamela Fuentes (in this issue) and, earlier, Donna Guy, have argued, Latin American responses to trafficking, while part of a wider international conversation, were also developed according to postcolonial nation-building and migration norms specific to Latin America.31 Historians have uncovered a similar dynamic between empire, internation alism, and national interest in the case of East and South East Asia, where trafficking discourse was entangled with debates over militarized sexual labor, the practice of mui tsai, and entangled imperialisms.32 In South Asia, as Ashwini Tambe details, concerns about trafficking were simultaneously part of an internationalist and imperial project, and part of the postcolonial nation-building project.

36 Finally, as the work of Philippa Levine, Stephen Legg, Susan Pederson, and Liat Kozma have shown, early internationalist initia tives around trafficking and other social questions were grafted onto much older structures of imperial governance and colonial subjugation.37

Jean Allain, for instance, has explored the legal history of the earliest anti-trafficking agreements signed by mostly European nations prior to the First World War, which held signatories responsible for implementing key anti-trafficking legislation in their jurisdictions, both national and imperial. These agreements, Allain argues, left plenty of room for interpretation and allowed signatories to water down many of its provisions.40As Allain high lights, the question of age of consent was central to the first transnational

These conceptual quagmires help to explain the gulf that emerged between concepts, laws, and policies that sought to stop and punish trafficking and their actual implementation. Much of the earlier scholarship on “white slavery” examines its discursive and legal parameters, albeit primarily in domestic or nationally bounded contexts. More recently, historians have broadened their perspective in two directions: first, in the international and transnational legal context, and second in the ways these laws were put into imperfect practice.

Efforts to confront trafficking through law have occurred at interna tional, transnational, national, and regional levels, and the historiography on law and trafficking reflects this. Whereas much early scholarship looked at national lawmaking in metropolitan Britain and the United States, the most recent work draws on the extensive research on trafficking and international organizations to focus on international (or transnational) conventions and agreements.

But to provoke, what are historians of ‘trafficking’ writing a transna tional history of? Is it a transnational history of sexuality or of labor? Is it the transnational history of crime or of migration? Is it a transnational history of conservative policy diffusion or of feminists’ engagement with the global community? Clearly it is all of these—and more—but these difficulties of historical categorization help demonstrate the concept’s ambiguities and the realities which underlay it.

Anti-Trafficking Law and Anti-Trafficking Practice

Journal of Women ’s History16 Winter

38 Scholars of international law highlight the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth century as one in which notions of “global administrative law” took shape in transnational agreements and conventions concerning topics as diverse as international postal systems, health cooperation, and crime control.39 The problem of “white slavery” was one of the first and most prominent questions addressed by this body of global administra tive law. The period saw a flurry of international diplomatic agreements and conventions aimed at suppressing this trade, attended by government representatives and anti-trafficking activists alike. Indeed, “white slavery” was a particularly jurisgenerative category in the period 1899–1949, and historians are only beginning to scratch the surface as to why.

International legal debates did not only rest on which women were and were not included in the category “trafficked.” They also hinged on which territories were to be included and excluded from the space of “humani tarian” protection. Should colonies or dependent territories be included in international agreements about trafficking? Philippa Hetherington and Sonja Dolinsek have recently highlighted the centrality of the so-called colonial clause to debates about anti-trafficking international law in the middle of the twentieth century.42 First signalled in the 1904 International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Trade, this clause gave colonial powers discretion to decide whether or not non-metropolitan spaces fell under the jurisdiction of the agreement. This clause would later appear in myriad other “administrative” agreements and even found its way into the 1951 Genocide Convention. The clause was not a purely academic mat ter. France’s colonial clause, which excluded French West Africa from its responsibilities under the 1904 Agreement and 1910 Convention, resulted in a comparatively open space for migratory sex work in those colonies, as Caroline Séquin elaborates in this special issue.

The study of anti-trafficking laws’ national effects has not lain fallow.

anti-trafficking agreements. Diplomats debated at what age a girl or woman could have been said to have consented to commercial sex or migration (or both). Unsurprisingly, there were considerable national differences in attitudes to age of consent with regard to sex or movement, and disagree ments over whether a woman over twenty-one could constitute a “victim” of trafficking nearly prevented the signing of the 1910 Convention.41 The discussions around age of consent in pre-war international meetings prefigured the League’s move toward seeing all forms of migratory sex work as trafficking, articulated in the 1933 International Convention for the Sup pression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age. They also placed questions of women’s bodily autonomy and sexual maturity within a corpus of evolving international law concerning global governance, a theme that deserves more exploration in the historiography.

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 17

Historians have continued to explore specific national legislation from within and without the context of internationalism and document how international and national law fed into policy and international policing in the early twentieth century and, as the edited collection from Pliley, Robert Kramm, and Harald Fisher-Tiné demonstrates, was entangled with the international policing of other forms of “vice.”

Turning from law on paper to law as implemented on the ground, a number of recent histories explore the way that anti-trafficking laws have functioned as a way to surveil and control young, working-class women. This was particularly true during the height of the “white slavery” panic in the early twentieth century, which served as a warning to girls leaving

48 Conveniently, those who were saved could be coercively redeployed to work as domestic servants in middleclass-homes or as cheap labor in other feminized industries. This practice was not considered trafficking, despite its many shared characteristics.

As April Haynes points out, the links between “rescuing” victims of exploited prostitution and controlling working-class women’s labor pre-date the anti-trafficking movement. By the late nineteenth century, as her research has found, middle-class women who positioned themselves as “rescuers” of exploited prostitutes also ran for-profit employment agencies that worked to plug the significant domestic labor shortage in the expanding American West. They sought, in Haynes’s words, to shuttle vulnerable women “out of brothels and into kitchens.”

Journal of Women ’s History18 Winter their homes and institutions and traveling independently for work. In some countries, these young women would be required to seek the permission of fathers and husbands in order to be given exit papers; in other countries they would find their points of embarkment and arrival heavily surveilled.

The relationship between anti-trafficking organizations and the forced “retraining” of young women was a trend that continued throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, especially for those who sold sex or were forced to sell sex within their own country’s borders. In England, Ireland, India, and elsewhere, “rescued” domestic victims of exploited prostitution were put to work in institutional laundries for no pay.47 It was widely understood that “moral insanity”—that is, bad or precocious sexual behavior—rendered young women vulnerable to exploitation, and this “moral insanity” was defined along class and race lines. In the hands of influential religious and humanitarian organizations, anti-trafficking was a powerful tool to control the behavior of racialized and poor, young women in order to “save them from themselves.”

While anti-trafficking policies worked to manage female labor in the domestic and imperial context, they also operated as a form of border control. Migration restriction soon became the main way in which trafficking was policed and ostensibly “prevented.” Many historians have shown how “white slavery” and “trafficking” became a way to manage porous borders and empower early immigration bureaus and departments to surveil and police marginalized and racialized women (and the men branded as “traf fickers” and “pimps”).49 In other places, this mobility control became an extension of imperial power within colonies, where the regulatory power of “regulationism” was replaced by an equally powerful set of criminal laws

Certain women, branded “undesirable migrants,” would be subject to denied entry or deportation.44 Often, steamship companies played critical roles in surveilling working-class female migrants, as enforcement of im migration policy was “off shored” in what Aristide Zolberg calls a form of “remote control.”

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 19 and restrictions on free migration, and where trafficking was used as way of reifying racial hierarchies.

In her scathing and oft-cited article, “The Truth About White Slavery,” published in the English Review in 1913, feminist Teresa Billington-Greig lambasted the proponents of the new White Slavery Act, passed in Britain the year before, which, in keeping with other early anti-trafficking laws, outlawed “controlling or directing the movement of a prostitute,” rather than referring to any particular presence of exploitation. “The law is of very little value in the underworld of sexual trading,” she wrote, “…the causes of this evil cannot be touched by law, however perfectly conceived, however perfectly administered…the more severe you make your deterrent punishment, the more cunning and subtilty you develop in those who have to evade it.”

51 Early twentieth-century campaigners and policy makers were never explicit about the fact that laws about trafficking were central pillars in wider systems of migration controls, and yet that they were is undeniable. Trafficking appears in these historical investigations as the “thin end of the wedge”: anti-trafficking laws were some of the first anti-migration laws modern states passed as they began to develop much broader policies of anti-immigration and carceral border control. In paral lel to the way that the purported rescue of exploited prostitutes enabled middle-class women to find meaningful work and business opportunities, the recent work of Katherine Benton Cohen (and Eva Payne in this special issue) shows how anti-trafficking allowed women to move into civil service roles within the new bureaucracies of immigration control; and the work of David Petrucelli and Philippa Levine, for instance, demonstrates various ways in which narratives of “anti-trafficking” and women’s protection al lowed women to forge new roles for themselves in modern police forces.

Voice, Agency, Experience

Historians Eithne Luibhéid, Torrie Hester, Grace Peña Delgado, and others have also shown, in the case of the United States, how laws enacted in the name of anti-trafficking became in practice laws that were used far more broadly to control “undesirable” migration and police troublesome borders.

In contested claims about the relative freedom of migrant sex work, who gets to decide who is “free”? As scholars of both contemporary and

53 Historical scholarship has added evidence to this assertion. States and empires used the concept of trafficking as an important tool to control the mobility and labor of migrant workers, imperial subjects, and young, unmarried women. But in all cases, the application of ideas and laws about trafficking was a highly imperfect, localized, and negotiated practice that was resisted, at times successfully, by those who found themselves at the law’s sharp end.

Journal of Women ’s History20 Winter

What emerges from these studies is a picture of complex and clever negotiations with authorities who, while powerful and subjugating, were still not immune to the tactics of migrant women workers trying to make good in a global economy.55 For example, as Laite, Pliley, and Yarfitz show, women who had been labeled prostitutes frequently found ways to evade restrictions on their migration, particularly through the use of “marriages of convenience” to gain access to citizenship.56 Sometimes, as Camiscioli argues in her article about French women’s migration to Argentina in the interwar years, migrant sex workers would deploy trafficking narratives to navigate systems of state control, even as they were themselves aware of the limits of their own choices within overlapping contexts of labor and sexual exploitation.57

The social history of trafficking seeks not only to recover the experiences of migrant women sex workers—it has also recently engaged with another arguably subaltern figure in the illicit sex trade: the pimp, trafficker, or mi gration agent. Those who engaged in moving people—especially women who sold sex—across international borders, did so in full knowledge of the limitations of state power and international policing. They deployed strings of aliases, changed their appearance, took complex travel routes, crossed

historical sex work can attest, it is rarely sex workers themselves. And yet recent historical work—much of it building on decades of social histories of prostitution and migration—explores what it would mean to prioritize the voices of those who were assumed to have been trafficked. This scholarship often relies on police and court records as well as the testimony of migration officials, researchers, and interviewers for the League’s official inquiries.

These historians routinely note the way that women themselves ar ticulated their activities in the sex industry as work, and their mobility as a form of labor migration, even if these articulations arrive to us in fragments, filtered through the records of authorities. Indeed, some of the most chal lenging and engaging questions in the study of intimate labor, trafficking, and women’s migration are those of voice, agency, and the archive of ex perience. Historians remain committed to the struggle to find evidence of individual “trafficked” women’s choices, experiences, and opinions in the past, and have developed creative and insightful ways of uncovering them.

Using techniques of reading against the archival grain elaborated by post colonial scholarship and recent work on Atlantic slavery, historians such as Elisa Camiscioli, Keeley Stauter-Halsted, Christina E. Firpo, and Kozma have highlighted the alternative picture of migrant sex work generated by the words of suspected “white slaves” themselves.

In her work on Poland and Eastern Europe, Stauter-Halstead explores the business of migrant prostitution and the way that it operated alongside (and often hidden within or nearly indistinguishable from) licit systems of brokered migration and employment agencies.

In this special issue, Sandy F. Chang uses a paper trail of deportation to uncover the potential experiences and motivations of a Chinese woman in Malaysia’s sex trade in the 1930s, and Caroline Séquin scours the archive to trace the movements of a brothel keeper between France and West Africa in the same period. Both Chang and Séquin demonstrate the opportunities that come from moving beyond the metropolitan archive and drawing more

Fortunately,others.recent explorations of the presence or absence of the ‘traf ficked woman’ in the archive highlight the theme’s capacity for historio graphic innovation. In her recent book, The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey, Laite uses microhistory and family history to radically contextualize the life of a young woman who had been idealized as a victim of “white slavery” in 1910. Juxtaposing the narratives of multiple actors in Lydia Harvey’s case allows Laite to situate the case far beyond the victim framing that people placed upon her without downplaying the tragedy of Harvey’s life. In her PhD work and in her forthcoming book, Emily Alyssa Owens uses manumission and slavery records in New Orleans to explore the doubly marginalized lives of young, enslaved Black women in the city’s brothels and to document the way that they sometimes were able to use the com plex palimpsest of legal codes to their marginal advantage. Owens’s work, perhaps more than any other cited, captures the complexities of freedom and unfreedom within the context of racialized sexual labor.

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 21 borders by foot, and used falsified documents.59 Perhaps most of all, they counted on the systematic and endemic corruption of authorities—espe cially police and immigration officials—who would look the other way if the right amount of money changed hands. There is widespread anecdotal evidence of this practice, although of course the most common recordkeepers of anti-trafficking (the police and immigration officials themselves) rarely documented such behavior, and even more rarely preserved it in the archivalWhilerecord.much important work on the social history of transnational sex has shed light on the lived experiences of migrant men and women, it is notable that the historiography on trafficking has yet to engage fully with the classic critiques of seeking voices (Gayatri Spivak), of essentializing agency (Walter Johnson), and of reifying the evidence of experience (Joan Scott).60 Despite nuanced readings such as those by Camiscioli and Laite, other scholars too often mobilize a police record or League researcher’s interview as the transparent “voice” of a trafficked woman, and eschew the ethical problems of ventriloquizing agency highlighted by a genera tion of postcolonial scholars.61 As the field moves away from a focus on Europe and towards the colonial world, this problem arguably becomes more acute, especially as, once again, certain voices are privileged in the archive over

Journal of Women ’s History22 Winter thoroughly on the historiographical innovations of imperial histories. All these case studies encourage us to think in complicated ways about what Camiscioli calls “coercion and choice” within intimate migrant labor and trafficking. Most of all, people, especially women, who were identified as trafficked, defied its narrow definitions of victimhood, consent, and criminality simply by living their lives as complex human beings. They moved in and out of licit and illicit work and legal and “illegal” migration routes, in and out of freedom and unfreedom, and also into and out of visibility in the historical record.

Peck goes on in later work to suggest that while “white slavery” had its origin in conversations about white men’s labor exploitation, it became feminized and sexualized until it meant, almost exclusively, women’s prostitution.

63 These arguments, which echo Adam McKeown’s work on migration restrictions, offer a way to consider the gendered and sexualized discourse of “white slavery” and “trafficking” alongside broader conversations about exploited labor in all its forms: enslavement, indenture, and the myriad other kinds of abusive and coercive practices found in modern, capitalist labor structures that operated outside of these formal exploitative systems.

Historians have long pushed against these contemporary conceptual boundaries, and some of the newest scholarship on trafficking examines it as a discourse and a reality that was as deeply connected to ideas about labor. Peck’s scholarship has been instrumental in furthering this conversation. In his book Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West he explores the way that labor, especially migrant labor, was reconceptualized as “free” and “unfree” in order to police the boundaries of legitimate work and legitimate migration.

Trafficking, Labor, and Unfreedom Ultimately, individual states, the League, and subsequently the United Nations, remained entrapped within a concept of “trafficking” that on the one hand broadly defined all prostitution as exploitative, and on the other, narrowly conceived of trafficking as a problem related solely to women’s prostitution.

Twentieth-century discourse about trafficking was marked by a widespread aphasia about prostitution as work, and simultaneously struggled to articulate trafficking as a term that could be applied to nonsexual labor, including other forms of feminized intimate labor.

65 What Peck does not adequately consider, however, is the degree to which this new superficial meaning of “white slavery” masked what was in reality a wider discourse about women’s work. As Laite, Ei leen Boris, Rodríguez García, and others have shown, discussions about trafficking within and outside the League of Nations and its associated

Indeed, it is striking and revealing, that prostitution was brought under the rubric of “decent work” (in order to exclude it) in 1949, but that domestic service was left out of these global labor standards until 2019.70

Indeed,prostitution.whenexamined with any care, these sectors appeared to be rife with trafficking-like practices themselves: coerced migration, defraudment about working conditions, confiscated documents, exploitative and binding contracts, withheld pay, long hours, sexual harassment and assault, and termination without recourse to repatriation or support.67 Throughout the twentieth century, socialist feminists persistently demanded safe and decently paid work for women, but these demands only ever sat uncomfort ably alongside policies on trafficking that sought to suppress and control the problem through criminalization and migration restrictions.

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 23 bodies routinely returned to the problems associated with women’s work as being closely correlated to their experiences of migrant prostitution and trafficking, particularly within domestic service and the entertainment industry.

Today, the face of trafficking is changing once again, having been re branded as “modern slavery” in US and UK policy-making circles, starting from around 2010, most clearly in the UK’s ‘Modern Slavery Act’ in 2015. The term is now in wide use amongst NGOs, internationalists, and national policy makers around the world. Some historians have responded positively to this rebranding, forming organizations such as Historians Against Slavery in order to add historical weight to contemporary campaigns, and drawing parallels—just as late Victorian anti-trafficking campaigners did—between the campaign to abolish chattel slavery in the eighteenth and ninetieth centuries, and the efforts to ‘abolish’ “modern slavery” today.71

66 In short: organizations, and women themselves, routinely cited vulnerability and poor pay in these sectors as a leading cause of women turning to

Other historians, who are of course also “against slavery,” view the rebranding with significantly more cynical eyes. It is, they argue, a broken analogy, that draws on a highly problematic narrative of abolitionism, erases the history of Black suffering, and draws false parallels between American slavery—which was a legal, state-sanctioned system whose abolition was achieved by the repeal of laws—and “modern slavery”—which is a crimi nalized, transnational phenomenon whose repression is sought by passing laws and enacting carceral measures. “Modern slavery” as a concept and

As Boris shows in her recent book The Making of the Woman Worker, conversations about “sex trafficking” were happening alongside the cre ation of the “woman worker as a distinct category in law and social policy,” whether this was explicitly acknowledged or not. Prostitution was labeled “trafficking” amid a persistent exclusion of feminized forms of labor (paid and unpaid domestic service) from conversations about “decent” work.69

In her article “Deportation as Rescue: White Slaves, Women Reform ers, and the US Bureau of Immigration,” Eva Payne reassesses the role of middle-class women anti-trafficking campaigners in developing the United States’ emerging immigration law and bureaucracy. Focusing on the doc tor, feminist, and campaigner Kate Waller Barret in the years leading up to and just after the First World War, Payne uncovers the way that “white maternalist women’s organizations” worked with the federal government to reshape the public understanding of deportation “as a protective rather than punitive act.” This not only made it easier for the federal govern ment to legitimate their new deportation policies, but also augmented the authority of feminist philanthropic organizations, who collaborated with the government “to police poor migrant women and women of color” in the name of their own protection, and of “national morality. “Through the story of Barret’s collaboration with the Immigration Bureau, Payne points to a moment which “wedded the nineteenth-century tradition of women’s rescue work to a state-based, carceral approach to migratory sexual labor,”

This Special Issue

It is no wonder, therefore, that the analogy of “modern slavery” falls apart in the hands of historians who are familiar with the historical malle ability of concepts of free and unfree labor and who intrinsically understand “work” as something that has entailed various degrees of exploitation, coercion, or unfreedom for the vast majority of people over the vast major ity of history. For women in particular, the nexus of legal intimate, casual, and unpaid labor continues to underwrite their vulnerability to exploita tion and trafficking; a social reality largely unaddressed by anti-trafficking policies, which continue to use migration law and criminal law to address this complex problem.

Journal of Women ’s History24 Winter legal system positions states and private corporations as the key arbiters of emancipation, and further cloaks their roles as exploiters and coercers themselves within licit systems of labor, border control, and, most strik ingly, the prison system. “Modern slavery” presents an image of global, racialized, and gendered labor exploitation that can be tackled through regulatory and carceral frameworks, rather than through the abolition of the hyper-capitalist global labor system itself.

The articles in this special issue of the Journal of Women’s History all reflect on and build upon the rich scholarship that has emerged over the past thirty years on the question of “white slavery” and “trafficking.” They also connect this scholarship to other fields—both in terms of geographical focus and national historiographies, but also in terms of trafficking’s relationship to migration, law, racialization, and other forms of labor.

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 25 which set the “ideological foundations” that continues to determine antitrafficking policy in the present day.

In her article “Intimate Itinerancy: Sex, Work, and Chinese Women in Colonial Malaya’s Brothel Economy, 1870s–1930s,” Sandy F. Chang uses the case of Lee Sam to illuminate the way that anti-trafficking played out on both the micro and macro levels. Lee Sam was a migrant Chinese woman who travelled across inter-colonial borders during East Asia’s “mobility revolution,” eventually working as a market and cash-crop gardener and it seems, helping manage a small brothel that catered to mostly migrant Chinese men working in Perak province’s tin mines, agricultural industry, and other areas of the imperial economy. Thanks to “seismic shifts” in the laws controlling commercial sex as Britain moved away from regulationism and toward policies of criminalization in its colonies in the interwar years, Lee Sam found herself imprisoned, deported, and banished for life from the colony. Through the story of Lee Sam, Chang uses the framing of “intimate labor” to examine how “itinerant Chinese women in the brothel industry emerge as labor migrants whose economic endeavors, from selling sex to serving drinks, were often imbued with moral implications in ways that challenged the agendas of the colonial state.”

Julia Martínez, writing about “The League of Nations, Prostitution, and the Deportation of Chinese Women from Interwar Manila,” examines the way that international ideas about “white slavery” were applied in the context of the American-influenced Philippines during the 1920s and 1930s. This translated, she argues, to the targeting of Chinese migrant women who worked in the capital’s sex trade. These women, Martínez observes, were “caught within a paradox, being documented by the League of Nations as passive victims, while in Manila newspapers, they were depicted as lead ing an ‘immoral’ life,” therefore rendering them deserving of punishment and deportation. These policies, developed in conversation with interna tionalists, American imperialists, and local authorities, were grafted onto wider policies of immigration control, which included deportation and the targeting of racialized and migrant women.

Moving away from East Asia and the British Empire, Caroline Séquin’s article, “Marie Piquemal, the ‘Colonial Madam’: Brothel Prostitution, Migration, and the Making of Whiteness in Interwar Dakar” explores the way that French imperial authorities—alongside migrant French sex workers— helped determine and shape policies of racial segregation in Senegal’s sexual economy. The article follows the life of Marie Piquemal, who migrated to Dakar to work in a state-sanctioned brothel that catered to the city’s white clients. Despite the increasingly influential anti-trafficking movement, France had adopted legal clauses that meant that they were not obligated to apply anti-trafficking conventions in their colonies, in another excellent

Journal of Women ’s History26 Winter example of the way that discourse on trafficking operated along tangled international, transnational, and imperial lines. As Séquin argues, women like Piquemal “capitalized on the commercialization of white women’s bod ies” in an imperial context, and in so doing, contributed to “the hardening of racial boundaries in the French Empire.” Séquin’s article points to the way that the intimate labor of migrant prostitution helped to reify racial categories and explores the difficult reality of white sex workers’ active roles in this Pamelaprocess.Fuentes explores the way that “discourses of ‘trafficking’ were as much about the transnational entertainment industry as they were about the sex industry” in her article “‘White Slavery’ and Cabarets: Mexican Artists in Panama in the 1940s.” She uncovers how discourses of “white slavery,” which obsessed over the idealized victimhood of white women in the sex trade, made invisible the exploitation of brown-skinned women who worked in the supposedly “licit” entertainment industry. The moral panic over Mexican cabaret performers in Panama created ambiguous and binary cultural scripts, of women who were either ambitious or naïve, of women who were both threatened and threatening. Set against the backdrop of global shipping, proletarian male labor, and US militarism and oc cupation, concerns over “trafficking” in the context of 1940s Panama were complex, contradictory, and uninterested in the voices and experiences of the women workers themselves.

In “‘Everyone Dreams About Leaving’: Debates on Human Trafficking in State-Socialist Poland,” Anna Dobrowolska joins an emerging conversation about the history of trafficking and prostitution in the post-war era. She examines two sex trafficking scandals in the early 1970s and 1980s, in which women were found to be moving through the increasingly porous Iron Curtain to sell sex in Dubai and Italy. These scandals, Dobrowolska argues, were tied to much wider, and contextually dependent, narratives of moral and economic crisis. In exploring the way that concerns over “sex trafficking” became a political football between communist and conservative forces in late twentieth-century Poland, Dobrowolska shows “how seem ingly outdated discourses of ‘white slavery’ could be reapplied to serve the purposes of the Cold War competition.” The women themselves, in contrast to the infantilizing narratives built around them, often saw migration and sexual labor as a means of meeting their own aspirations as consumers and workers in a more open world.

The special issue concludes with an article by Magaly Rodríguez García and Eileen Boris, which takes a longer view of trafficking in the twentieth century and explores it at the level of internationalism. In “(In) Decent Work: Sex and the ILO,” the authors “map the ragged contours of worker protection, criminalization, and moralism that has characterized

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 27 deliberation over sex work in the international sphere.” The ILO was, as Rodríguez García and Boris explain, instrumental in “generating knowl edge about what counts as work and who is a worker.” In failing to take seriously the idea that sexual labor was work, the earlier phase of the ILO defined prostitution as a criminal activity beyond their purview. When at last attempts were made to account for labor in the global “sex sector,” the organization found itself embroiled in debates over their supposed support for the legalization of prostitution, which could not, argued opponents, be considered “decent work.” Crucially, the authors note, this exclusion from the framework of “decent work” was also extended to domestic service and other kinds of feminized, intimate labor. This “tension between intimate labor and the quest for decent work” continued to plague the ILO over the course of the long twentieth century, and is a tension that continues to inflect policy, law, and practice in the present day.

The historical study of “trafficking” is now an established, rich, and di verse field. Over the past three decades, several prominent historiographical themes have emerged as we grapple with the “useless category” in which

While “trafficking” is sometimes a useful heuristic for historians, it is also a conceptual trap. Like queer historians who struggle to articulate the way that “homosexuality” existed and yet also did not exist before the concept was created, historians of “trafficking” must deploy terminology and concepts as semi-normative shorthand, even as we historicize the mo ment of their making and examine the way this naming created new social realities.72 The methodological and theoretical challenges are impossible to transcend, not least because they are embedded in the archives, where authorities, media, and the law labeled some people trafficked or “white slaves,” while others went unnamed, and unrecorded. Instead, we must work within these troubled categories and, as Marisa Fuentes puts it, read along the archive’s “bias grain” to recover the lived experiences of vulner able and marginalized migrant people.73

Together, these articles demonstrate the entangled, ambiguous, and contradictory nature of trafficking as a concept, and anti-trafficking as a social and political movement, over the course of the long twentieth century and beyond. They encourage us to think beyond the Euro-American framing of “white slavery” from the early twentieth century and to link histories of trafficking to histories of empire, racialization, globalization, migration, and more. Most of all, they consider selling sex as part of a wider economy of feminized and migrant intimate labor, whether the organizations defining it and the authorities policing it saw it that way or not.

Conclusion: A Useless Category?

Secondly, historians have debated the role and the successes of femi nism and the wider women’s movement within this late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century story. On the one hand, they have identified and recognized real achievements: in better protections for women and girls against sexual violence and abuse, in progressive conversations about the nature of consent, in demands—sometimes met—for more labor and political rights for women. For many early feminists, campaigns to abolish regulationism and trafficking were part of a wider campaign against the patriarchal biopower of the modern state, which nothing epitomized more clearly than the state regulation of prostitution.74 On the other hand, historians have also uncovered uncomfortable alliances between feminists and conservative, often religious, moral reform organizations, and show how anti-trafficking campaigns used coercive and punitive methods to achieve their aims and save young women as much “from themselves” as from their ostensible traffickers. Historians are not much convinced by the concept of “balance sheets,” but most historians of trafficking would likely agree that the assault on women’s rights and freedoms encouraged by many in the anti-trafficking movement certainly off-set any potential gains. Together, this historiography points to key moments which presaged what Elizabeth Bernstein famously labeled “carceral feminism,” which dominates antitrafficking discourse in the 21st century.75

we are working. Firstly, amid complex and interleaved meanings and practices, and relying on archives generated in the main by anti-trafficking campaigners and enforcers, historians of trafficking have struggled to articulate the relationship between the “myth” of “white slavery” and the reality of women’s often exploited work within increasingly global prostitution markets in the twentieth century. To what extent was “white slavery” a racialized moral panic, and to what extent was it a highly problematic name for a very real problem linked to women’s (and others’) sexual and economic exploitation? Over the years, historians have found new ways to articulate the spaces in between this useless binary, ably demonstrated by several of the articles in this special issue.

Journal of Women ’s History28 Winter

Thirdly, historians have come to identify how trafficking played a major role in ushering in the much broader immigration restrictions that are so central to geopolitics in our current century. Those who study trafficking’s past recognize these processes as they continue in the present, where appeals to “end trafficking” or, more recently, “end modern slavery,” form a central part of the rhetoric of carceral border states as they enact new powers of de portation, visa refusal, border policing, and migrant detention. While much of this scholarship remains focused on European and American migration systems and experiences, new work—including in this special issue—is

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 29 bringing global majority perspectives into the frame. As these perspectives grow in number, the concept of “trafficking,” developed by western nations and internationalists against a backdrop of racialization, xenophobia, and colonization, will likely grow ever more useless still.

1For a related discussion from the perspective of social science, see Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Maria Cecilia Hwang, and Heather Ruth Lee, “What Is Human Trafficking? A Review Essay,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 37, no. 4 (2012): 1015–29 and Janie Chuang, “Exploitation Creep and the Unmaking of Hu man Trafficking Law,” American Journal of International Law 108, no. 1 (2014): 606–49.

Finally, long before policy makers and media began to shift attention from ‘sex trafficking’ to labor trafficking, historians have identified “white slavery” and ‘the traffic in women’ as phenomena and concepts deeply related to women’s migrant, exploited, and intimate labor. This reality went largely unnamed—trafficking obscured as much if not more than it revealed—but through studies of women’s migration and women’s labor in domestic service, care work, and work in more formal sectors, historians have been able to contextualize the conditions under which women were rendered vulnerable to sexual and labor exploitation within prostitution. As the scholarship matures, it is clear that the history of trafficking further complicates the idea of “free” and “unfree” labor. This research helps us to understand the conceptual and structural links between trafficking and slavery, and contextualizes trafficking in the context of labor migrations in the GlobalTraffickingSouth.76may be a useless—or at least an incredibly tricky—category of historical analysis, but it has nonetheless profoundly shaped our ideas about migration, gender, labor, sex and crime for a century or more. The term and criminal category continue to shape national and international responses to migration. At the vanguard of internationalism, and inherently transnational, trafficking’s ambiguity is the defining feature of its past, and this ambiguity has created messy social realities. Trafficking’s definition and its history remains largely uninterrogated in policy and law-making circles today, and media, politicians, and internationalists alike see trafficking as a naturalized, normative category rather than a discursive, tangly idea with a long and complex past. This may be one of the reasons that exploitative labor and the carceral anti-trafficking movement—the poison, and the supposed cure—both continue to have such a harmful effect on the lives of vulner able migrants. This is surely one of the great ironies of trafficking’s present.

2Judith R Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Alain Corbin, Women for

Notes

Journal of Women ’s History30 Winter Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990); Donna J. Guy, Sex & Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991); Luise White, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Mary Gibson, Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860–1915 (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1986).

5Anne Summers, “Which Women? What Europe? Josephine Butler and the In ternational Abolitionist Federation,” History Workshop Journal 1, no. 62 (2006): 214–31.

Malte Fuhrmann, “‘Western Perversions’ at the Threshold of Felicity: The European Prostitutes of Galata-Pera (1870–1915),” History & Anthropology 21, no. 2 (June 2010): 159–72; Molly McGregor Watson, “The Trade in Women: ‘White Slav ery’ and the French Nation, 1899–1939” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2000); Paul Knepper, “The ‘White Slave Trade’ and the Music Hall Affair in 1930s Malta,” Journal of Contemporary History 44, no. 2 (2009): 205–20; Petra de Vries, “‘White Slaves’ in a Colonial Nation: The Dutch Campaign against the Traffic in Women in the Early Twentieth Century,” Social and Legal Studies 14, no. 22 (2005): 39–60; Rachael Attwood, “Stopping the Traffic: The National Vigilance Association and the International Fight against the ‘White Slave’ Trade (1899– c. 1909),” Women’s History Review 24, no. 3 (June 2015): 325–50; Rachael Attwood, “Vice beyond the Pale: Representing ‘White Slavery’ in Britain, c.1880– 1912” (Ph.D diss., University College London, 2013); Cecily Devereux, “‘The Maiden Tribute’ and the Rise of the White Slave in the Nineteenth Century: The Making of an Imperial Construct,” Victorian Review 26, no. 2 (2000): 1–23; Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (London: Virago, 1992); Deborah Gorham, “The ‘Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’ Re-Examined:Child Prostitution and the Idea of Childhood in Late-Victorian England,” Victorian Studies 21, no. 3 (1978): 353–80.

7Jessica R. Pliley, “Claims to Protection: The Rise and Fall of Feminist Aboli tionism in the League of Nations’ Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, 1919–1936,” Journal of Women’s History 22, no. 4 (2010): 90–113; Stephanie A. Limon

Donna J. Guy, White Slavery and Mothers Alive and Dead: The Troubled Meet ing of Sex, Gender, Public Health, and Progress in Latin America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000); Guy, Sex & Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991); Edward J. Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight against White Slavery 1870–1939 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1982). See also Victor A. Mirelman, “The Jewish Community Versus Crime: The Case of White Slavery in Buenos Aires,” Jewish Social Studies 46, no. 2 (1984): 145–68.

Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (London: Routledge, 2003); Stephen Legg, Prostitution and the Ends of Empire: Scale, Governmentalities, and Interwar India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014). See also newer work from Paul Kramer, “The Darkness That Enters the Home: The Politics of Prostitution during the Philippine-American War,” in Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, ed. Ann Laura Stoler (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 366–404 and Christine Elizabeth Firpo, Black Market Business: Selling Sex in Northern Vietnam, 1920–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020).

10Jessica R. Pliley, “Protecting the Young and the Innocent: Age, Consent, and the Enforcement of the White Slave Traffic Act,” in Childhood Slavery Before and After Emancipation, ed. Anne Mae Duane (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 156–76.

11Harald Fischer-Tiné, “‘White Women Degrading Themselves to the Lowest Depths’: European Networks of Prostitution and Colonial Anxieties in British India and Ceylon ca. 1880-1914,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 40, no. 2 (2003): 163–90; Philippa Levine, “‘A Multitude of Unchaste Women’: Prostitution in the British Empire,” Journal of Women’s History 15, no. 4 (2004): 159–63; Álvarez-Castro, “Transatlantic Sex Trafficking and Imperial Anxiety.”

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 31 celli, The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).

9Gunther Peck, “White Slavery and Whiteness: A Transnational View of the Sources of Working-Class Radicalism and Racism.”Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 1, 4 (2004): 41–64; and Gunther Peck, “Feminizing White Slavery in the United States: Marcus Braun and the Transnational Traffic in White Bodies, 1890–1910,”in Workers Across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History, ed. Leon Fink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 222–41.

8Kristofer Allerfeldt, “Marcus Braun and ‘White Slavery’: Shifting Perceptions of People Smuggling and Human Trafficking in America at the Turn of the Twen tieth Century,” Journal of Global Slavery 4, no. 3 (2019): 343–71; Luis Álvarez-Castro, “Transatlantic Sex Trafficking and Imperial Anxiety in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Fiction: Trata de blancas (1889) and Carne importada (1891),” Hispanic Review 86, no. 1 (2018): 25–44; Rachael Attwood, “Lock Up Your Daughters! Male Activists, ‘Patriotic Domesticity’ and the Fight Against Sex Trafficking in England, 1880–1912,” Gender & History 27, no. 3 (November 2015); Attwood, “Stopping the Traffic”; Jo Doezema, Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking (London: Zed Books, 2010); Brian Donovan, White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender, and Anti-Vice Activism, 1887–1917 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Nora Glick man, “The Jewish White Slave Trade in Latin American Writings,” American Jewish Archives 34, no. 2 (1983): 178–89; Mara L. Keire, “The Vice Trust: A Reinterpretation of the White Slavery Scare in the United States, 1907-1917,” Journal of Social History 35, no. 1 (2001): 5–41; Eric Olund, “Traffic in Souls: The ‘New Woman,’Whiteness and Mobile Self-Possession,” Cultural Geographies 16, no. 4 (2009): 485–504; Joyce Outshoorn, “The Political Debates on Prostitution and Trafficking of Women,” International Studies in Gender, State and Society 12, no. 1 (2005): 141–55; Rachel Sch reiber, “Before Their Makers and Their Judges: Prostitutes and White Slaves in the Political Cartoons of the ‘Masses’ (New York, 1911–1917),” Feminist Studies 35, no. 1 (2009): 161–93; Julia Laite, “Justifiable Sensationalism,” Media History 20, no. 2 (April 2014): 126–45,; Gretchen Soderlund, Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism, 1885–1917 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2013); Gretchen Soderlund, “Running from the Rescuers: New US Crusades against Sex Trafficking and the Rhetoric of Abolition,” NWSA Journal 17, no. 3 (2011): 64–87; Gretchen Soderlund, “Covering Urban Vice: The New York Times,” White Slavery,” and the Construction of Journalistic Knowledge,” Critical Studies in Media Commu nication 19, no. 4 (2005): 438–60; Gretchen Soderlund, “The Rhetoric of Revelation: Sex Trafficking and the Journalistic Expose,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 2, no. 2 (2011): 193–211.

17Julia Martínez, “A Female Slave Zone? Historical Constructions of Traffic in Asian Women,” in Slaving Zones: Cultural Identities, Ideologies, and Institutions in the Evolution of Global Slavery, ed. Jeff Flynn-Paul and Damien Alan Pargas (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 309–35; Francesca Biancani, Sex Work in Colonial Egypt Women, Modernity and the Global Economy (London: Bloomsbury, 2018); Liat Kozma, Global Women, Co lonial Ports: Prostitution in the Interwar Middle East (Albany: SUNY Press, 2016); Liat Kozma, “Women’s Migration for Prostitution in the Interwar Middle East and North Africa,” Journal of Women’s History 28, no. 3 (2016): 93–113; Johan Mathew, Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016); Caroline Séquin, “Prostitution and the Policing of Race in the French Atlantic, 1848–1947” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2019). 18Julia Laite, “Traffickers and Pimps in the Era of White Slavery,” Past & Pres ent 237, no. 1 (2017): 237–69; Mary Tin Yi Lui, “Saving Young Girls from Chinatown: White Slavery and Women’s Suffrage, 1910-1920,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 18, no. 3 (2009): 393–417; Jenny Clegg, Fu Manchu and the ‘Yellow Peril’: The Making of a Racist Myth (Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books, 1994); Brian Donovan, “‘Yellow Slavery’ and Donaldina Cameron’s Mission,” in White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender, and Anti-Vice Activism, 1887–1917 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006),110-128.

12Philip Howell, Geographies of Regulation: Policing Prostitution in NineteenthCentury Britain and the Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Journal of Women ’s History32 Winter

16Mir Yarfitz, Impure Migration: Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina (New York: Rutgers University Press, 2019).

19Nancy Wingfield, The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Philippa Hetherington, “‘The Highest Guardian of the Child’ International Criminology and the Russian Fight against Transnational Obscenity, 1885–1925,” Russian History 3, no. 3-4 (2016): 275–310; Sandy F. Chang, “Across the South Seas: Gender, Intimacy, and Chinese Migration to British Malaya, 1877–1940” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2020). See also Johanna S. Ransmeier, Sold People: Traffickers and Family Life in North China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).

13Attwood, “Vice beyond the Pale.”

15Paul Knepper, “British Jews and the Racialisation of Crime in the Age of Empire,” British Journal of Criminology 47, no. 1 (2007): 61–79; Paul Knepper, “‘Jewish Trafficking’ and London Jews in the Age of Migration.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 6, no. 3 (2007): 239–56.

14Elisa Camiscioli, “Black Migrants, White Slavery: Métissage in the Metropole and Beyond,” in Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 99–128; Kate Marsh, “‘La Nouvelle Activité des Trafiquants de Femmes’: France, Le Havre and the Politics of Trafficking, 1919–1939,” Contemporary European History 26, no. 1 (2017): 23–48; Mir Yarfitz, Impure Migration: Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 2019).

28 Sonja Dolinsek and Philippa Hetherington, “Socialist Internationalism and Decolonizing Moralities in the UN Anti-Trafficking Regime, 1947–1954,” Journal of

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 33 20For more on intimate labor and women’s migration, see for instance, Eileen Boris, Making the Woman Worker Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919–2019 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

25Jean-Michel Chaumont, Magaly Rodríguez García, and Paul Servais, eds., Trafficking in Women 1924-1926: The Paul Kinsie Reports for the League of Nations Vol I (Geneva: United Nations Publications, 2017). 26Jean-Michel Chaumont, Le mythe de la traite des blanches: enquête sur la fabrica tion d’un fléau (Paris: La Decouverte, 2009); Jessica R. Pliley, “Ambivalent Abolitionist Legacies: The League of Nations’ Investigations into Sex Trafficking, 1927–1934,” in Fighting Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking: History and Contemporary Policy, ed. Genevieve LeBaron, Jessica R. Pliley, and David W. Blight (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 97–118; Paul Knepper, “The Investigation into the Traffic in Women by the League of Nations: Sociological Jurisprudence as an International Social Project,” Law and History Review 34, no. 1 (2016): 45–73; Paul Knepper, “Mea suring the Threat of Global Crime: Insights from Research by the League of Nations into the Traffic in Women” Criminology 50, no. 3 (2012): 777–809.

22Attwood, “Stopping the Traffic”; Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast: English Feminism and Sexual Morality, 1885–1914 (London: Penguin Books, 1995); Julia Laite, Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London, 1885–1960 (Bas ingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

23Daniel Gorman, “Empire, Internationalism, and the Campaign against the Traffic in Women and Children in the 1920s,” Twentieth Century British History 19, no. 2 (2008): 186–216; Barbara Metzger, “Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Interwar Years; the League of Nations’ Combat of Traffic in Women and Children,” in Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, c.1880-1950, ed. Kevin Grant, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 54–79; Carol Miller, “‘Geneva–the Key to Equality’: Inter-War Feminists and the League of Na tions,” Women’s History Review 3, no. 2 (1994): 219–245.

21 Olund, “Traffic in Souls: The ‘New Woman,’ Whiteness and Mobile SelfPossession,” Cultural Geographies 16, no. 4 (October 2009): 485–504.

27Julia Laite, “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Women’s Labour Migration and Sex Trafficking in the Early Twentieth Century,” International Review of Social History 62, no. 1 (2017): 35–65; Report of the Special Body of Experts on the Traffic in Women and Children (Geneva: League of Nations, 1927).

24Katarina Leppänen, “Movement of Women: Trafficking in the Interwar Era,” Women’s Studies International Forum 30, no. 6 (2007): 523–33; Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking; Jeanne Morefield, “‘Families of Mankind’: British Liberty, League In ternationalism, and the Traffic in Women and Children,” History of European Ideas 46, no. 5 (2020): 681–96; Pliley, “Claims to Protection”; Magaly Rodríguez García, “The League of Nations and the Moral Recruitment of Women,” International Review of Social History 57 (2012), 97–128.

Journal of Women ’s History34 Winter the History of International Law/Revue d’histoire du droit international 21, no. 2 (2019): 212–38. See also, Elizabeth A. Faulkner, “Historical Evolution of the International Legal Responses to the Trafficking of Children: A Critique,” in The Palgrave Interna tional Handbook of Human Trafficking, ed. John Winterdyk and Jackie Jones (London: Springer, 2020), 79–95; Jo Doezema, “Who Gets to Choose? Coercion, Consent, and the UN Trafficking Protocol,” Gender & Development 10, no. 1 (2002): 20–27; E. Scully, “Pre-Cold War Traffic in Sexual Labor and Its Foes,” in Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 74–106.29Stephen

30 See, for instance, Magaly Rodríguez García, Lex Heerma van Voss, and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, eds., Selling Sex in World Cities: A Global History of Prostitution, 1600s-2000s (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Torsten Feys, “Transoceanic Shipping, Mass Migration, and the Rise of Modern-Day International Border Controls: A Histo riographical Appraisal,” Mobility in History: Yearbook of the Transnational Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility 7, no. 1 (2016): 151–62; Christiana Schettini, “South American Tours: Work Relations in the Entertainment Market in South Amer ica,” International Review of Social History, 57 (2012): 129–60. In the historiography, “international” refers specifically to the activities of international organizations, “transnational” to exchanges between countries/empires beyond/outside “inter nationalism.”

33Ashwini Tambe, Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2009).

For an extended discussion of these terms, see Akira Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013). 31Guy, White Slavery and Mothers Alive and Dead. See also Elisa Camiscioli, “La ‘traite des femmes,’ une histoire de migrations (France-Cuba, début du XXe siècle),” Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire, 51 (2020), 97–117. 32Chang, “Across the South Seas;” Martínez, “A Female Slave Zone?;” Susan Pederson, “The Maternalist Moment in British Colonial Policy: The Controversy over “Child Slavery” in Hong Kong, 1917–1941,” Past & Present 171, no. 1 (May 2001): 161–83; Christina Firpo and Agathe Laroche Goscha, “La traite des femmes et des enfants dans le Vietnam colonial (1920–1940), Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire no. 120 (October 2013): 113–24; Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics; Philip Howell, “Race, Space and the Regulation of Prostitution in Colonial Hong Kong,” Urban History 31, no. 2 (2004): 229–48; Chunghee Sarah Soh, “Women’s Sexual Labour and the State in Korean History,” Journal of Women’s History 15, no. 4 (2004): 170–77; Yuki Fujime, “Japanese Feminism and Commercialized Sex: The Union of Militarism and Prohibitionism,” Social Science Japan Journal 9, no. 1 (2006): 33–50; Yuki Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the U.S. Occupation (New York: Routledge, 2002); Chunghee Sarah Soh, The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

Legg, “The Life of Individuals as Well as of Nations”: International Law and the League of Nations’ Anti-Trafficking Governmentalities,” Leiden Journal of International Law 25, no. 3 (2012): 647–64.

Frederick K. Grittner, White Slavery: Myth, Ideology and American Law (New York: Garland, 1990); for an overview of the scholarship on England see Laura Lammasniemi, “Anti-White Slavery Legislation and its Legacies in England,” AntiTrafficking Review, no. 9 (2017): 64–76.

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 35 34Eva Payne, “Purifying the World: Americans and International Sexual Reform, 1865–1933” (PhD diss., Harvard, 2017); Jessica R. Pliley, Policing Sexual ity: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Gunther Peck, “Migrant Labor and Global Commons: Transnational Subjects, Visions, and Methods,” International Labor and Working-Class History 85 (Spring 2014): 118–37.

40Jean Allain, “White Slave Traffic in International Law,” Journal of Trafficking and Human Exploitation 1, no. 1 (2017): 1–40.

39Benedict Kingsburg, Nico Krisch and Richard B. Stewart, ‘The Emergence of Global Administrative Law,’ Law and Contemporary Problems 68, no. 3/4 (2005): 19–20.

42Dolinsek and Hetherington, “Cold war and International Law.”

41Allain, “White Slave Traffic.”

Jessica R. Pliley, Robert Kramm, and Harald Fischer-Tiné, eds., Global AntiVice Activism, 1890–1950: Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and ‘Immorality’ (New York: Cam bridge University Press, 2016); Laura Lammasniemi, “International Legislation on White Slavery and Anti-Trafficking in the Early Twentieth Century,” in The Palgrave International Handbook of Human Trafficking, eds. John Winterdyk and Jackie Jones (London: Springer, 2020), 67–78; Pliley, Policing Sexuality; Jessica R. Pliley, “Vice Queens and White Slaves: The FBI’s Crackdown on Elite Brothel Madams in 1930s New York City,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 25, no. 1 (2014): 137–167.

35Wingfield, The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria; Knepper, “The ‘White Slave Trade’”; Fuhrmann, “‘Western Perversions’ at the Threshold of Felic ity”; Keely Stauter-Halsted, “Moral Panic and the Prostitute in Partitioned Poland: Middle-Class Respectability in Defense of the Modern Nation,” Slavic Review 68, no. 3 (2009): 557–81; Keely Stauter-Halsted, “Sex at the Border: Trafficking as a Migration Problem in Partitioned Poland,” in Migration and Mobility in the Modern Age: Refugees, Travelers, and Traffickers in Europe and Eurasia, ed. Anika Walke, Jan Musekamp, and Nicole Svobodny (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 164–87.

36Philippa Hetherington, “Victims of the Social Temperament: Prostitution, Migration and the Traffic in Women from Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, 1885–1935” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2014).

37Liat Kozma, “Regulated Brothels in Mandatory Syria and Lebanon: Between the Traffic in Women and the Permanent Mandate Commissions,” in The League of Nations and Social Issues, eds. Magaly Rodríguez García, David Rodogno and Liat Kozma (New York: The United Nations, 2016), 153–65; Stephen Legg, “Of Scales, Networks and Assemblages: The League of Nations Apparatus and the Scalar Sovereignty of the Government of India,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geog raphers 34, 2 (2009) 234–53; Stephen Legg, Prostitution and the Ends of Empire: Scale, Governmentalities, and Interwar India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).

49Grace Peña Delgado, “Border Control and Sexual Policing: White Slavery and Prostitution along the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1903–1910,” The Western Historical Quarterly 43, no. 2 (2012): 157–78; Pliley, Policing Sexuality; Marsh, “‘La Nouvelle Activité Des Trafiquants de Femmes’”; Elisa Camiscioli, Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migration, unpublished manuscript.

Aristide Zolberg, “The Archaeology of ‘Remote Control,’” in Migration Control in the North Atlantic World: The Evolution of State Practices in Europe and the United States from the French Revolution to the Inter-War Period, eds. Andreas Fahrmeir, Olivier Faron and Patrick Weil (New York: Berghahn books, 2003): 195–222; Yukari Takai, “Navigating Transpacific Passages: Steamship Companies, State Regulators, and Transshipment of Japanese in the Early-Twentieth-Century Pacific Northwest,” Journal of American Ethnic History 30, no. 3 (2011): 7–34; Ethan Blue, “Finding Margins on Borders: Shipping Firms and Immigration Control across Settler Space,” Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities 5, no. 1 (2013): 1–2.

48Vicki Crinis, “Sex Trafficking to the Federated Malay States 1920–1940: From Migration for Prostitution to Victim or Criminal?,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 48, no. 2 (2020): 296–318.

46April Haynes, Tender Traffic: Intimate Labors in the Early American Republic (unpublished manuscript); Andrew Urban, Brokering Servitude: Migration and the Politics of Domestic Labor during the Long Nineteenth Century (New York: New York University Press, 2017).

50Kozma, Global Women, Colonial Ports; Christelle Taraud, “La réglementation de la prostitution, instrument de domination raciale,” in Histoire de l’Algérie à la période coloniale, 1830-1962, eds. Abderrahmane Bouchène, Jean-Pierre Peyroulou, Ounassa Siari Tengour, and Sylvie Thénault (Paris: La Découverte, 2014), 416–18; Séquin, “Prostitution and the Policing of Race.”

52Katherine Benton-Cohen, Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018); David Petruccelli, “Pimps, Prostitutes and Policewomen: The Polish Women Police and the International Campaign against the Traffic in Women and Children between the World Wars,” Contemporary European History 24, no. 3 (2015): 333–50; Philippa Levine, “‘Walking the Streets in a Way No Decent Woman Should’: Women Police in World War I,” Journal of Modern History 66, no. 1 (1994): 34–78; Eric Cimino, “On the Border Line of Tragedy: White Slavery, Moral Protection, and the Travelers’ Aid Society of New York, 1885-1917” (PhD diss., Stonybrook University, New York, 2012).

Journal of Women ’s History36 Winter 44See, for instance, Eithne Lubhéid, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2002).

51Grace Peña Delgado, “Border Control and Sexual Policing”; Torrie Hes ter, Deportation: The Origins of US Policy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).

47Paula Bartley, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 1860–1914 (London: Routledge, 2000); Maria Luddy, Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

56Julia Laite, Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London, 1885-1960 (Basingstoke, Palgrave: 2011); Jessica R. Pliley, “Trafficked White Slaves and Misleading Marriages in the Campaigns against Sex Trafficking, 1885–1927,” Federal History 11 (April 2019): 60–82; Mir Yarfitz, “Uprooting the Seeds of Evil: Ezras Noschim and Jewish Marriage Regulation, Morality Certificates, and Degenerate Prostitute Mothers in 1930s Buenos Aires,” in The New Jewish Argentina: Facets of Jewish Experiences in the Southern Cone, eds. Adriana Brodsky and Raanan Rein (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 55–80; Mir Yarfitz, “Polacos, White Slaves, and Stille Chuppahs: Organized Prostitution and the Jews of Buenos Aires, 1890–1939” (PhD diss., University of California Los Angeles, 2012).

The critique of “ventriloquism of agency” comes especially from settler colonial studies. See Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of An thropology (New York: Continuum Books, 1999).

55Catherine Christensen, “Mujeres Públicas: American Prostitutes in Baja California, 1910–1930,” Pacific Historical Review 82, no. 2 (2013): 215–47; Kazuhiro Oharazeki, Japanese Prostitutes in the North American West, 1887–1920 (Seattle: Uni versity of Washington Press, 2018); Nora Glickman, The Jewish White Slave Trade and the Untold Story of Raquel Liberman (London: Routledge, 2012); Cristiana Schettini, “Between Rio’s Red-Light District and the League of Nations: Immigrants and Sex Work in 1920s Rio de Janeiro,” International Review of Social History 62, special issue no. S25 (2017): 105–32.

62Emily Alyssa Owens, “Fantasies of Consent: Black Women’s Sexual Labor in 19th Century New Orleans” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2015). See also Jes sica Marie Johnson, Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) and Marisa J. Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 37 53Teresa Billington Greig, “The Truth about White Slavery,” The English Review June (1913): 1. 54See, for instance, Christina E. Firpo, Black Market Business: Selling Sex in Northern Vietnam, 1920–1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020).

Keely Stauter-Halsted, The Devil’s Chain: Prostitution and Social Control in Partitioned Poland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015).

59Julia Laite, “Traffickers and Pimps in the Era of White Slavery,” Past and Present 237, no. 1 (2017): 237–69.

60Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988) 271–313; Walter Johnson, “On Agency,” Journal of Social History 37, no.1 (2003): 113–124; Joan W. Scott, “The Evidence of Experi ence.” Critical Inquiry 17, no.4 (1991): 773–97.

57Elisa Camisicioli, “Coercion and Choice: The ‘Traffic in Women’ between France and Argentina in the Early Twentieth Century,” French Historical Studies 42, no. 3 (2019): 483–507.

65Gunther Peck, “Feminizing White Slavery in the United States.”

70Eileen Boris and Jennifer N. Fish, “‘Slaves No More’: Making Global Labour Standards for Domestic Works,” Feminist Studies 40, no. 2 (2014): 411–43.

63Gunther Peck, Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West, 1880–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Journal of Women ’s History38 Winter

69Boris, Making the Woman Worker

72Carol S. Vance, “Innocence and Experience: Melodramatic Narratives of Sex Trafficking and Their Consequences for Law and Policy,” History of the Present 2, no. 2 (2012): 200–218. 73Marisa J. Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives 74 Julia Ann Laite, “The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, Abolition ism, and Prostitution Law in Britain, 1915–1959,” Women’s History Review 17, no. 2 (2008): 75207–23.Elizabeth

68Elisa Camiscioli, “Trafficking Histories: Women’s Migration and Sexual Labor in the Early Twentieth Century,” Deportate, Esuli, Profughe. Rivista Telematica di Studi Sulla Memoria Femminile 40 (2019): 1–13; Magaly Rodríguez García, “The League of Nations and the Moral Recruitment of Women,” International Review of Social History 57, no. 20 (2012): 97–128; Howell, Geographies of Regulation.

67Magaly Rodríguez García, “Child Slavery, Sex Trafficking or Domestic Work? The League of Nations and Its Analysis of the Mui Tsai System,” in Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers, eds., Dirk Hoerder, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, and Silke Neunsinger (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 428–50; Cristiana Schettini, “South American Tours: Work Relations in the Entertainment Market in South America,” International Review of Social History 57, Special Issue 20 (2012): 132–37.

64Adam McKeown, “How the Box Became Black: Brokers and the Creation of the Free Migrant,” Pacific Affairs 85 (2012), 21–46 and Adam McKeown, Melan choly Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

66Boris, Making the Woman Worker; Rodríguez García, “The League of Nations and the Moral Recruitment of Women;” Julia Laite, “Between Scylla and Charybdis.”

71For a critical assessment of this changing discourse, see Joel Quirk, The AntiSlavery Project From the Slave Trade to Human Trafficking (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) and Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg and James Brewer Stewart, eds. Human Bondage and Abolition: New Histories of Past and Present Slaveries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Bernstein, “Militarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism: The Politics of Sex, Rights, and Freedom in Contemporary Antitrafficking Campaigns,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 36, no. 1 (2010): 45–71; Elizabeth Bernstein, Brokered Subjects: Sex, Trafficking, and the Politics of Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019).

Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite2021 39 76Benjamin N. Lawrance and Richard L. Roberts, Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012); Robin Chapdelaine, “Girl Pawns, Brides & Slaves,” Child Trafficking in Southeastern Nigeria, 1920s,” in Children on the Move in Africa: Past and Present Experiences of Migration , eds. Elodie Razy, Marie Rodet, Robin Chapdelaine, Oluwole Coker, Kelly Duke-Bryant, Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2016) 51–66 and Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine, The Persistence of Slavery: An Economic History of Child Trafficking in Nigeria (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2021).

Deportation as Rescue: White Slaves, Women Reformers, and the US Bureau of Immigration Eva Payne

In the spring of 1914, the US Bureau of Immigration sent Kate Waller Barrett, a well-known American medical doctor, social reformer, and suffragist, on a three-month trip across Europe to study the sources of the “white slave traffic.” Although Barrett stressed her interest in protecting the victims of white slavery, her report focused on the power of the US government to deport noncitizen women for their postentry sexual conduct. Barrett argued that sexually immoral immigrant women could be redeemed through the process of deportation if they were cared for by women immigration officers with the cooperation of women’s voluntary organizations around the world. This article examines how Barrett and the Bureau worked together to reconfigure deportation as a protective rather than a punitive act. In doing so, they expanded the authority of white maternalist women’s organizations to police poor migrant women and women of color domestically, and to pursue US government interests in the international arena.

In February 1910, newspapers reported the harrowing story of Warwara Karloszczak, an Austrian immigrant who had been in the United States for a year and awaited deportation under a “new ‘white slave’ law.” In an attempt to escape from the detention facility where she was being held, Karloszczak “squeezed her way through a narrow window opening thirty feet above the ground, clambered down a waterspout, ran to Atlantic av enue, was captured by a policeman, dove off the wharf into the harbor, was pulled to safety on the end of a rope and removed, semi-conscious, to the hospital.” Karloszczak’s case shows the lengths to which some women went to avoid deportation, while illustrating the paradox of the white slave nar rative. While the narrative was premised on the idea that prostitutes were powerless, virginal victims who had been tricked or forced to sell sex and thus needed to be rescued, it also painted foreign prostitutes and women of color as threats to the US nation-state. This tension was present, although unspoken, in the brief article that detailed Karloszczak’s case: was she the victim of an unnamed man, a dangerous prostitute, or a casualty of the US deportation apparatus itself?1

Congress conferred upon the recently founded Bureau of Immigration the power to prevent sexually immoral immigrants from entering the coun try and to deport noncitizens accused of participating in the white slave traffic, as either supposed victims or perpetrators, at any time after their entry. At the same time, the bureau, tarnished by debates over immigra tion restrictions and accusations of mistreating immigrants, sought to gain endorsements from women’s organizations to bolster its authority and improve its reputation. The issue of trafficking had galvanized national and transnational women’s organizations, including the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the International Abolitionist Federation, and Barrett’s own National Florence Crittenton Mission, in the late nineteenth century.

The early twentieth-century crusade against white slavery gave both the US government and women’s voluntary organizations new authority.

Yet Barrett argued that if deportation proceedings were carried out under the supervision of white middle-class women like herself, “the truest kindness to the individual is conserved by placing her in the hands of the Govern ment.”

Such conflicting conceptions of the women arrested and deported under white slave laws troubled both reform-minded, middle-class, white American women and the US Bureau of Immigration. In the spring of 1914, the bureau sent Kate Waller Barrett, a well-known American medical doc tor, social reformer, and suffragist, on a three-month trip across Europe to study the sources of the white slave traffic that threatened American shores.

Women’s organizations founded rescue homes for prostitutes, sponsored undercover investigations of prostitution, successfully lobbied governments to pass legislation prohibiting state-regulated prostitution and raising the age of consent to sex, and promoted international agreements to stop traf ficking. By the turn of the century, while continuing to work through their own voluntary organizations, American women also sought to harness the power of the state by shaping policy that affected women and children, de

Working together, Barrett and the Immigration Bureau reconfigured deportation as a protective rather than a punitive act, thus expanding the authority of white maternalist women’s organizations to police poor mi grant women and women of color in the name of the federal government.2

Barrett was tasked with the seemingly contradictory mission of discerning how the US government could protect white slaves while also protecting the nation from them. Barrett’s final report and policy recommendations resolved the contradiction by reframing deportation not as a punishment for the victims of the white slave traffic but instead as a means of rescuing and reforming them. She acknowledged that deporting trafficking victims could stoke public outrage, noting that “the picture of a deported woman is so pathetic that it immediately arouses the sympathy of the most callous.”

Eva Payne2021 41

Barrett’s investigation of white slavery for the Immigration Bureau merged her commitment to rescuing and rehabilitating prostitutes with her aspirations for enlarging middle-class white women’s opportunities in both the national and international political spheres. As a result of Barrett’s recommendations, in 1915 the bureau amended Rule 22 of the Immigra tion Rules to “humanize” the treatment of “immoral women and girls” during the deportation process by allowing white, middle-class women to oversee it. Barrett argued that the bureau should hire women agents

Like many women, Barrett came to antitrafficking work through her religious faith, her commitment to women’s rights, and her efforts to rescue and reform poor and working-class women. As a devout Christian, wife of an Episcopal minister, and mother of six, Barrett cared for the abandoned women who came to the church for help, eventually earning a medical degree so that she could better serve them. Raised in an enslaving family on a Virginia plantation, Barrett moved with her husband and children to Washington, DC, in 1894, which gave her new proximity to national politics. The following year, she cofounded the National Florence Crittenton Mission, an organization devoted to rescuing prostitutes and helping unwed mothers. An advocate for women’s political rights, Barrett was an early member of the all-white Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, served as president of the National Council of Women (NCW), and represented the United States at several meetings of the International Council of Women (ICW).4

amplified women’s organizations’ broader reform efforts on such issues as suffrage and national prohibition.

In addition to her long career in reform organizations, Barrett also had federal government experience. Barrett previously had worked for the Dillingham Commission, which conducted a sweeping multiyear study of immigration that included a report on white slavery. As historian Katherine Benton-Cohen has shown, the commission employed about two hundred women—more women than men—and put women into positions of relative power, allowing them to lead investigations and author reports. While Bar rett believed that immigration could benefit both immigrants and the United States, in her view only the right kinds of women should be allowed in, for as potential mothers, women had the power to shape the next generation of American citizens. Women like Barrett made new claims to political power and government employment through surveilling and reforming poor and working-class women, immigrant women, and women of color.5

Journal of Women ’s History42 Winter

manding that such state agencies as the Immigration Bureau employ them to oversee the treatment of women and children. This increased political visibility was particularly important at a time when many women, including Barrett, were fighting for the right to vote. The war against white slavery

Eva Payne2021 43 to care for women throughout the deportation process and should part ner with women’s organizations in the United States and abroad. Barrett imagined a transnational community of middle-class white women who could claim political power through labor only they were qualified to do: rescuing prostitutes, while protecting their own nations from the scourge of immoral immigrant women.6

By forging partnerships between women’s organizations and the fed eral government, Barrett and women like her articulated a maternalist and statist feminism premised on the power of the state to police immigrant women’s sexuality. As Barrett endeavored to protect noncitizen women by ameliorating the hardships they faced as a result of their deportation, she also advocated for the fortification of the deportation apparatus that had inflicted those hardships in the first place. Through her work for the Im migration Bureau, Barrett incorporated the tradition of white middle-class women’s rescue work into the state’s deportation apparatus and framed deportation as a humanitarian act.

White Slavery and US Immigration Policy

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the fight against the white slave traffic spanned Europe and the Americas. Although it reflected states’ growing interests in controlling their borders and regulating their populations’ mobility, the fight’s contours varied according to the national context. In the United States, white slavery crystallized fears over the sexuality of single, potentially child-bearing immigrant women, who were arriving in greater numbers than ever before, as well as the changing racial and ethnic demographics of cities, with their growing populations of southern and eastern European immigrants and African Americans. Bar rett and other reformers used the term white slavery to connect their fight against migratory sexual labor to the successful abolition of chattel slavery. At the same time, the term purposely obscured the sexual violence Afri can American women experienced during and after slavery and centered native-born white women—and immigrant women, who were potentially white—as the true victims.7

The definition of a white slave was ambiguous in both public and legal discourse. Immigration officials and reformers often used the terms white slave and prostitute interchangeably. At times they distinguished be tween white slaves as victims forced into prostitution, particularly across national borders, and prostitutes as unsympathetic women whose sexual labor involved an element of choice. At the same time, they pushed for laws that defined a white slave as any woman brought across state or national

The concept of white slavery offered new legal strategies for limiting immigrant women’s mobility, combatting commercial sex, and solidifying the borders of the United States. From its inception, federal immigration law targeted women deemed sexually suspicious. The 1875 Page Act was designed to keep out Chinese and Japanese immigrants. It excluded prostitutes and those who “imported” them along with contract laborers and convicts. The 1903 Immigration Act was the first to include provisions for the deportation of prostitutes and procurers, making them deportable within three years of entry. Officials assumed that a woman who sold sex after her arrival must have done the same before entry, thus stamping a woman who sold sex even once a prostitute for life. The 1907 Immigra tion Act built on the 1903 act to exclude people suspected of a far broader range of sex-related offenses. It mandated the deportation of any woman who practiced prostitution “at any time” within three years of entering, although this section of the law would be struck down by the Supreme Court on technical grounds.9

Women’s limited access to US citizenship in the early twentieth century gave the deportation provisions of the 1910 Immigration Act even greater force. Until the 1920s and 1930s a woman’s citizenship was derivative of her father’s or husband’s nationality. Single women immigrants who were racially eligible for citizenship and of “good moral character” could

Journal of Women ’s History44 Winter lines to sell sex “with or without her consent,” rendering women’s volition immaterial.

While white slave laws applied to women of color, including Asian, Mexican, and Black women, white officials and reformers often saw them as willing prostitutes and thus as undeserving of protection or rescue.8

In response, Congress in 1910 passed two new laws to fight white slavery. The Mann White-Slave Traffic Act criminalized taking a woman across state or international lines for prostitution or “any other immoral purpose,” whether “with or without her consent.” Barrett and many women’s organizations immediately threw their support behind the Mann Act, offering to house women held for trial in charitable homes, which the Department of Justice soon authorized. The Mann Act was a domestically focused counterpart to the 1910 Immigration Act, passed only a few months earlier, which dramatically extended the government’s ability to deport those deemed sexually immoral. It declared a noncitizen woman deport able for prostitution-related offenses no matter how long she had been in the country. It also mandated the deportation of any noncitizen who ben efited from the earnings of prostitution, even indirectly. The 1907 and 1910 laws were the first of their kind to make noncitizens deportable for their postentry actions since the 1798 Alien Friends Act, which had allowed for the deportation of alien political dissidents.10

Eva Payne2021 45 file naturalization papers. But because of the cost and because citizenship conveyed limited benefits to women before the right to vote, the majority did not, making most immigrant women deportable if officials labeled them as prostitutes. Since Asian women were ineligible for naturalization in the first place, all were deportable if officials found they had practiced prostitution. But reformers and Immigration Bureau officials fretted that im migrant prostitutes could circumvent immigration restrictions by marrying American men to avoid deportation. Thus the 1917 Immigration Act denied citizenship to prostitutes married to US citizens, going so far as to infringe upon a white male citizen’s prerogative to bestow his citizenship upon his spouse in order to deport immigrant prostitutes who were also wives.11

The bureau’s focus on foreign women who sold sex belied the fact that in the early twentieth century the majority of those women were native born. Despite their relatively small numbers, immigration officials pursued noncitizen women who sold sex with vigor. They had broad discretion in deciding who might be a prostitute: women who owned too much cloth ing, admitted to an affair with a married man, or associated with “persons of questionable character” could be deported, and women of color faced particular scrutiny. Prostitutes constituted the second largest deportable category between 1902 and the First World War. The most deportations were of those deemed “likely to become a public charge.” Under this classification, officials deported and excluded thousands of people, including many women suspected of prostitution because such a charge required less evidence. From 1913 to 1918 the Immigration Bureau deported about four hundred people per year for involvement in the sex industry.12 These laws had very real consequences for women, who often experi enced deportation as a hardship. Even Barrett noted in a newspaper article that trafficking victims were “often afraid to tell of the guilty person lest the evidence lead to their own deportation.” Some women turned to diplomatic channels to avoid deportation. French women accused of prostitution in the United States appealed to French consular officials to repatriate them rather than face deportation proceedings.13 Other women challenged their deportation orders in the courts. Helena Bugajewitz appealed her deporta tion after her arrest in 1910. The Immigration Bureau alleged that she had been a prostitute when she entered the United States in 1905 and that she had been practicing prostitution since her arrival. Bugajewitz’s lawyers argued that if she was charged with the crime of prostitution, she had a right to trial. Her case reached the Supreme Court in 1913. The court upheld her deportation, arguing that a woman could be deported as a prostitute although she had not been convicted of prostitution and that deportation was not a punishment: it was simply “a refusal by the Government to harbor

While the feminist abolitionist position continued to be popu lar in Britain and continental Europe, by the early twentieth century most

As one judge charged, immigrants accused of sexual immorality were deported “upon the instigation of the inspector who acted as judge, jury, inquisitor, and police.” In the spring of 1911, outcry from German American organizations and newspapers around the country led Congress to hold a hearing about conditions at Ellis Island, where one witness reported, “women who are brought there, sound in body and mind and virtuous, are kept there like cattle.”15

Journal of Women ’s History46 Winter persons whom it does not want.”14 The legal fiction that deportation was not punishment, and therefore not subjected to the constitutional protections of due process, paved the way for both bureau officials and reformers like Barrett to argue that the process of deportation constituted the protection of vulnerable or victimized women.

At the same time Addams, like Barrett, argued that the solution to protecting immigrant women lay in extending the powers of the Bureau of Immigration. Women reformers’ reliance on state-based solutions marked a shift in the way US women’s organizations approached trafficking and prostitution.

Restrictive immigration laws generated controversy on multiple fronts. Immigrant and ethnic organizations, as well as members of the judicial branch, called attention to the poor treatment of detained immigrants, particularly women, and the lack of due process afforded to detained im migrants.

Some US women reformers also spoke out against immigration restric tions that targeted women, arguing that deportation punished the female victims of white slavery. As the renowned settlement house founder Jane Addams noted, “Certainly the immigration laws might do better than to send a girl back to her parents, diseased and disgraced because America has failed to safeguard her virtue from the machinations of well-known but unrestrained criminals.” Addams related the example of a Russian girl living in Chicago whose former lover became jealous and told federal authorities that she had been a prostitute in Russia. The girl was eventually saved from deportation “with the greatest difficulty.” Addams lamented that if she had been sent back, she would have been forced to become a registered prostitute in Odessa. Such an outcome was particularly abhorrent because officials required registered prostitutes to submit to invasive genital examinations, a procedure reformers termed “surgical rape.”16

In the nineteenth century many women reformers in Europe and the United States rejected laws that treated prostitutes as a special class, whether through legalizing and regulating prostitution or through criminal izing the act of selling sex. They believed that such laws harmed women and infringed on their civil liberties, an approach scholars have termed feminist abolitionism

Eva Payne2021 47

European policy makers criticized the United States’ strict deportation laws for undermining women’s right to mobility, while denying the victims of sex trafficking the protections they deserved under the international agreement. When investigator Marcus Braun traveled throughout Europe, French official Félicien Hennequin told him that “prostitutes have a perfect right to travel and to circulate freely from and into France” and stated that he would not help enforce US immigration laws. In fact, he accused the United States of violating the 1904 agreement by deporting women who had been lured to the country under false pretenses. “We must give such a woman protection,” he argued, repatriating her only at her request. From Hennequin’s perspective, deportation was punishment rather than protec tion. These tensions over the difference between voluntary repatriation and forced deportation would continue to shape international efforts to fight white slavery into the interwar years.19

The 1904 International Agreement for the Suppression of the “White Slave Traffic,” of which the United States was a signatory, included provisions for repatriation. Repatriation signified returning a migrant to her country of citizenship, while deportation, in the context of US immigration law, indicated removal to her last point of departure before entering the United States. The 1904 agreement stated that while repatriation was desirable, it should also be voluntary. Notably, the agreement called for charitable or ganizations to care for women until they departed for their home country. This provision built on the work of such women’s organizations as Travelers Aid Societies, which emerged in the late nineteenth century in the United States and Europe to protect single migrant women from the sexual danger they faced during transit. While the language of the 1904 agreement was paternalistic, it acknowledged that some women chose to migrate and sell sex and did not sanction their removal.18

American women reformers saw the state as an ally and worked through its channels in their antitrafficking and antiprostitution campaigns. They viewed the abuse of women that occurred during deportation proceedings and women’s attempts to avoid deportation as evidence that more middleclass women should be employed by the federal bureaucracy to properly care for immigrant women rather than as an indictment of immigration laws policy and its harsh deportation provisions also led to diplomatic tensions. European officials criticized the deportation of prostitutes from the United States regardless of the women’s own wishes.

USthemselves.17immigration

Journal of Women ’s History48 Winter

Investigating Immigrants

Investigations were a cornerstone of Progressive Era reform, viewed by state officials and reformers alike as the best way to identify and solve pressing social problems. They were often conducted through public-private partnerships, which benefited both government agencies and the organi zations and individuals who carried them out. In the face of national and international scrutiny of US deportation policy, Immigration Bureau officials looked to women’s organizations for help. In the spring of 1914, Anthony Caminetti, the recently appointed immigration commissioner, wrote to Bar rett expressing his desire to hire her as a special agent who would study white slavery in the United States and Europe. Barrett, Caminetti believed, could help the bureau to effect the “efficient and at the same time humane disposition of the cases of immoral women.” Barrett’s investigation would also provide an opportunity for Caminetti to improve his own image along with that of the Immigration Bureau. His son had recently been found guilty of violating the Mann Act by taking his teenage mistress from Sacramento to Reno. A national scandal erupted when state officials accused Caminetti of using his position to interfere in the case.20

Both Caminetti and Barrett understood that Barrett’s position as a woman, mother, physician, and president of the NCW could allow her to carry out what was in fact a sensitive political and diplomatic mission on behalf of the US government, while appearing to be simply engaged in women’s work for other women. In contrast to a man like Marcus Braun, Barrett could work through state channels without European governments perceiving her as intervening in state matters. When she was studying the politically sensitive issue of international trafficking—at once a humanitar ian problem about the treatment of women and a political problem about the management of borders and populations—Barrett’s gender was an asset. If humanitarianism was gendered as an appropriate feminine arena and statecraft was gendered as a male realm, as a woman Barrett could pursue US state interests under the guise of humanitarianism, while also advanc ing her own policy goals.21

Barrett started her investigation by meeting with US officials, including the secretary of labor, the commissioner general of immigration, the acting commissioner of Ellis Island, and members of the Immigration Service. She spoke with more than forty national philanthropic societies and consulted with prominent women around the country, including Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association, and famed suffragist and peace advocate May Wright Sewall. She interviewed women held at Ellis Island for deportation. On her way to Europe, Barrett scrutinized the conditions of immigrant women on steamships bound for

When Barrett reported the results of her investigation, published in the Immigration Bureau’s Annual Report, she shrewdly played on the bu reau’s concerns about its domestic and international image. While Barrett did not accuse immigration officials of sexual misconduct, she noted that having male officials handle the deportation cases of sexually immoral im migrant women aroused the public’s suspicion. This strategic argument also reflected real concerns about the sexual violence immigrant women faced when traveling, something Barrett likely learned through her work for the Dillingham Commission. The deported woman was such a “pathetic” figure, Barrett noted, that “a single case of unnecessary suffering is sufficient to call down criticism upon the Government” and could prevent public and legislative support for new immigration restrictions. American citizens, Barrett found, had even refused to cooperate with immigration officials in locating deportable women because of concerns about their treatment.24

In addition to her official state visits, Caminetti asked Barrett to secure cooperation from national and international women’s organizations to help the Immigration Bureau handle cases of trafficking. Both Caminetti and Barrett believed that such nonstate channels could be more effective than official ones in obtaining international cooperation. Working with women’s organizations gave Barrett “unusual opportunities for finding out the true conditions” rather than just what government officials wanted her to see.

As Caminetti noted, members of women’s organizations had “individual personal interest” in cases of the white slave traffic. Cooperation with these organizations would be “much more effective” than working with foreign government agencies, “whose interest in the cases is often strictly official.”

While male officials often cited women’s sensitive nature as a reason why they should not engage in politics, women argued that their womanly instincts uniquely equipped them to combat international white slavery. Barrett argued that women could explain US immigration law to foreign governments who were hostile to it, noting that “women have both the leisure and the social instinct to inform themselves upon these subjects, and most of the problems appeal more readily to women than to men.” National women’s organizations could communicate US law to their governments in a positive light, in ways that official channels could not.23

Eva Payne2021 49 the United States. Once there, armed with letters of introduction from the US secretary of state, she met with officials, police, diplomats, and repre sentatives of philanthropic organizations in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, France, Great Britain, Holland, and Belgium to facilitate cooperation with the US government against traffickers. She also studied the condition of deported women once they returned to their native countries and investigated whether officials forced them to register as prostitutes.22

Barrett described how deportations negatively shaped European perceptions of the US government. While she flatteringly declared that Europeans were aware of the “kindly and merciful interpretation and ap plication of our immigration laws,” she also recounted European officials’ concerns about US immigration policy. For example, a British immigration official raised the troubling case of Russian women deported from the United States to their port of embarkation in Britain. The British government then deported them to Russia through a German border station. Because the women refused to enter Russia, where they would be punished for leaving the country without passports, the German government deported them back to Britain, where authorities incarcerated them. Moreover, European governments generally opposed the United States’ restrictive immigration legislation, even as those governments worked to secure their own borders. In particular, eastern European governments were keen to promote their citizens as “white” Europeans who were the social and political equals of western European and North American workers. US immigration laws undercut these aspirations.25

Journal of Women ’s History50 Winter

The solutions Barrett proposed rested on placing women and women’s organizations in positions of state authority. The Immigration Bureau could improve the public’s perception of deportation and rehabilitate sexually immoral women if it appointed women officers at each immigration station to oversee women’s cases. Placing one woman supervisor for every one hundred female immigrants on all steamships that landed in or departed from American ports and posting a woman inspector on every transconti nental train would prevent women from becoming “unfit for citizenship” during their journey. To implement this solution, the bureau would have to hire approximately thirty-six hundred women just to monitor steamships coming to the United States and hundreds more for departing ships, thus providing unprecedented government employment for women. Barrett argued that women held for deportation should be placed with a private women’s organization if possible, preferably of their nationality and reli gion, rather than in jails. This suggestion gave state recognition to immi grant women’s groups and Jewish and Catholic women’s organizations, in addition to the white middle-class reform organizations to which Barrett belonged. Placed in the care of other women, a female immigrant could be held longer before deportation so that she could give evidence to convict “those contributory to her delinquency,” leading to more deportations for pimping and trafficking.

The US government should also solicit the cooperation of European women’s organizations, Barrett advised, to care for deported women during their travels and after they returned to their native countries. They could also pressure their governments to adopt such stricter emigration restric

In her speeches to the assembly, Barrett admitted that deportation could cause a woman to suffer, but she blamed the imperfect way US immigration laws were carried out rather than the laws themselves. She

Barrett’s vision for official cooperation between women’s organiza tions and the Immigration Bureau reflected the goals of both domestic and transnational women’s organizations. It built on the provision of the 1904 International Agreement for the Suppression of the “White Slave Traffic” for charitable organizations to care for women who chose to repatriate. It reiterated women’s organizations’ calls for the appointment of women as inspectors at train stations and ports to protect vulnerable women. It also reflected the increasingly close relationship of US women’s organizations to law enforcement at both the municipal and federal levels early in the twentieth century, as police departments hired women, and the Depart ment of Justice used Florence Crittenton Mission homes to house women witnesses in Mann Act trials. Barrett’s report claimed that women’s special abilities to rescue other women meant that they should play a crucial role in shaping and implementing US immigration policy domestically, as well as in international cooperation to carry it out abroad.28

Eva Payne2021 51 tions as raising the age at which a girl traveling alone could emigrate or be allowed admission into another country. (It is notable that Barrett did not connect Russia’s strict emigration restrictions to the difficulties that deported Russian women faced, even commending a Russian law that forbade the emigration of women under age twenty without parental permission as the “care and protection” of women.) Moreover, women’s organizations could spread information about US immigration law to deter immoral immigrants from attempting to enter the county. The press committee of the ICW had promised to see that “any data which the United States Government desires to bring to the attention of the public reaches the best class of periodicals.” Barrett argued that, if implemented, her recommendations would eliminate criticism of the bureau, improve the government’s ability to exclude and deport the sexually immoral classes, and rehabilitate immigrant prostitutes through the process of deportation, while also encouraging public-private cooperation to enhance women’s access to state power internationally.27

To facilitate cooperation between the Immigration Bureau, European governments, and women’s organizations, Barrett attended the 1914 meeting of the ICW in Rome as both a representative of the bureau and a member of the US National Council of Women. In 1907, the ICW reported that it represented 4 million to 5 million women, and by 1925 the number reached 36 million. At the 1914 meeting, delegates came from twenty countries, mostly in Europe. The middle-class European women of the ICW, both Barrett and US immigration officials believed, could be ambassadors for US immigration policy to their governments.29

Not all ICW women saw the US government as an ally in their efforts to protect vulnerable women migrants. Austrian Jewish feminist Bertha Pappenheim strongly opposed Barrett’s proposal because it would harm Jewish women. In the early twentieth century, a widespread anti-Semitic narrative charged Jews with leading an organized international trafficking ring. In response, Jewish organizations fought to dispel these charges, rescue Jewish women whom they believed to be prostitutes, and safeguard Jewish migrant women. Pappenheim argued that US immigration law “involves an unusual harshness.” Rather than protecting them, the US government wanted “to get rid of those girls and women—of whom hundreds of thou sands come to them—who are useless,” particularly Jewish women from Russia and Romania. These women would be rendered stateless if deported. Pappenheim begged the ICW “not to give moral support to laws that do not match the spirit of this assembly.” “I understand that America has cre ated such a law,” she acknowledged, “but there are even higher laws than those that governments can make.” Pappenheim’s speech pointed to the structural problems that harmed women, including anti-Semitism, eastern European political instability, and the increasingly restrictive immigration and emigration policies that states were adopting.31 Other ICW women did not share Pappenheim’s concerns. The ICW’s sole concession was to insert a clause calling for “special attention” to the care of deported women whose home countries would not repatriate them. The final resolution passed by the ICW directed its members to cooperate with the US government in caring for deported women.32

The Immigration Bureau tasked Barrett with asking national women’s organizations at the ICW meeting to pressure their respective governments to attend an international immigration conference, even providing them with a form to use for writing petitions to their governments. Yet the bureau’s desire for collaboration extended only so far. When British delegate Chrystal

To prevent women from returning to the “streets” in their native country, Barrett proposed that each national council form a committee charged with communicating with the US government and protecting de ported women. Barrett stressed the role that women’s organizations could play in alleviating deported women’s suffering without questioning the state’s duty to deport women it deemed sexually immoral.30

emphasized the compassion of American officials, telling the women of the ICW that there was “nothing so distressing” to immigration officials “as to deport girls without anyone into whose hands they would be placed.”

Journal of Women ’s History52 Winter

Such statements implicitly blamed the travails deported women faced on the receiving countries, which did not have bureaucracy in place to handle immoral women returned to them. Yet as US immigration laws became “more stringent,” according to Barrett, deported women became “more numerous.”

Eva Payne2021 53

Despite such setbacks, Barrett and the women’s organizations of which she was a part hoped that her work for the Immigration Bureau might transform women’s informal influence into more overt positions of authority and aid the NCW’s quest for suffrage. As an NCW report noted, Barrett’s position as a special representative of the Immigration Bureau gave the NCW “official recognition by the federal government” and placed it “in a most advantageous position” to speak with US officials as well as representatives of foreign governments. Indeed, at the 1915 International Congress of Women in San Francisco, several judges and Senator James D. Phelan, an ardent opponent of Asian immigration and proponent of women’s suffrage, hosted a symposium titled “What Can Be Done to Aid the Federal Government.” Cooperation between government officials and the NCW could be mutually beneficial, with white American women gaining access to the benefits of citizenship previously denied them—from roles as policymakers to new kinds of employment and, they hoped, suffrage—as they policed the moral and political borders of the United States.34

Rule 22: Policing as Protection Barrett’s report and policy suggestions proved persuasive to Immigra tion Bureau officials. In April 1915, Camenetti circulated an “Amendment of Rule 22 of Immigration Rules, Adding thereto Provisions for Special Proce dure in Cases of Arrested Women and Girls,” which made many of Barrett’s recommendations into official bureau policy. “Rule 22,” as the policy was abbreviated, called for an end to the practice of jailing women and girls charged with immorality. It decreed that female “special officers” should handle the cases of immoral aliens and that the bureau should cooperate with women’s voluntary organizations—both US and foreign—who could care for deportees throughout their journey. Caminetti did not, however, adopt Barrett’s proposal to employ women on steamships, likely because of the cost of employing so many women, jettisoning a long-held goal of women’s organizations around the world.35 With Rule 22, Caminetti pro claimed, deportation would “not result in affording means for the further degradation of the alien, but rather in placing her in the way of opportu nities for reformation.” Barrett and other bureau officials addressed close to two hundred organizations to inform them of Rule 22 and invite their cooperation in carrying it out.36

Macmillan asked if women members would be invited to the conference, Barrett acknowledged that “they would be very pleased to have women speakers, but officially it could only contain official representatives of the governments,” all of whom would be men.33

Rule 22 led to changes in immigration detention practices, particu larly the appointment of women to oversee women and girls detained for deportation.

Journal of Women ’s History54 Winter

While the Immigration Bureau deported the vast majority of women deemed white slaves, it occasionally allowed women to remain in the United States under the care of philanthropic organizations. In 1917 the commis sioner in San Francisco detailed the case of Bertha Husson, a young French immigrant whose husband had placed her in a brothel. Husson and her husband were arrested, and he was deported. “The commendable attitude of the department in its efforts to uplift and improve the conditions of these unfortunate women,” the commissioner proclaimed, “is emphasized by the fact that, instead of deporting the woman, she was granted parole to a philanthropic association which secured suitable employment for her, and there is every reason to believe she will henceforth lead an honest, useful, and moral life.” Husson’s treatment was predicated on her ability to appear as a model white slave victim, an innocent white woman tricked into prostitution who wanted to reform and take up “useful” employment and thus be a good American.38 At the same time, Husson was subject to surveillance by the philanthropic organization that housed her as well as by the Immigration Bureau. As a noncitizen, she could be deported at any time if someone accused her of prostitution again.

As a result of Rule 22, officials designated women as “special officer[s]” at the ports of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, Galveston, San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago. In their annual reports, district immigration supervisors praised Rule 22 as modern and hu mane, noting that it was “in line with the present-day thought of tempering law with mercy and with aiding those who have fallen.” The commissioner of the US-Mexico border district reported that “in California gratifying results have followed the activities of private organizations in extending aid to those unfortunate women indicating an honest desire to reform,” emphasizing the sympathetic way that officials treated such redeemable women. The commissioner in Montreal noted in his report on “white slave matters” that while few women could be placed with private philanthropic organizations, the women detained in immigration buildings were there only a short time, while the jails used were “modern institutions in every respect” with “suitable female attendants.” He proclaimed that his officers had been “instrumental in rescuing many young girls and returning them to their parents who otherwise might have been led into a life of shame.”37

Barrett further shaped popular perception of deportation through her prolific writings and lectures. In a series of articles about US immigration law, Barrett praised the 1907 Immigration Act for placing a “zone of safety” around immigrant women and the 1910 Immigration Act for improving

Rule 22 quickly generated positive publicity, receiving “favorable comment” by religious societies and women’s organizations and coverage in national newspapers. The New York Times reported that because of Rule 22, “women who are deported will not be released to go their own way and possibly to sink deeper in immorality.” Through government cooperation with women’s philanthropic organizations in the United States and abroad, deported women could “find good homes and opportunities for making an honest living.” The American Leader, a proimmigration newspaper that reached millions, celebrated Rule 22 and credited Barrett with bringing it about, noting that “the reforms which have been adopted place this country on a high plane with reference to the humanitarian measures employed in the treatment of unfortunate women.”41 Such articles touted the Immigration Bureau as a benevolent organization and deportation as the best means to care for immoral immigrants.

Barrett’s ideas about immigration and deportation reached a wide audience. After she returned from her European investigation, Barrett visited immigration stations across the East and the Midwest and met with “representative groups of men and women who have pledged their co-operation with the Government.”

Yet the changes Rule 22 brought were less sweeping than Barrett might have hoped. Some stations resisted hiring women employees to oversee

Eva Payne2021 55 upon its predecessor by removing the time limit on deportation: “Now a girl may be deported if she has been born on foreign soil unless her father had taken out naturalization papers before she is eighteen years old, and anyone contributing to her delinquency can be severely punished.” She emphasized that such laws made women “safe” and contributed to the “protection” of immigrant girls. Barrett recognized that “designing persons” could and did abuse the law by falsely accusing women of prostitution in order to have them deported. Yet she stressed that the federal government was the rightful protector of women. Immigration officials acted “for the best good of the country” and in the interest of the immigrant women, who were “worse off” if they remained in the United States under the sway of pimps and traffickers.

While in California overseeing im migrant women for the bureau at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, she spoke on immigration to more than two hundred clubs and conferences and met with representatives from Japan and China. She took, by her estimate, between seven hundred and eight hundred US and foreign women interested in the “immigration problem” on tours of the facilities at Angel Island. As a result of Barrett’s widespread lectures, other organizations, including the General Federation, the National Congress of Mothers, and the Daughters of the American Revolution, took up studies of the US immigration system.40

themselves protested the provisions of Rule 22. Officials arrested English-born Isabel McCartney in October 1914 and charged her with entering the country for “an immoral purpose.”43 McCartney had arrived in the United States a few months earlier in the company of Mon tagu R. W. Higginson, a married man. She was approximately five months pregnant. The couple registered at a hotel in Philadelphia as husband and wife, but when Higginson left for a week to find work without paying the bill, the hotel’s housekeeper took McCartney to a hospital, which turned her over to the care of the Midnight Mission, a rescue home for prostitutes and unmarried pregnant women. The superintendent of the mission believed “the case was one for the Federal authorities” and contacted the Bureau of Immigration.44

After an immigration official arrested McCartney and Higginson, they were held at the Philadelphia Immigration Station and repeatedly questioned about whether McCartney was a prostitute, which they denied. Both Higginson and McCartney stated that they did not wish to be deported and that they planned to marry once Higginson could secure a divorce from his wife. The inspector who arrested them recommended deporting McCart ney “before the birth of the child in order to avoid complications,” since the child would be a US citizen. But when mission worker Charlotte Waln asked the commissioner of immigration at Philadelphia to stay McCartney’s deportation and place her in the care of the mission until she gave birth, he

detained women. In his 1915 report, the supervising inspector of the USMexico border district noted that there were “no female employees within the district who might be designated to look after the welfare of arrested women and girls during detention,” although the district was observing “the spirit of the regulation.” The provision of Rule 22 calling for the cooperation of foreign women’s organizations to care for women after their deportation also seems not to have been put into practice. The commissioner in Montreal reported that he had delivered no women to such organizations abroad.

While he admitted that some of the “unfortunates” would have benefited from such attention, officials had not received any responses from the so cieties to which they had reached out. Moreover, immigration inspectors argued that the global political climate made cooperation with women’s organizations abroad difficult. While the commissioner in Philadelphia lauded Rule 22, he noted that the war in Europe had “interfered materially” with his ability to follow it and had even prevented him from executing five warrants of deportation against prostitutes. The inspector of the USMexico border district argued that the revolution in Mexico had made it “impossible” to arrange for the “reception and care” of the 79 prostitutes and 13 women and girls “coming for an immoral purpose” whom he had deported to ImmigrantMexico.42women

Journal of Women ’s History56 Winter

Eva Payne2021 57

While Rule 22 was based on the rhetoric of the redeemable white slave victim, this rhetoric elided the fact that a large number of women held for deportation were Mexican and Asian, which shaped how officials treated them during deportation proceedings. Mexican women were the largest single nationality deported or debarred from entry for prostitution in the majority of years between 1910 and 1920. While naturalization law consid ered Mexican women as white, bureau officials and state and municipal laws often did not offer them the privileges of whiteness. Annual reports from the supervising inspector at the US-Mexico border portrayed Mexi can women accused of prostitution as dangerous and greedy, “impelled by cupidity” to repeatedly return to the United States after deportation to continue selling sex. “The majority of them,” he noted, “are afflicted with gonorrhea or syphilis, or both.” As Grace Peña Delgado has demonstrated, the enforcement of anti–white slavery immigration law in the early twentieth century helped to construct the US southern border as a site of racialized, sexualized, and gendered exclusion.48

To the surprise of immigration officials and Waln, McCartney refused to go with her. Even when Waln threatened McCartney that she would be immediately deported and have to give birth at sea in steerage, McCartney would not go. In a sworn statement McCartney wrote, “I would like very much if it is possible, to stay here until after my confinement, and then go back to England, but in the alternative of going back or the Midnight Mission, I would prefer to go back, as I cannot overcome my aversion to that place.” The commissioner ordered her immediate deportation, but it was delayed for reasons not noted in her file. Officials deported McCartney and her one-month-old daughter to England in January 1915.46

granted the request, in keeping with Caminetti’s memo that called for the “kindly” treatment of immoral women deportees.45

McCartney’s case illustrates the fraught relationships that could exist between middle-class reformers and immigrant women. While reformers argued that they could rehabilitate immoral immigrant women while they awaited deportation, they also provided the bureau with information that led to immigrant women’s detention in the first place. The workers of the Midnight Mission were responsible for McCartney’s arrest and separation from the father of her child, and threatened her in the event that she did not comply with their plans for her. Moreover, women in rescue homes often lived under stifling restrictions. Most homes forbade women from leaving the house alone and required them to perform domestic labor and attend regular prayer services.47

Immigration officials also did not often consider Asian women as victims worthy of assistance, although immigration reports listed their cases under the heading “White-Slave Matters.” The inspector in charge

In 1914, Japanese women represented 47 of the 238 deporta tions for practicing prostitution after entry, approximately 20 percent. As the historians Kazuhiro Oharazeki and Martha Gardner have shown, officials targeted Asian women in particular for deportation proceedings. After her entry into the United States to join her husband, Chan Ching was visited ten times in four months by an immigration inspector, who repeatedly noted what he saw as evidence of prostitution, including a male visitor and the appearance of her apartment.49 While anti–white slavery immigration laws increased the surveillance of all immigrant women in the name of protect ing them, immigrant women of color faced increased state intervention into their lives without the purported benefits that policies like Rule 22 offered.

Immigration officials also saw Black women as less deserving of the protections of Rule 22. This was the case for J. P. Densmore, the chief law of ficer of the Department of Labor. During his investigation of the immigration station in Jacksonville, Florida, he found that officials “frequently” arrested “colored alien prostitutes,” likely women migrants from the West Indies. Under Rule 22, the women could not be held for deportation in jails, yet it cost $2.50 a day to maintain them in private houses, far more than the 40¢ a day that jail cost. Densmore wrote to the Bureau of Immigration in Wash ington, DC, suggesting that “as these people are of extremely low character it occurred to me . . . that they might be better confined in jails”; however, officials decided it was “inadvisable” to issue Densmore’s proposal.

Immigration officials used their discretion and applied Rule 22 uneven ly on the basis of their racialized and gendered conceptions of victimhood and criminality. While some officials did not see Black women as worthy of the opportunities for reform that private organizations could provide, others believed that Rule 22, at least as it was explicitly written in policy, should apply to all women. Yet the differences between how immigration officials enacted Rule 22 when detaining European women and how they enacted it when detaining Asian, Mexican, and Black women suggest that policy did not always translate into practice. Moreover, some immigration stations did not report on how they implemented Rule 22, suggesting that the Immigration Bureau’s enforcement of the program was decentralized and limited.51 While Immigration Bureau officials welcomed the favorable publicity Rule 22 generated, many were less interested in implementing its provisions.

Journal of Women ’s History58 Winter

in Honolulu reported that they had no special facility to house immoral Japanese women, and there was no Japanese women’s society to care for them. He did, however, make provisions for protecting the women from other detainees, as well as preventing the women from corrupting others, noting that such women were “kept in a separate room at night and, as far as possible, their association with others in detention is prevented or discouraged.”

Eva Payne2021 59

Conclusion Barrett hoped that Rule 22 could purify the state by incorporating maternalist policies into the deportation apparatus and purify the nation by removing sexually immoral immigrants. In the years following her investigation, Barrett continued her attempts to shape law and policy in ways that emphasized gains for native-born women, often at the expense of immigrants. Barrett next targeted laws that stripped an American woman of her citizenship if she married a foreign national. Testifying before Con gress, Barrett asserted that an American woman should be able to retain her citizenship regardless of her marital status or her husband’s nationality. Yet she assured the assembly that her interest in women’s access to citizenship was limited to native-born women alone, while immigrants’ access to citizenship should be given only to those deemed “worthy”: “whatever laws you pass restricting naturalization will have the support of the united intelligent womanhood of this country.”53

The involvement of women’s organizations and Barrett, a well-known reformer, helped the Immigration Bureau to obscure the punitive nature of the deportation process and the suffering of woman migrants, reconstruing

Thus Rule 22 expanded and justified the surveillance, detention, and deportation of women in the name of stopping white slavery and offering women care. While historian Torrie Hester argues that the Immigration Bureau’s antiprostitution efforts operated as a “kind of victim’s rights pro gram,” they also were overtly and purposefully punitive. Indeed, officials often focused on Rule 22’s efficacy in leading to deportations rather than on the treatment of women under it. In 1916, the immigration inspector in Jacksonville, Florida, deported eight prostitutes for entering the country for an immoral purpose, noting that “the amendment to rule 22 . . . has worked and is still working satisfactorily in this district. Under its operation no alien woman wanted for deportation has escaped.” The commissioner in Boston reported that a matron had been assigned to communicate with local courts and probation officers and had “thereby effected the arrest and deportation to Canada and Newfoundland of a considerable number of women and girls of the immoral classes.”52 Rule 22 allowed the Immigration Bureau to construct the detention of women as a humane means of fighting white slavery, even as many immigration officials on the ground saw it as a further mandate to deport sexually suspicious women. Through Rule 22, Barrett made compatible the two ostensibly conflicting goals of anti–white slavery immigration laws: to rescue victims while at the same time ridding the country of dangerous prostitutes.

Barrett proclaimed her commitment to the well-being of “fallen” women and devoted her life’s work to rescuing them. Yet she was also aware of the ways that cooperation with the US government could benefit women like her in their fight for suffrage and an enlarged role in public and political life. While Rule 22 was the first provision of its kind to attempt to “humanize” the Immigration Bureau’s treatment of women held for deportation, it was also a means for white native-born women to access political power and government employment. Rule 22 codified US government cooperation with women’s organizations around the world, giving them recognition as significant political actors, although still without the seat at the diplomatic table that many had hoped for. While Barrett believed she was advocating for all women’s rights through her work for the Immigration Bureau, she did not recognize that her gains often came at the expense of the rights and desires of immigrant women.

Barrett’s cooperation with the Immigration Bureau wedded the nine teenth-century tradition of women’s rescue work to a state-based, carceral approach to migratory sexual labor. Such an approach shapes much of the contemporary antitrafficking movement, which advocates the detention and deportation of migrant sex workers as a means of protecting them and emphasizes a securitized state apparatus and the tightening of borders.

Journal of Women ’s History60 Winter exclusion and deportation as the humanitarian protection of vulnerable women. Barrett’s work for the bureau concealed its political and economic interest in spreading restrictive immigration laws and gaining cooperation from other states to enforce them. While the First World War cut short the bureau’s attempts at cooperation with European women’s organizations, after the war Caminetti again asked Barrett to obtain the ICW’s coopera tion to receive women deportees, many of whom were “feeble-minded or insane,” terms that carried connotations of sexual immorality. As Caminetti noted, “Publicity in this country of this subject is not desirable, and it is advisable for the obvious reasons also to have as little of it in Europe as possible.” The bureau continued to seek transnational public-private part nerships with the ICW in the interwar period to deflect criticism about the inhumane treatment of women migrants.54

Building on earlier movements, contemporary antitrafficking campaigns draw on evangelical Christian and secular liberal feminist discourses that equate prostitution with exploitation and insist that it is the duty of the state—and particularly the criminal justice system—to protect women, the family, and the nation. Such campaigns continue to distinguish between idealized white trafficking victims deserving of rescue and Black women and girls, whom they view as choosing prostitution and who make up a disproportionate number of prostitution arrests. Meanwhile, the US govern

4Otto Wilson, Fifty Years’ Work with Girls, 1883–1933 (Alexandria, VA: National Florence Crittenton Mission, 1933), 139–189; Katherine G. Aiken, Harnessing the Power of Motherhood: The National Florence Crittenton Mission, 1883–1925 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998), 33–66; Elna C. Green, Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 157.

2US Department of Labor, Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Im migration, Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1914 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1915), 365, 384 (hereafter Annual Report followed by the fiscal year).

Eva Payne2021 61 ment often deports noncitizen women accused of prostitution without of fering them the protections US law claims to provide for trafficking victims.

3For an overview of US deportation policy, see Torrie Hester, Deportation: The Origins of U.S. Policy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017); Deirdre Moloney, National Insecurities: Immigrants and U.S. Deportation Policy since 1882 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); and Daniel Kanstroom, Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer sity Press, 2007). On women’s anti-trafficking work, see Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Ian Tyrrell, Woman’s World/Woman’s Empire: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Stephanie Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010); and Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer sity Press, 1980). On women’s organizations and the state, see Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); and Jessica R. Pliley, “The Petticoat Inspectors: Women Board ing Inspectors and the Gendered Exercise of Federal Authority,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 12, no. 1 (January 2013): 95–126.

1“Resists Deportation,” Washington (DC) Evening Star, February 18, 1910. I use the terms white slavery and prostitute when discussing the views of my historical actors. Elsewhere I use the terms sexual labor and commercial sex to reflect my own analytical voice.

Moreover, contemporary antitrafficking activists and organizations gain political power and capital for themselves by “rescuing” supposed victims of trafficking.55 By reconciling the tension between rescuing versus punishing women, and protecting women versus protecting the nation, Barrett laid ideological foundations that continue to shape antitrafficking efforts.

The author is grateful to Yvette Butler, Elisa Camiscoli, Cristina Groeger, Philippa Hetherington, Julia Laite, Allison Lange, Margot Moinester, Jessica Pliley, Jarod Roll, Lydia Walker, Jessica Wilkerson, and the anonymous peer reviewers for their insightful comments on this manuscript.

Notes

Journal of Women ’s History62 Winter 5Katherine Benton-Cohen, Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 157, 140–141, 167; Val Marie Johnson, “Protection, Virtue, and the ‘Power to Detain’: The Moral Citizenship of Jewish Women in New York City, 1890–1920,” Journal of Urban History 31, no. 5 (July 2005): 655–684; “‘The Alien Woman’ Topic of Address: Mrs. Kate Waller Barrett Speaks Under Auspices of Middlesex Women’s Club,” n.d., Box 4, Kate Waller Barrett Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (hereafter KWB). 6Annual Report 1915, 271. 7On race and white slavery in the international context, see Jean Allain, “White Slave Traffic in International Law,” Journal of Trafficking and Human Ex ploitation 1, no. 1 (Feb. 2017): 1–40, 7–8. The literature on white slavery is vast. An incomplete list of works includes Brian Donovan, White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender, and Anti-Vice Activism, 1887–1917 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Elisa Camiscioli, Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Donna J. Guy, Sex & Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991); Philippa Hetherington, “Victims of the Social Temperament: Prostitution, Migration and the Traffic in Women from Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, 1885–1935” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2014); Julia Laite, Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London, 1885–1960 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Limoncelli, Politics of Trafficking; Gun ther Peck, “Feminizing White Slavery in the United States: Marcus Braun and the Transnational Traffic in White Bodies, 1890–1910,” in Workers Across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History, ed. Leon Fink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 221–44; Jessica R. Pliley, Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Keely Stauter-Halsted, The Devil’s Chain: Prostitution and Social Control in Partitioned Poland (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015); and Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society. On race and immigration in the United States see Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Dif ferent Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). On African American women, see Cynthia M. Blair, I’ve Got to Make My Livin’: Black Women’s Sex Work in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 8Pamala Haag, Consent: Sexual Rights and the Transformation of American Liberal ism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999); Mann Act, 36 Stat. 825 (1910); Grace Peña Delgado, “Border Control and Sexual Policing: White Slavery and Prostitution along the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1903–1910,” Western Historical Quarterly 43, vol. 2 (Summer 2012): 157–178; Catherine Christensen, “Mujeres Públicas: American Prostitutes in Baja California, 1910–1930,” Pacific Historical Review 82, no. 2 (May 2013): 215–247; Kazuhiro Oharazeki, Japanese Prostitutes in the North American West, 1887–1920 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016); Martha Gardner, The Qualities of a Citizen: Women, Immigration, and Citizenship, 1870–1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 51–72; Blair, I’ve Got to Make My Livin’, 187–222.

9For an overview of US immigration policy and the policing of sexuality see Eithne Luibhéid, Entry Denied: Policing Sexuality at the Border (Minneapolis: Uni versity of Minnesota Press, 2002), 1–16; Act of March 3, 1903, sec. 2, 2, 32 Stat. 1213; Act of February 20, 1907, sec. 3, 34, Stat. 899; Keller v. United States, No. 653, Ullman v. United States, No. 654, Decided 5 April 1909.

181904 International Agreement for the Suppression of the “White Slave Traffic,” Paris, May 18, 1904; Eric Carmin Cimino, “On the ‘Border Line of Trag edy’: White Slavery, Moral Protection and the Travelers Aid Society of New York, 1885–1917” (PhD diss., Stony Brook University, 2012).

12United States Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Com mission, vol. 37 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1911), 62; Gardner, Qualities of a Citizen, 54, 82–84; Hester, Deportation, 83, 97.

14Kate Waller Barrett, “Whose the Responsibility?” Washington Times, March 10, 1914; Bugajewitz v. Adams et al., 228 U.S. 585 (1913).

19Marcus Braun to Commissioner General of Immigration, June 23, 1909, 001742/003/0586, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Series A: Subject Correspondence Files, Part 5: Prostitution and White Slavery, 1902–1933, ProQuest History Vault, (hereafter INS); Peck, “Feminizing White Slavery”; Pliley, Policing Sexuality, 45–48; Limoncelli, Politics of Trafficking, 82–89.

Eva Payne2021 63 10White Slave Traffic Act, June 15, 1910, 36 Stat. 825; An Act to amend an Act entitled “An Act to regulate the immigration of aliens into the United States,” March 26, 1910, 36 Stat. 263; Pliley, Policing Sexuality, 95; Aiken, Harnessing the Power of Motherhood, 167–168; Kanstroom, Deportation Nation, 126. 11Marian L. Smith, “‘Any woman who is now or may hereafter be married . . .’: Women and Naturalization, ca. 1802–1940,” Prologue 30, no. 2 (Summer 1998), 3–6; Oharazeki, Japanese Prostitutes, 184; Annual Report 1916, 222; Gardner, Qualities of a Citizen, 48.

17Jessica R. Pliley, “Claims to Protection: The Rise and Fall of Feminist Aboli tionism in the League of Nations’ Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, 1919–1936,” Journal of Women’s History 22, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 90–113; Limoncelli, Politics of Trafficking, 42–70. On the continuation of feminist abolitionism in the United States, see Anya Jabour, “Prostitution Politics and Feminist Activism in Modern America: Sophonisba Breckinridge and the Morals Court in Prohibition-Era Chi cago,” Journal of Women’s History 25, no. 3 (Fall 2013): 141–164. On American women reformers’ cooperation with the state, as well as resistance to state aims, see Scott Stern, The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-long Government Plan to Imprison “Promiscuous” Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018).

13Elisa Camiscioli, “Trafficking Histories: Women’s Migration and Sexual Labor in the Early Twentieth Century,” Deportate, esuli, profughe: Rivista telematica di studi sulla memoria femminile 40 (Summer 2019): 1–13.

16Jane Addams, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (New York: Macmillan, 1912), 34–35; Laurie Bernstein, Sonia’s Daughters: Prostitutes and their Regulation in Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 56–62; Katharine Caroline Bushnell and Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew, The Queen’s Daughters in India (London: Morgan & Scott, 1899), 16.

15US Congress, House, Committee on Rules, Hearings on House Resolution No. 166, 62nd Cong., 1st sess., 1911, 41, 14.

On the feminization of humanitarianism, see Francesca Piana, “Maternalism and Feminism in Medical Aid: The American Women’s Hospitals in the United States and in Greece, 1917–1941” in Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century: Practice, Politics and the Power of Representation, ed. Esther Möller, Johannes Paulmann, and Katharina Stornig (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020): 85–114. 22Annual Report 1914, 366. 23Annual Report 1914, 359; Caminetti to Barrett, 15 Apr. 1914, 001742/007/0416, INS; Annual Report 1914, 385. 24Benton-Cohen, Inventing the Immigration Problem, 149–150; Annual Report 1914, 384.25Annual Report 1914, 364, 379. On Russian women, see Hetherington, “Victims of the Social Temperament”; and Tara Zahara, The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World (New York: Norton, 2016), 9. 26Annual Report 1914, 384, 385, 381. To calculate this figure, I used data from Annual Report 1913, 7, 38–39. On women inspectors, see Pliley, “Petticoat Inspectors”; and Annual Report 1914, 385. 27Annual Report 1914, 383–386, 376, 363. 28On women police in the United States and Europe, see Chloe Owings, Women Police: A Study of the Development and Status of the Women Police Movement (New York: Frederick H. Hitchcock, 1925); and Aiken, Harnessing the Power of Moth erhood, 29167–168.LeilaRupp, “Constructing Internationalism: The Case of Transnational Women’s Organizations, 1888–1945,” American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (Dec. 1994): 1571–1600, 1574; International Council of Women, Report on the Quinquennial Meetings, Rome 1914 (Karlsruhe, Germany: G. Braunsche Hofbuchdruckerei und Verlag, n.d.), 456–467; Annual Report 1914, 385. 30ICW, Report on the Quinquennial Meetings, 159. 31Marion A. Kaplan, The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany: The Campaigns of the Jüdischer Frauenbund, 1904–1938 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979); Edward J. Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight against White Slavery, 1870–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982); Mir Yarfitz, Impure Migration: Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019); ICW, Report on the Quinquennial Meetings, 232–233, 33, German translation with the assistance of Johanna Straavaldsen.

Journal of Women ’s History64 Winter 20Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Jen nifer Fronc, New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Anthony Caminetti to Kate Waller Barrett, 15 Apr. 1914, 001742/007/0416, INS; Robert Lee Anderson, The Diggs-Caminetti Case, 1913–1917: For Any Other Immoral Purpose, 2 vols. (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1990).

21On women as diplomatic actors, see Glenda Sluga and Carolyn James, Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500 (London: Routledge, 2015).

37Annual Report 1915, 41-42, 230; Annual Report 1916, 230, 224; Annual Report 1917 223; Annual Report 1918, 315.” 38Annual Report 1917, 201–202.

45Hearing at Philadelphia Immigration Station, 53835/153, NARA; Caminetti to commissioners of immigration, 001742/007/0416, INS.

46Isabel McCartney, statement, Oct. 28, 1914, 53835/153, NARA; E. E. Green awalt to commissioner general of immigration, Jan. 11, 1915, 53835/153, NARA.

47Aiken, Harnessing the Power of Motherhood, 94–95. 48Hester, Deportation, 90; Annual Report 1918, 318; Peña Delgado, “Border Control and Sexual Policing”; Christensen, “Mujeres Públicas.” Annual Report 1917, 180–181; Annual Report 1916, 208; Annual Report 1914, 110–111; Oharazeki, Japanese Prostitutes; Gardner, Qualities of a Citizen, 56.

41Annual Report 1915, 42; “To Aid Women Immigrants,” New York Times, Apr. 8, 1915, 22; Jeanne D. Petit, The Men and Women We Want: Gender, Race, and the Progressive Era Literacy Test Debate (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2010), 66; Ira E. Bennett, “Humane Treatment of Alien Women,” American Leader 7 (May 27, 1915): 595–598, 598.

35Caminetti to Commissioners of Immigration and Inspectors in Charge, Oct. 12, 1914, 001742/007/0416, INS. 36Caminetti to Commissioners of Immigration and Inspectors in Charge, Oct. 12, 1914, 001742/007/0416, INS; Annual Report 1915, 271–272, 41.

Eva Payne2021 65 32ICW, Report on the Quinquennial Meetings, 33. 33ICW, Report on the Quinquennial Meetings, 13, 231–232.

39Kate Waller Barrett, “Protecting Immigrant Girls,” Washington Times, March 9, 1914; Barrett, “Whose the Responsibility?”; Barrett, “The Deported Girl,” ca. 1914 or 1915, Box 1, KWB.

43Hearing at Philadelphia Immigration Station, Oct. 8, 1914, RG85 E9, 53835/153, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC (here after NARA).44 S. Eugenie Gregg, Sept. 3, 1914, 53835/153, NARA.

42Annual Report 1915, 267; Annual Report 1917, 223; Annual Report 1915, 230, 267.

40NCW, Biennial of the Proceedings of the National Council of Women, 12–13; untitled article, Delphian Club Quarterly, ca. 1915, Box 3, KWB.

34National Council of Women, Biennial of the Proceedings of the National Council of Women, Washington, January 1916, and the Executive Meeting, New York, June 1916: with Report of the International Congress of Women, San Francisco, Cal., November, 1915 (Washington, DC: National Council of Women, 1916), 63, 67.

53US Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Rela tive to Citizenship of American Women Married to Foreigners, 65th Cong., 2nd sess., 1917, 16. On married women’s citizenship, see Nancy F. Cott, “Marriage and Women’s Citizenship in the United States, 1830–1934,” American Historical Review 103, no. 5 (Dec., 1998): 1440–1474. 54Caminetti to Barrett, Apr. 18, 1919, Folder: Department of Labor, Box 2, KWB. 55Elizabeth Bernstein, Brokered Subjects: Sex, Trafficking, and the Politics of Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018); Jasmine Phillips, “Black Girls and the (Im)Possibilities of a Victim Trope: The Intersectional Failures of Legal and Advocacy Interventions in the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Minors in the United States,” UCLA Law Review 62, no. 6 (August 2015): 1642–1675; Pliley, Policing Sexuality, 212–213; Laura María Agustín, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Mar kets, and the Rescue Industry (London: Zed Books, 2007); Aya Gruber, Amy J. Cohen, and Kate Mogulescu, “Penal Welfare and the New Human Trafficking Intervention Courts,” Florida Law Review 68, no. 5 (Sept. 2016): 1333–1402.

Journal of Women ’s History66 Winter

50Bureau of Immigration memo by Acting Secretary [J. B. Densmore], Mar. 8, 1917, 001742/007/0692, INS. 51See, e.g., Annual Report 1917, 180–181, 183, 186, 269. 52Hester, Deportation, 83–84; Annual Report 1916, 193; Annual Report 1918, 276.

The League of Nations, Prostitution, and the Deportation of Chinese Women from Interwar Manila

Julia T. Martínez

The 1933 League of Nations report on the traffic in women and children across Asia included a passing mention of the deportation of nine hun dred Chinese women from the American Philippines. In the League’s decades-long campaign aimed at the abolition of state-registered brothels, Manila, with its red-light district shut down since 1918, was regarded as a model for the suppression of the sex industry. This article considers the extent to which the criminalization and deportation of Chinese women was encouraged by the League of Nations’ anti-trafficking campaign and whether the authorities and women’s organizations in Manila shared the League’s agenda. It highlights American discourse on prostitution as a police matter and suggests that abolition policies, combined with the targeting of Chinese women, undermined the aims of liberal feminist internationalists.

Ay Kim spent eight months in the custody of the collector of customs after escaping from the brothel and applying to the Chinese consul for protection. A board of special inquiry ordered her deportation under Sec tion 19 of the US Immigration Act of 1917, which was in force in the Philip pines and applied to any alien who was “an inmate of or connected with the management of a house of prostitution or practicing prostitution . . . or who shall receive, share in, or derive benefit from any part of the earnings

In 1934, a young Chinese woman, Ay Kim, testified before the Philippines Supreme Court that the Manila migration agent Tan Ping Co had arranged for her to travel from Amoy (Xiamen) to Manila. In order to evade the re strictions of the Chinese Registration Act of 1903, she had taken the name Tan Kim on arrival, claiming to be Tan Ping Co’s daughter. She testified that she had been sold to Yap Ah Huan in China in 1931 and forced to sell sex. She did not say who had sold her, but given that her father was deceased, it is most likely that her mother, living in Shanghai, had been unable to provide for her.1 Shanghai was well known at the time for its licensed and unlicensed brothels.2 Once in Manila, Ay Kim was forced to work in Yap Ah Huan’s brothel on Gotamco Street, Pasay, while Tan Ping Co collected a fee of 750 pesos (US$375) from her earnings. Ay Kim’s testimony led to her deportation along with the brothel owner and two other girls.3 Tan Ping Co, although a resident of Manila, was also deported in 1935.4

In Southeast Asia, Chinese women had been, as Eric Tagliacozzo phrased it, “tolerated and encouraged” to work in the brothels of British, Dutch, and French colonies, but from 1913 onwards the Dutch, then the British, and finally the French abolished licenced brothels.9 This history, including that of the Philippines, was documented in the 1933 League of Nations Commission of Enquiry into Traffic in Women and Children in the East. The commission met from December 5 to December 10, 1932, to discuss the results of this study of Asia undertaken from 1930 to 1931 by a traveling com mission.10 The study reported on “Victims of International Traffic,” a phrase referring broadly to female immigrants selling sex, including consenting adult women.11 The number of Chinese women referred to as prostitutes was summarized as: “Indo-China, about 50; Siam, about 1,000; Philippine Islands, a few; Dutch East Indies, a number not estimated; British Malaya 5,000 to 6,000.”12 The report did not provide more precise figures for the Dutch East Indies or the Philippines because in both locations the registra tion of women in state-regulated brothels had already been abolished.

In court, Ay Kim pointed Tan Ping Co out “without fear nor doubt,” telling Justice J. C. Vickers that “she was willing to go to jail for what she had done if it deserved punishment, provided that she be deported after her imprisonment.”

6 This rare surviving testimony by a Chinese woman suggests that while she welcomed deportation as her only means of escape from her exploiter and state custody, she doubted that she deserved imprisonment. Her words echoed an ethical concern posed by the League of Nations’ anti-trafficking campaign, which by opposing state-regulated brothels appeared to sanction the incarceration and deportation of women.

Journal of Women ’s History68 Winter of any prostitute.”5 Most women departed voluntarily at this point, but Ay Kim’s case went to the Philippines Supreme Court because Tan Ping Co tried to prevent her deportation.

In this article I draw together the history of the Philippines’ sex industry with that of the League of Nations’ anti-trafficking campaign. I consider the extent to which American and Filipino officials and women’s groups

There had been more than a thousand deportations of Chinese women from Manila in the decade prior to 1934; their numbers reflecting the increased rate of immigration from China. Ay Kim had traveled from Amoy along with six hundred other Chinese passengers on the SS Anking in March 1933, the ship’s arrival announced in the Tribune (Manila) under the inflammatory caption “Chinese Influx Here Unabated.”

7 Six months later the authorities arrested and deported some two hundred Chinese women.8 Ay Kim’s story thus exemplifies the immigration experience of hundreds of women who traveled from China to Manila. While her escape may have drawn attention to her own circumstances, this pattern of migration, debt, arrest, and deportation was common.

Colonial Narratives of Chinese Prostitution

The focus on Chinese women in the 1930s followed some sixty years of colonial discourse that conceived of Chinese women as enslaved and trafficked. While this study is concerned with women selling sex, the his toriography on slavery includes girls in domestic service, whose pathway into the sex industry provides necessary context. Mui tsai (translated as “slave girls” by abolitionists) were Chinese girls aged from about seven to thirteen contracted, often overseas, as domestic servants. The mui tsai controversy started in Hong Kong in 1870, when Chief Justice Sir John Smale heard a case involving a mui tsai sold to a brothel.17 Historians have traced this practice up to the late 1930s, with Maria Jaschok citing a deed of sale of a ten-year-old girl from China in 1927. She concluded that once mui tsai were resold into brothels, “or kept by women, who lived off their earnings, it was difficult for these girls to escape that life.”

Julia T. Martínez2021 69 aligned with the League’s agenda, considering that abolition in Manila predated the League of Nations. The Philippines had been influenced by the US White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910 (Mann Act) and the abolition campaigns of the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) since 1914.13 I also consider the Chinese women at the heart of this campaign in the context of broader immigration restriction. Liberal feminist internationalists con nected to the League of Nations, according to David Petruccelli, gave “the fate of women as individuals . . . precedence over the interest of the state,” at least until the early 1930s.

18 James Warren’s study on

14 Whether this concern extended to Chinese women is unclear. Chinese women were caught within a paradox, being documented by the League of Nations as passive victims, while in Manila newspapers they were depicted as leading an “immoral” life. Historian Liat Kozma observed the racialization of prostitution in imperial contexts during the interwar period, with European women who sold sex being granted more freedom than colonized women, who were still obliged to be regularly examined for venereal disease.15 This study of Chinese women contributes to this interwar analysis, recognizing that while not colonized, Chinese women were racialized in profound ways. The League of Nations avoided reporting on Filipina women selling sex in Manila, limiting the scope of their research to international traffic and the largely unchallenged nation alist targeting of Chinese women. The deportation cases of three Chinese women described below help to provide some sense of how deportation policies affected individual women.16 The historiography of trafficking, thus far mostly shaped by studies of white women or colonized women, needs to account for Chinese women’s particular experiences and representations in the context of the League of Nations literature and beyond.

A number of historians have problematized these narratives of Chinese women’s slavery. British abolitionists, according to Sarah Paddle, sought to promote an image of Chinese womanhood as childlike, silenced, and passive.

The League of Nations’ campaign, as discussed below, had a strong impact on Singapore, which in 1927 banned the disembarking of Chinese women suspected of immigrat ing for prostitution and shut down regulated brothels. In 1929 the Colonial Office introduced the Suppression of Brothels Bill in Malaya, and licenced brothels shut down over the next two years. This timetable prepared these colonies for the arrival of the League of Nations’ traveling commission in 1931. Hong Kong belatedly announced plans to close brothels and stop the registration of women in December 1931.

27 In French Indochina authorities sought to prevent trafficking, but they retained regulated brothels until the end of the colonial period in the 1950s, with one 1942 report describing Chinese women who sold sex as “recalcitrants” for not following colonial regulations.

The American Philippines has been almost entirely absent from the literature on Chinese women in colonial Southeast Asia, most likely because

Rachel Leow suggested that Smale was “casting Chinese custom against a universal morality.”21 The “maternal imperialism” of British aboli tionist women, such as Clara Haslewood, whose protests in 1919 Hong Kong galvanized the abolitionist movement, is raised by Susan Pedersen.22 Despite the Hong Kong ban enacted in the Female Domestic Service Ordinance of 1923, the practice continued and was taken up by the League of Nations Slavery Committee. According to Magaly Rodríguez García, however, the League of Nations judged the mui tsai phenomenon to be a separate issue from the “traffic in women and children” for prostitution.

24 However, women who went to Southeast Asia, with its male-dominated Chinese population, were more likely to end up in domestic or sexual service roles.

Much of the literature on Chinese women in the sex industry across Southeast Asia concerns the British colonies of Singapore and Malaya as described by Philippa Levine, Lenore Manderson, Raelene Frances, and others.25 Levine cautioned that authorities might have “over-estimated the proportion of Chinese women” working in the sex industry, which the high figures cited in the 1933 report suggest.

Singapore similarly noted the use of kongchu (literally, “princess”) to refer to “a sold prostitute with no rights over the disposal of her own person.”

Journal of Women ’s History70 Winter

23 Gail Hershat ter reflected on Chinese women’s work in brothels compared with other forms of women’s labor. She observed that in 1930s China “roughly twice as many women worked in Tianjin brothels as in the city’s cotton mills.” She concluded that girls from “desperately poor rural villages” might end up in brothels or in mills depending on the decisions made by their rela tives or traffickers.

36 From 1898, Americans expressed opposition to what Major Owen Sweet termed the “social evil” of prostitution. In Jolo, in the southern Philippines, Sweet was concerned for his troops when he implemented “regulation, re striction and control” over “immoral women and their keepers,” targeting Chinese women in particular.

The American military government also introduced prostitution regula tions in Manila. In 1900, Major Ira C. Brown proposed setting aside a district of central Manila for brothels, but this provoked so many complaints that

T. Martínez2021 71

A law resembling the British Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s was implemented by the Spanish colonial authorities in 1888 to regulate the casas de prostitución (houses of prostitution), obliging women to undergo regular medical examinations for venereal disease. In the 1890s, legal brothels spread out beyond Binondo, employing women of various ethnicities but apparently no Chinese, if we can judge by a surviving 1893 report listing 31 brothel keepers and 103 brothel workers.34 The 1893 report also makes no mention of Japanese women, but Motoe Terami-Wada explained that the Japanese consulate in Manila was closed from 1893 to 1896, and when it reopened just two Japanese women were recorded in Manila.35 Clearly, the official records are incomplete, and historians of prostitution have often found or suspected such gaps in the archives.

it has been understood that Chinese women did not immigrate in large numbers until 1937, when they were allowed entry in significant numbers, as part of the seven thousand Chinese who entered as war refugees.29

Julia

Before 1918

In her study of prostitution in the late nineteenth century, Maria Luisa Camagay describes Chinese men in the Philippines as clients and brothel keepers, but she found no Chinese women labeled as prostitutes or brothel keepers (amas) although women were encouraged to work as brothel keep ers in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.30 Jely Agamao Galang reviewed some five thousand arrest cases from 1831 to 1898 and found none involving Chinese women.31 For the period 1885 to 1887 Andrew Jimenez Abalahin noted that more than half of the 126 arrests of women took place in Binondo (Chinatown), but he found only a small number of mestiza sangley (daughters of Chinese men and Indigenous women) among those arrested, the majority being Indigenous women.32 There were just 196 Chinese women in Manila at the time, 52 of whom were minors.33

Prostitution in the Philippines

At the turn of the century, Spanish colonial rule ended in the Philippines and the United States waged a bloody colonial war to suppress Filipino resistance. Vicente Rafael observes that American colonialism remained “rhetorically driven” by the moral imperative of “benevolent assimilation.”

With the shift to civilian government, the 1902 Philippines Commis sion Act No. 519 criminalized prostitution under vagrancy laws directed at “every lewd or dissolute person who lives in and about houses of ill fame; every common prostitute.”41 The term vagrant referred to “any person who keeps a house of prostitution; or acts as pimp or procurer; or who is a common gambler or prostitute.”

48 In the United States, domestic programs were implemented with the approval of Bascom Johnson, a member of the ASHA and then director of the Army Sanitary Corps.

In the Philippines, Governor General Francis Burton Harrison reluc tantly passed on the order from President Woodrow Wilson to close down

American administrators were forced to expel women who were selling sex.

47 As Laura Briggs explains, the US colonial policy of seg regated and regulated prostitution, which had applied to the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, was replaced in 1918 by the US domestic policy of “suppression and incarceration.”

Anti-imperialist women in the United States criticized the tolerance of brothels in the Philippines. As Kristin Hoganson explained, Women’s Christian Temperance Union members challenged the “civilizing mission” that condoned “licensing prostitutes who had dealings with U.S. troops.”

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44 In 1908, the United States signed the Interna tional Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic of 1904 on behalf of the Philippines. Manila authorities continued to allow brothels to operate discreetly under the name “lodging houses.”45 In fact, the number of Japanese women recorded as working in prostitution rose in 1910 to 432 across the Philippines.

In Manila, the red-light district of Gardenia was shut down in 1918. In that year there were 902 female Japanese and 3,098 female Chinese in the Philippines.

42 By this time the Chinese female population had slightly increased; the 1903 census recorded 40,518 Chinese males and 517 Chinese females in the Philippines, compared with 475 Japanese males and 446 Japanese females. Notably, only the Japanese women were described as being “in the main composed of prostitutes.”43 The census commentary emphasised “foreign” women as the problem, applauding the “chastity of the Filipinos.”

In 1901, Sampaloc—further north and more isolated—was nominated to be a red-light district and would remain as one until 1918. There were an estimated 200 licensed brothels employing about 600 women selling sex. A report by William B. Johnson of the American League claimed that while many of these women declared themselves to be Americans, the authorities suspected that some were Europeans.39

The National American Woman Suffrage Association protested that their Association’s “sense of transcendent sisterhood” made them concerned that “Filipinas were being degraded, turned into sexual objects to gratify male desires.”

According to Jessica R. Pliley, the Advisory Committee debated three distinct positions: the continued regulation of prostitution; a paternalist abolition opposing all forms of prostitution even to the point of restricting women’s mobility; and the feminist abolitionist position, which opposed “laws specifically targeting women.”60 The “prohibition of the employment of foreign women in licensed houses” was first raised in 1922 by a Polish

Julia T. Martínez2021 73 red-light districts within ten miles of an army post. There were some 200 Filipina and 122 Japanese women in licensed brothels at the time.50 Mayor Justo Lukban controversially deported 178 Filipinas to Davao, in the south. He was apparently encouraged by Josefa Abiertas, the first female Filipina law graduate from the University of the Philippines, although she regretted his actions against the women involved.51

The signing of the Covenant of the League of Nations in 1919 had brought a renewed commitment to international cooperation to suppress the “traffic in women and children.”57 The 1921 International Convention for the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children aimed to suppress trafficking and forced prostitution, although as Daniel Gorman pointed out, it did not target consenting prostitution or brothel keeping. Signatories to the 1921 convention were expected to submit annual reports on their ac tions to suppress the traffic.

The criminalization of prostitution was an active policy from 1918 onwards. The police reported 170 arrests made for violation of the law on prostitution in 1921, according to historian Alfred McCoy.54 Discreet regula tion was permitted, but only under the guise of dance halls that served the US Army and Navy as covers for selling sex.55 As Paul Kramer remarks, the US troops had sufficient wages to be frequent customers at these clandestine Manila brothels.56

The Manila Council tried to revert to licensed prostitution in 1924, but this was opposed by local women’s associations and the clergy.52 The Japanese government responded by repatriating Japanese women, and by 1928 there were no Japanese women officially recorded as selling sex in the Philippines.53

The League of Nations’ Anti-Trafficking Campaign, 1921–1933

The Social Section of the League of Nations Secretariat, headed by London-born Dame Rachel Crowdy from 1919 to 1931, compiled summary reports for the Advisory Commission for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People—Traffic in Women and Children Committee (henceforth Advisory Committee).58 The Advisory Committee under Crowdy had five assessors from voluntary associations, such as the abolitionist International Bureau for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (International Bureau) and the feminist International Women’s Organizations.59

74 delegate to the Fifth Committee of the Assembly who was concerned about Polish women in South America. The French representative opposed the proposal, describing it as an attack on the “liberty of women who chose to prostitute themselves” and discriminatory toward foreign women.61

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Journal of Women ’s History

Stephanie Limoncelli suggested that unlike the more liberal International Abolitionist Federation, the International Bureau saw prostitution as a “moral failing” of women and girls.

Carol Miller also alludes to tensions on the Advisory Commit tee between the French, supporting state-regulated brothels, and British representative, S. W. Harris, advocating for the suppression of brothel prostitution.

The Philippines officials started record ing the number of deportations because the League of Nations required it.

The League of Nations published its first regional study of traffick ing in 1927, investigating prostitution in Europe, the Americas, and North Africa, based on the research that had begun in 1924. The 1927 and 1933 traffic reports had many similarities; most notably, both were funded by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bureau of Social Hygiene and overseen by Bascom Johnson. Dr. William Snow, head of the ASHA, presided over the original committee, and he appointed Bascom Johnson to lead the research.

62 Speaking at the April 1932 meeting of the Traffic Committee on behalf of Women’s International Associations, feminist abolitionist Avril de Sainte-Croix argued against deportation, as “the great majority of women’s international associations had declared themselves opposed to the expulsion of foreign prostitutes” and to licensed brothels.

The United States did not sign the 1921 convention, having rejected membership in the League of Nations, but Bascom Johnson provided answers to the League’s 1921 questionnaire on behalf of the United States.66 A report on the Philippines appeared in the 1924 League of Nations “Prostitu tion and the Traffic in Women and Children in Various Asiatic Countries and Colonies,” recording women selling sex as “Native 600, European and American 30, Japanese 30,” but omitting Chinese women.67 The League questionnaire also asked for the number, age, and nationality of women deported as “foreign prostitutes.”

The British lobby built on the work of Josephine Butler and the Ladies’ National Association (LNA), which fought until 1886 against the Contagious Diseases Acts and forced medical examination of women selling sex. The LNA became the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene after 1915 and continued advocating against regulation in the colonies.65

Johnson was again requested for the Asia study, after Grace Abbott, the US representative on the Advisory Committee, helped secure funding of US$125,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation.69 Both reports began with compiled data provided by local officials, police, and interviews with organizations involved in rescue activities. The 1927 investigation was

Julia T. Martínez2021 75 thought by some to be more rigorous because it also employed undercover investigators who made contact with underworld informants and women in brothels. Paul Knepper suggests that this direct approach did not lead to a more nuanced reading of the situation. For example, investigators merely cited the Argentine authorities who blamed trafficking on immigrants, and on Jewish women in particular a trend also seen in Europe. Jean-Michel Chaumont similarly noted that ASHA undercover investigator George Worthington blamed immigrant Chinese in America for the trafficking in young Chinese women.70

71 Crowdy was already planning for the next study of Asia. Japanese delegates had come to her with a proposal for the abolition of regulated brothels in Japan by 1933.72 In 1926, the British Social Hygiene Council had also commissioned the Bostock Hill’s Report on Singapore, which highlighted the conditions experienced by Chinese women and advocated against renewed regulation of brothels.

The 1933 Commission of Enquiry collected an array of data, although the published 500-page report was brief considering its geographical range. The unpublished preliminary report on the Philippines was longer, breaking down deportation figures for Chinese women across the years 1925–1930, with a peak of 200 in 1929, reducing to 135 in 1930.

The Japanese representative Ito, however, cited reports of Chinese trafficking into the Philippines. Abbott explained that it was generally agreed that “owing to our immigration laws and the Mann Act the Philippines was at least for an oriental country in an excellent condi tion.” She concluded that the Philippines should be visited if only because it would provide “a very interesting and valuable contrast to conditions in other parts of the Orient.”

Rachel Crowdy, speaking on the 1927 report, cited its finding that as many as 70 percent of women in international traffic had previously worked in prostitution in their own countries. At the same time, women testified that “had they known the conditions to which they were going . . . they would never have gone.”

76 Thus from the outset Abbott cast Chinese immigration as the problem and indicated her support for the restrictive Mann Act as the solution.

74 Initially, the Advisory Committee had been unsure whether to include the Philippines in the itinerary of the 1930–1931 traveling commission. As Michael Salman notes, the assumption was that the American Philippines would be exemplary and thus there would be no need for League intervention.75 The members of the traveling commission met with the Committee of Enquiry in August 1930, with French representative Eugène Regnault serving as chair. Grace Abbott reported that Spain’s Don Picente Palmarali y Reboulet claimed that “there was no traffic in the Philippines, moral conditions were on a very high level.”

The Manila Girl’s Training School gave the traveling commission information about two Chinese girls in their care. One was a sixteen-year old, brought to Manila in 1923 at age ten. She had been bought for $150 from her former master, who returned to China. She was arrested in 1929 for vagrancy at the New Chicago Hotel, Manila, where she was taken by a Chinese procurer for the purpose of selling sex.80 According to the Tribune newspaper, the manager of the New Chicago Hotel was a Cantonese man, Yap Tack Wing.81 The second girl was a seventeen-year-old who had arrived

A report titled “A List of Foreign Prostitutes Deported from the Philip pine Islands” included twenty-eight women categorized as European who were deported from 1928 to 1930; aged nineteen to forty-three, they were mostly French, but there were a few American and Russian women. Euro pean women who sold sex reportedly arrived as tourists or dressmakers, while Chinese women, because of immigration restrictions, entered Manila as the wives and minor children of Chinese residents.78 Most of the Chinese women were listed as voluntary deportations. No mention was made of the fact that deported Chinese women were not necessarily convicted of prostitution; any woman not related by birth or marriage to a Philippines resident was liable to deportation. The Immigration Department in Manila appeared proud of its restrictive measures, showing no regard for women’s well-being: “Prostitutes or not prostitutes—they must go through that in vestigation; every woman who comes, especially Chinese. . . . If she makes contradictions in her testimony we reject her, denying her admittance.”79

In addition to Bascom Johnson, the traveling commission included Karol Pindor, a Polish diplomat with experience in Asia, and Dr. Alma Sun dquist, a Swedish expert in venereal disease. They spent just two weeks in Manila, from January 24 to February 10, 1931. During this time, they were received by Governor General Dwight F. Davis and interviewed forty others.

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While historians have pointed to the reduction in voluntary organizations on the Advisory Committee in the 1930s, there is no question that the traveling commission sought information from a wide range of interested parties. They interviewed chief medical officers of the army and the navy, the Young Women’s Christian Association, and the Trained Nurses Association. The French, Chinese, and Japanese consuls gave testimonies. The commission spoke to representatives from nongovernmental organizations, including the Women’s Temperance Union, the Public Welfare Commission, the As sociated Charities, the Manila Bulletin, and the Episcopal Church. They also visited the Mary Johnson Hospital, Bilibid Prison, cabarets and dance halls, and the Children’s Welfare Village. If they spoke to Chinese women in person, this was not recorded. The traveling commission also attended the Board of Special Enquiry deportation hearings of three fifteen-year-old Chinese girls.

Katherine F. Lenroot, also of the US Children’s Bureau, went to Geneva in Abbott’s stead. The Traffic Commission meeting, with Johnson as rappor teur, acknowledged that clandestine prostitution in the Philippines, which had no licensed houses, had been reduced thanks to the vigilance of local authorities. The Traffic Commission’s only criticism was that the commis sioner general of immigration in Washington, DC, should be charged with coordinating deportations and should liaise with a local representative in the Philippines. The Immigration Department in Manila was also advised to consult with the Chinese consul before deporting women, noting that no arrangements had been made for the women’s “reception by relatives, friends, or charitable agencies on arrival.”

The Chinese consul, K. L. Kwong, who was cited at length, claimed not to have been notified of the deportations of Chinese women; this was not surprising given that as consul from 1930 to 1934, he had been a recent ar rival in 1931. In an apparent attempt to deflect the blame onto the Japanese, Kwong speculated that the women might have been arriving from Formosa (Taiwan), then under Japanese rule. He told the traveling commission that he opposed the mui tsai system, but he acknowledged that it continued and could lead to prostitution when the girls came of age.84 Historian Christian Henriot pointed out that the Chinese government, wishing to prevent the tarnishing of their image abroad in the League’s report, requested that maps depicting the “yellow slave trade” be removed from the final report.85 China, it should be noted, had been a League of Nations member since 1920 and had ratified the 1921 convention in 1926.

Grace Abbott reviewed the preliminary report on the Philippines and made no comment on the treatment of Chinese women. Since she was unable to attend the Geneva meeting in December 1932, Bascom Johnson sent her his draft report and encouraged her to provide him with feed back. Her only request was that one statement relating to traffic in Filipina women be removed “unless there is a good deal of evidence to back it up.”

87 Wellington Koo, Chinese delegate to the League of Nations Council, later requested that a Chinese representative be added to the Advisory Committee to enable China “to participate fully in the discussion.”88

Julia T. Martínez2021 77 in Manila in 1925 when she was fourteen, and sold to a Chinese man. She was arrested in 1928 for vagrancy and deported.82 It was not surprising that these cases of underage prostitution appeared in the report; women under the age of twenty-one were the primary concern of the 1921 convention. The League of Nations decided, however, to expand its campaign, introducing the International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age in 1933. This convention made it an offense to procure or entice, “even with her consent, a woman or girl of full age for immoral purposes in another country.”

90 In 1931 there were 207 arrests of young women. Not all cases led to deportation, as some lawyers successfully petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus to claim unlawful detention on the grounds of insufficient evidence or improper hearing proceedings. The police complained to the traveling commission that without a detention station, the women had to be released on bond, which gave them “every opportunity to prepare them selves when their cases are presented before the Board of Special Enquiry.”

Jose Fernandez Uy Tana instituted habeas corpus proceedings on behalf of Sia Pag, then just fifteen years old, to overturn the deportation order. Her attorney, Zaragoza, successfully argued that she “was not granted a full, complete, and impartial hearing.”92

After the red-light district was closed, new Manila brothels opened in La Loma to the north and in Pasay and Culiculi to the south. These were unofficial brothels, associated with gambling and gangsters, who paid police and local officials to allow them to operate. According to Alfred McCoy, the police campaigns of 1925 and 1931 failed to “break this nexus among the vice syndicates, crooked police, and local politics.”

The case of Sia Pag is an example. Sia Pag arrived in Manila on Sep tember 22, 1930, from Amoy, traveling as the minor daughter of resident merchant Sia Hoat Lian. On December 17, authorities received complaints that Sia Pag was engaged in prostitution. She was arrested and sent before a board of special inquiry, where she was represented by attorney Ernesto Zaragoza. The board concluded: “There is no proof that the girl had ever plied this disgraceful trade.” They disregarded the testimony of agents Lazcanotegui and Tan Heng that she lived in the New Chicago Hotel with a Chinese man. Instead, the court found her guilty of having fraudulently obtained her certificate of residence and recommended that she be deported.

In 1930, Judge Anacleto Díaz led revisions of the Spanish colonial codes with provisions against trafficking in women and concubinage.93 The Re vised Penal Code of 1930 (Act No. 3815) criminalized prostitution in article 202, Vagrants and Prostitutes, which defined prostitutes as “women who, for money or profit, habitually indulge in sexual intercourse or lascivious conduct.” Punishment was arresto menor (minor arrest) with one to thirty days in prison or a fine not exceeding two hundred pesos. Other related offenses included corruption of minors (article 340), relating to underage prostitution, with a punishment of six to twelve years in prison, and white slave trade (article 341).94

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Policing of Prostitution in Manila after 1930

89 The 1931 push on policing was likely galvanized by the visit of the traveling commission, as it was soon afterwards that the Philippines Vice Commission was established “to make a survey of the existence of prostitution and traffic in women in the Philippines, with a view to the adoption of measures for its control and eradication.”

Asunción A. Perez, executive secretary of the Associated Charities, provided “facts and figures on the corruption of minors, especially through the agency of dance halls and cabarets.”105

Lillian Kwong, the Chinese consul’s wife, herself an active social worker, visited the Engineer Island detention station, where Ay Kim was being held in 1934, and declared that she was satisfied with the conditions there.99

Prostitution was again on the agenda at the National Federation of Women’s Clubs convention in 1933, concerning Filipina women rather than Chinese.

In 1932, Insular Customs began to construct a new immigration de tention station to accommodate more than one thousand immigrants on Engineer Island, at the mouth of the Pasig River, close to central Manila.95 The detention station opened in July 1933, in time for the arrival of the SS Anking and the arrests of Chinese women in September. 96 The insular collector of customs, Vicente Aldanese, ordered authorities “to conduct rigid investigations of Chinese women arriving here with a view to keeping out Chinese girls of questionable character.”97 A large group aged sixteen to twenty-one waived their right to a hearing and left voluntarily for China.98

102 Her views were not necessarily shared by the leading women of Manila, who, if anything, were calling for stronger police action.

In 1935, the Manila tabloid magazine Scandal claimed that Chinese girls were still being imported for clandestine brothels: “All around Binondo, on Gandara, T.Pinpin, Ongpin, Teodara Alonso, Nueva and other sur roundings streets, they can be had through the right approach.”100 Scandal acknowledged that the “Chinese consulate and the respectable portion of the Chinese community have consistently campaigned for the eradication of these vicious elements and spared no efforts to cause their deportation.” Nevertheless, there was “a fresh supply of young slaves [aged fourteen to twenty] coming in from China almost every month;” the cost was thirty to fifty pesos “for the young and beautiful ones.”101

The Manila Tribune’s Woman’s Forum in 1934 published the views of magistrate Anna M. Kross, of the Women’s Court in New York City, who offered a critique of the criminalization of prostitution. She preferred “to take cases of prostitution out of criminal courts and handle them socially before a commission.”

In November 1932, the elite Woman’s Club of Manila held a public forum to discuss the problem of trafficking. President (and founder in 1925) Sofia R. de Veyra and Pilar H. Lim, president of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs, explained their plan to present bills to the legislature.103 These were items “they deemed essential to curb the iniquitous traffic in women and girls.” Lim spoke of controlling the so-called “Employment Agencies” in Manila. Acting Secretary Reyes of the Department of Justice had proposed a bill “to curb immorality” after consulting with leading women. Club women spoke at the forum on their knowledge of “commercialized vice.”104

Julia T. Martínez2021 79

111 His framing of women as “notorious” was at odds with the League of Nations’ understanding of women as the victims of Planningtraffickers.forthe 1937 traffic conference had begun in 1935, when Ruth F. Woodsmall, general secretary of the World YWCA in New York, wrote to Erik Ekstrand, Crowdy’s replacement in the Social Section. Woodsmall had been in Washington, DC, to discuss holding the conference in Manila. Mary Anderson, director of the Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau, and Kath erine F. Lenroot, director of the Children’s Bureau, made Woodsmall aware that with the transition to the Philippines Commonwealth, Manila was an unlikely venue. Both women assured her of their “deep and continued in terest in the problem.”112 Katharine F. Lenroot, who replaced Grace Abbott

Journal of Women ’s History80 Winter

108 Alzona argued for the arrest of both men and women. She noted that both the Philippines Medical Association and the women’s clubs had opposed the reopening of the red-light district “in order to stop the traffic in women.”

Encouragement for the prosecution of women also appears in the land mark book by Encarnación Alzona, The Filipino Woman: Her Social, Economic and Political Status, 1565–1933. The first female historian of the Philippines, Alzona had a degree in history from the University of the Philippines, a master’s degree from Radcliffe College, and a PhD in 1923 from Columbia University.106 In 1932 a Barbour Scholarship for Oriental Women at the Uni versity of Michigan allowed her to finish her book. Alzona was a feminist and a nationalist.107 In her book she discusses the closing of Manila’s red-light district: “Prostitutes are now free to live anywhere and they are scattered in the city, the suburbs, and the provinces, thus making their apprehension difficult. Moreover, the present law is defective, for it permits prosecution only in cases of vagrancy, and many of these unfortunates have some kind of part-time employment, either as waitresses, laundry women, or profes sional dancers.”

109

President Quezon, the League of Nations, and the YWCA

Manuel L. Quezon was elected president of the new Philippines Commonwealth in September 1935, having been president of the Philippines Senate since 1916 and leader of the Nacionalista Party.110 Quezon did not engage in the ongoing League of Nations trafficking campaign. He declined to send a representative to the 1937 League of Nations Traffic in Women and Children Conference in Bandung, Java, on the grounds that the traffic in women and children was already prohibited and penalized by Philippine law. He described trafficking as “more of a police problem than it is social” and added: “Foreign women who several years ago had been dedicating themselves to prostitution were deported. Since then we have had little or no trouble with notorious women.”

The fate of Chinese women was a concern for Lenroot, who wrote to Guthrie, in Java, suggesting that she discuss the welfare of deportees returning to China: “I realize that the problems of these girls are very dif ficult to work out and that it may not be possible to develop satisfactory methods of exchange of information which will ensure some measure of protection being given to the girls.”115 Guthrie also spoke at the conference on the appointment in 1936 of a woman judge in Manila to oversee cases involving women and children.116 These mid-1930s events suggest that there remained a strong cohort of feminist internationalists working on behalf of the League of Nations, following in the footsteps of Crowdy and Abbott.

The deportation case in 1936 of Lee Ha, a twenty-five-year-old woman who arrived from Hong Kong, provides one example of why Lenroot’s notion of protecting “girls” did not necessarily suit deported women. Lee Ha’s photograph was published on the front page of the Manila Tribune. Her serious gaze and businesslike suit jacket gave her the look of a sophisticated university student. Lee Ha had traveled from Hong Kong as the alleged wife of A. Mendoza in order to gain entry into Manila. She was immedi ately arrested by Agent Lazcanotegui, of the Customs Secret Service, who recognized her as the “same girl” he had placed on the SS President Lincoln for deportation eight months prior. She had been “charged with leading an immoral life” and had failed in her appeal to the Supreme Court. On her second arrival in Manila, she was deported that afternoon. The Tribune pub lished an interview with Lee Ha in which she “confided that she felt more at home in Manila than in China and that the call of the city’s atmosphere was too strong for her to resist.”117 It seems unlikely that Lee Ha would have welcomed YWCA support on her return journey.

Julia T. Martínez2021 81 as chief of the US Children’s Bureau in 1934, was on the League’s Advisory Committee until 1939.113 Lenroot arranged for Anne Guthrie, of the Manila YWCA, to attend the conference as the unofficial American observer.114

Conclusions

The deportation of Chinese women from Manila from 1925 to 1936 followed the American-led policy of brothel suppression implemented in 1918, which was taken up and expanded with the support of Filipino lead ers. The rise in the number of deportations during this decade was in part a response to the increased immigration of Chinese women and a grow ing antagonism toward Chinese immigration. The notable silence in the Manila Tribune after 1936 on the subject of the traffic in women most likely reflected the waning influence of the League of Nations in the Philippines. The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and the resulting wave of Chinese refugees fleeing from violence would soon shift those attitudes toward Chinese immigration.

2See, e.g., Gail Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasure: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Christian

Journal of Women ’s History82 Winter

1Case of Tan Kim, G.R. No. 41391, Sept. 6, 1934, Republic of the Philippines, Supreme Court, accessed July 1, 2017, http://www.lawphil.net; Antonio S. Tan, “The Emergence of Philippine Chinese National and Political Awakening,” in More Tsinoy Than We Admit, Chinese-Filipino Interactions over the Centuries, ed. Richard T. Chu (Quezon City: Vibal Foundation, 2015), 301–366, 320.

The influence of the League of Nations anti-trafficking campaign on Manila was seen in the formal recording of policing and deportation activi ties after 1924. Because the American Bascom Johnson took a leading role in the League’s investigations, Manila viewed the campaign as a largely American-driven one. As imperial rule in the Philippines drew to a close, the United States still sought to promote itself as a benevolent imperialist, bringing the rule of law to the “Orient.” In this respect the League of Na tions anti-trafficking campaign, by reasserting the need for social reform in Asia, had reinscribed racialized and orientalist understandings of Chinese women and promoted a regressive form of imperialist internationalism. In Manila, the anti-trafficking campaign, while supposedly aimed at the protection of women, provided no evidence that local feminist abolitionists or the Chinese consul sought to protect Chinese women from police inter vention. While some representatives on the League of Nations’ Advisory Committee may have protested against the deportation of “foreign pros titutes,” their advice was not taken up by the League of Nations Council. The only support offered to Chinese women in Manila was to encourage the government to develop more structured deportation processes. But by requesting that Chinese deportees be reunited with friends or family or voluntary organizations in China, feminist internationalists risked renew ing the maternalist interventions from earlier British imperial campaigns.

Grace Abbott, who had imagined Manila to be a showcase for social policy, was apparently unaware that the suppression of trafficking came at a cost to Chinese women. As successor to Grace Abbott, Katharine Lenroot was a strong advocate for feminist action, but her acknowledgment that there was no easy solution to the individual problems faced by Chinese women was rightly hesitant.

Notes I wish to thank Julia Laite, Philippa Hetherington, Frances Steel and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful advice. A special thanks to the archivists at the League of Nations Archives, Geneva. This research was funded by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, FT120100127, and a US Studies Centre grant from the University of Sydney.

17Tamara Cooper, “British Women Missionaries, Chinese Women, and the Protestant Rescue Project in Hong Kong and China, 1850–1940” (PhD diss., Uni versity of Wollongong, 2020), chap. 6.

See Jessica R. Pliley, Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).

Julia T. Martínez2021 83 Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History, 1849–1949, trans. Noël Castelino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Henriot, “Courtship, Sex and Money: The Economics of Courtesan Houses in Nineteenth- and TwentiethCentury Shanghai,” Women’s History Review, 8, no. 3 (1999): 443–467. 3“2 Agents Face Court Action,” Tribune (Manila), Feb. 2, 1934, 3. 4“Chinese deported,” Tribune, May 12, 1935, 12. 5Case of Tan Kim, Sept. 6, 1934; An Act to Regulate the Immigration of Aliens to, and the Residence of Aliens in, the United States, Pub. L. No. 64-301, 39 Stat. 874 (1917), On the United States, see Sucheng Chan, “The Exclusion of Chinese Women, 1870–1943,” in Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943, ed. Sucheng Chan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 94-146; 132. 6Case of Tan Kim, Sept. 6, 1934. 7“Chinese Influx Here Unabated,” Tribune, Mar. 16, 1933, 2. 8“Arrest of 200 Chinese Girls in City Ordered,” Tribune, Oct. 4, 1933, 2. 9Eric Tagliacozzo, Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865–1915 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 231. League of Nations, Commission of Enquiry into Traffic in Women and Children in the East: Report to Council (Geneva, 1933); Barbara Metzger, “Towards an Interna tional Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years: The League of Nations’ Combat of Traffic in Women and Children,” in Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, c. 1880–1950, ed. Keith Grant, Philippa Levine, and Frank Trentmann (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 54–79, 72. 11Metzger, “Towards an International Human Rights Regime,” 66. 12League of Nations, Commission of Enquiry into Traffic, 37.

15Liat Kozma, “Women’s Migration for Prostitution in the Interwar Middle East and North Africa,” Journal of Women’s History 28, no. 3 (Fall 2016): 93–113, 100.

For a nuanced discussion relating to individuals as method, see Julia Laite, “The Emmet’s Inch: Small History in a Digital Age,” Journal of Social History 53, no. 4 (Summer 2020): 1–27.

David Petruccelli, “The Crisis of Liberal Internationalism: The Legacies of the League of Nations Reconsidered,” Journal of World History 31, no. 1 (2020): 111–136, 127.

22Susan Pedersen, “The Maternalist Moment in British Colonial Policy: The Controversy over ‘Child Slavery’ in Hong Kong, 1917–1941,” Past and Present, no. 171 (May 2001): 161–202, 163. Antoinette Burton described Josephine Butler’s cam paign in India as “maternal imperialism”; see Antoinette M. Burton, “The White Woman’s Burden: British Feminists and the ‘Indian Woman,’ 1865–1915,” in Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance, ed. N. Chaudhuri and M. Strobel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 137-157; 144.

21Rachel Leow, “‘Do you Own Non-Chinese Mui Tsai?’ Re-examining Race and Female Servitude in Malaya and Hong Kong, 1919–1939,” Modern Asian Studies 46, no. 6 (Nov. 2012): 1736–1763, 1739.

19James Warren, Ah Ku and Karayuki-san: Prostitution in Singapore, 1870–1940 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1993), 52.

26Philippa Levine, “Modernity, Medicine and Colonialism: The Contagious Diseases Ordinances in Hong Kong and the Straits Settlements,” in Gender, Sexuality and Colonial Modernities, ed. Antoinette Burton (New York: Routledge, 1999), 35-48; 37. 27Warren, Ah Ku and Karayuki-san, 175; Vicki Crinis, “Sex Trafficking to the Federated Malay States, 1920–1940: From Migration for Prostitution to Victim or Criminal?” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 48, no. 2 (2019): 1–23, 11; “Brothels to Go,” Singapore Free Press, Dec. 16, 1931, 8.

18Maria Jaschok, Concubines and Bondservants, The Social History of a Chinese Custom (London: Zed Books, 1988), 146, 108.

20Sarah Paddle, “The Limits of Sympathy: International Feminists and the Chinese ‘Slave Girl’ Campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 4, no. 3 (2003): 1-22; 1. See also Karen Yuen, “Theorizing the Chinese: The Mui Tsai Controversy and Constructions of Transnational Chineseness in Hong Kong and British Malaya,” New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 6, no. 2 (2004): 95–110.

23Magaly Rodríguez García, “Child Slavery, Sex Trafficking or Domestic Work? The League of Nations and Its Analysis of the Mui Tsai System,” in Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers, ed. Dirk Hoerder, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, and Silke Neunsinger (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 428–450, 435. See also Suzanne Miers, “Mui Tsai Through the Eyes of the Victim: Janet Lim’s Story of Bondage and Escape,” in Narrating Hong Kong Culture and Identity, eds. Pun Ngai and Yee Lai-Man (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2003), 433–452. 24Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasure ; Gail Hershatter, “Appreciating Judith Walkowitz, Then and Now,” Journal of Women’s History 29, no. 4 (Winter 2017): 160–163, 160. See also Sue Gronewold, Beautiful Merchandise: Prostitution in China, 1860–1936 (New York: Haworth, 1982).

25Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York: Routledge, 2003); Lenore Manderson, Sickness and the State: Health and Illness in Colonial Malaya, 1870–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Raelene Frances, “Prostitution: The Age of Empires,” in A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Age of Empire, ed. Chiara Beccalossi and Ivan Crozier (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 145-170

Journal of Women ’s History84 Winter

37Paul A. Kramer, “The Military-Sexual Complex: Prostitution, Disease and the Boundaries of Empire during the Philippine-American War,” Asia-Pacific Journal 9, issue 30, no. 2 (2011): 1–35, 1, 10. See also Tessa Ong Winkelmann, “Rethinking the Sexual Geography of American Empire in the Philippines: Interracial Intimacies in Mindanao and the Cordilleras, 1898–1921,” in Gendering the Trans-Pacific World, ed. Catherine Ceniza Choy and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 39–76.

29Theresa C. Cariño, “Chinese women in Manila, Changing Roles and Percep tions,” in Chu, More Tsinoy Than We Admit, 462–478, 463. 30Maria Luisa Camagay, “Prostitution in Nineteenth Century Manila,” Philippine Studies 36 (1988): 241–255; Elizabeth Sinn, “Women at Work: Chinese Brothel Keepers in Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong,” Journal of Women’s History 19, no. 3 (2007): 87–111, 92; Manderson, Sickness and the State, 175; Warren, Ah Ku and Karayuki-san, 39. 31Jely Agamao Galang, “Vagrants and Outcasts: Chinese Labouring Classes, Criminality, and the State in the Philippines, 1831–1898” (PhD diss., Murdoch University, 2019), 191.

32Andrew Jimenez Abalahin, “Prostitution Policy and the Project of Moder nity: A Comparative Study of Colonial Indonesia and the Philippines, 1850–1940” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 2003), 161; Raquel A. G. Reyes, Love, Passion and Patriotism: Sexuality and the Philippine Propaganda Movement, 1882–1892 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), 18. 33Galang, “Vagrants and Outcasts,” 192. 34Jimenez Abalahin, “Prostitution Policy and the Project of Modernity,” 158–159. See also Greg Bankoff, Crime, Society and the State in the Nineteenth-Century Philippines, Manila (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1996), 41–44. 35Motoe Terami-Wada, “Karayuki-san of Manila: 1880-1920,” Philippine Studies 34 (1986): 287–316, 289.

36Vicente L. Rafael, White Love and Other Events in Filipino History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 21. See also Warwick Anderson, Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).

Julia T. Martínez2021 85 28Isabelle Tracol-Huynh, “Prostitution in Colonial Hanoi (1885–1954),” in Sell ing Sex in the City: A Global History of Prostitution, 1600s–2000s, ed. Magaly Rodríguez García, Lex Heerma van Voss, and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 538–566, 565; Julia Martínez, “La Traite des Jaunes: Trafficking in Women and Children across the China Sea,” in , Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World, ed. Emma Christopher, Cassandra Pybus and Marcus Rediker (Berke ley: University of California Press, 2007), 204–221; Trude Jacobsen, Sex Trafficking in Southeast Asia, A History of Desire, Duty, and Debt (London: Routledge, 2017), esp. 112; Isabelle Tracol-Huynh, “The Shadow Theater of Prostitution in French Colonial Tonkin: Faceless Prostitutes under the Colonial Gaze,” trans. Kareem James AbuZeid, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 7, no. 1 (2012): 10–51, 36.

44US Bureau of the Census, Census of the Philippine Islands, 1903, 2:117 Henry Willis mentioned only Russian, Japanese, and American women. Henry Parker Willis, Our Philippine Problem: A Study of American Colonial Policy (New York: Henry Holt, 1905), 257. 45Terami-Wada, “Karayuki-San of Manila,” 309; Luis Camara Dery, A History of the Inarticulate: Local History, Prostitution and Other Views from the Bottom (Quezon City: New Day, 2001), 150. 46Terami-Wada, “Karayuki-san of Manila,” 300.

43US Bureau of the Census, Census of the Philippine Islands, 1903, Vol. 2 (Wash ington, DC, 1905), 55.

47Annex II, Philippines Islands, Population by Nationality and Sex, League of Nations, “Report Concerning the Philippines Islands.”

41Victor Román Mendoza, Metroimperial Intimacies: Fantasy, Racial-Sexual Governance, and the Philippines in U.S. Imperialism, 1899–1913 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 45–46.

William B. Johnson, “The Crowning Infamy of Imperialism,” New Voice and the Chicago Lever (Chicago: American League, 1901), in American Social Hygiene Association Papers, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 6, https://archives.lib.umn.edu/reposi tories/11/resources/6144.

Journal of Women ’s History86 Winter 38Jimenez Abalahin, “Prostitution Policy and the Project of Modernity,” 300–301.39

40Kristin L. Hoganson, “‘As Badly Off as the Filipinos’: U.S. Women’s Suffrag ists and the Imperial Issue at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Women’s History 13, no. 2 (2001): 9–33, 15. See also Pamela Jean Maddock, “Venereal Disease Control in the Progressive Era US Army: Managing Gendered Labour and Leisure in Militarised Space, 1870–1920” (PhD diss., University of Sydney, 2019), chap. 2.

Ordinances of the City of Manila, Section 822, Annex IV, in League of Na tions, “Traffic in Women and Children, Extension of the Enquiry on Traffic in Women and Children in the East, Report Concerning the Philippine Islands,” 1932, Second Inquiry of the Special Body of Experts, Preliminary Reports, Philippine Islands, File 38291, LON Archives (hereafter League of Nations, “Report Concerning the Philippines Islands”).

48Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science and US Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 32, 46.

49Major Bascom Johnson, “Eliminating Vice from Camp Cities,” Annals of the American Academy, 1918, 64. 50Dery, History of the Inarticulate, 144; League of Nations, “Particulars concern ing Prostitution and the Traffic in Women and Children in Various Asiatic Countries and Colonies,” 82, 1924, S171, no. 1, 26, LON Archives, Geneva.

62Stephanie A. Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Move ment to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 63–64. See also Rachael Attwood, “Stopping the Traffic: The National Vigilance Association and the International Fight against the ‘White Slave’ Trade (1899–c. 1909),” Women’s History Review 24, no. 3 (2015): 325–350.

54Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009).

55Report of the Secretary of the Interior to the Governor-General, 1921, 19, 90, Box 9, Folder 12, Hayden Papers, Bentley Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 56Paul Kramer, “The Darkness That Enters the Home: The Politics of Prostitu tion during the Philippine-American War,” in Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Inti macy in North American History, ed. Ann Laura Stoler (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 366–404; D. J. Pivar, “The Military, Prostitution, and Colonial Peoples: India and the Philippines, 1885–1917,” Journal of Sex Research 17, no. 3 (1981): 256–269.

59Daniel Gorman, “Empire, Internationalism, and the Campaign against the Traffic in Women and Children in the 1920s,” Twentieth Century British History 19, no. 2 (2008): 198–199; Stephen Legg, Prostitution and the Ends of Empire, Scale, Gov ernmentalities, and Interwar India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 181. 60Jessica R. Pliley, “Claims to Protection: The Rise and Fall of Feminist Aboli tionism in the League of Nations’ Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, 1919–1936,” Journal of Women’s History 22, no. 4 (2010): 90–113, 97.

63League of Nations, Traffic in Women and Children Committee, Report on the Work of the Eleventh Session, Geneva, Apr. 4 9, 1932, C.390 M.220. 1932 IV EN, 4, LON Archives.

52League of Nations, “Particulars concerning Prostitution,” 82.

53Hiroshi Hashiya, “The Pattern of Japanese Economic Penetration of the Prewar Philippines,” in The Japanese in Colonial Southeast Asia, ed. Saya Shiraishi and Takashi Shiraishi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1993), 113–138, 135; Bill Mihalopoulos, Sex in Japan’s Globalization, 1870–1930: Prostitutes, Emigration and Nation-Building (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), 69.

Julia T. Martínez2021 87

57“The Covenant of the League of Nations,” American Journal of International Law 15, no. 1 (1921): 12.

58The title Advisory Commission for the Protection and Welfare of Chinese and Young People – Traffic in Women and Children Committee was used from 1925 to 1936. The Swede Erik Einan Ekstrand replaced Crowdy as director from 1931 to 1946. See Magaly Rodríguez García, “The League of Nations and the Moral Recruitment of Women,” International Review of Social History 57 (2012): 97–128, 99n8.

61Metzger, “Towards an International Human Rights Regime,” 63–64.

51Bessie Dwyer, “The House Set on a Hill—The Abiertas House of Friend ship,” Tribune, Feb. 1, 1935, 5.

73Gorman, “Empire, Internationalism,” 205.

League of Nations, “Report Concerning the Philippines Islands,” Annex VII. François-Xavier Bonnet wondered how many of the nine hundred women were prostitutes in “From Oripun to the Yapayuki-San: An Historical Outline of Prostitu tion in the Philippines,” Moussons 29 (2017): 41–64, 47.

69Metzger, “Towards an International Human Rights Regime,” 71; Paul Knepper, “The Investigation into the Traffic in Women by the League of Nations: Sociological Jurisprudence as an International Social Project,” Law and History Re view 34, no. 1 (Feb. 2016): 45–73, 71. On the Bureau of Social Hygiene, see Gretchen Soderlund, Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism, 1885–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

68Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children, report on the work of the third session, Apr. 11, 1924, 9, C.184. M.73. 1924 IV, LON Archives.

Rachel Crowdy, “The Humanitarian Activities of the League of Nations,” Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs 6, no. 3 (1927): 153–169, 158; League of Nations, Report of the Special Body of Experts on Traffic in Women and Children: Part 1 (Geneva, 1927).

Journal of Women ’s History88 Winter 64Gorman, “Empire, Internationalism,” 186–216, 198–199; Carol Miller, “The Social Section and Advisory Committee on Social Questions of the League of Na tions,” in International Health Organisations and Movements, 1918–1939, ed. Paul Weindling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 154–175, 155–157; Alain Corbin, Women for Hire, Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 334.

72Crowdy, “Humanitarian Activities of the League of Nations,” 160.

67League of Nations, “Particulars concerning Prostitution,” 82.

65The society was renamed the Josephine Butler Society in 1960. Julia Laite, Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizen: Commercial Sex in London, 1885–1960 (Bas ingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 123; Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 93, 99; Nancy M. Wingfield, The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 174. 66Paul Knepper, International Crime in the 20th Century: The League of Nations Era, 1919–1939 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 91; See https://treaties.un.org for details of ratifications.

Knepper, International Crime in the 20th Century, 109; Edward Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight against White Slavery, 1880–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982); Keely Stauter-Halsted, The Devil’s Chain: Prostitution and Social Control in Partitioned Poland (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015); David Petruccelli, “Pimps, Prostitutes and Policewomen: The Polish Women Police and the International Campaign against the Traffic in Women and Children between the World Wars,” Contemporary European History 24, no. 3 (2015): 333–350, 345; JeanMichel Chaumont, Le mythe de la traite des blanches: Enquête sur la fabrication d’un fléau (Paris: Le Découverte, 2009), 172.

85Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai, 318. 86Memo to Mr. Field, US State Department, from Grace Abbott, Nov. 14, 1932, RG 59, Department of State, Box 2575, NARA.

88Minutes, 70th Session of the Council, Feb. 1, 1933, Traffic in Women and Children, Special Body of Experts, 2nd Enquiry in the East, 11B, 926, LON Archives. Koo was not unsympathetic to the Americans, having earned a PhD from Columbia University.

Memo to US State Department from Grace Abbott, Sept. 26, 1930, RG 350, Bureau of Insular Affairs, Box 455, Entry 5, National Archives and Records Admin istration College Park, Maryland (hereafter NARA).

Julia T. Martínez2021 89 75Michael Salman, The Embarrassment of Slavery: Controversies over Bondage and Nationalism in the American Colonial Philippines (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 263.

89McCoy, Policing America’s Empire, 357. 90Official Gazette (Philippines), no. 36 (Mar. 24, 1931).

77League of Nations, “Report Concerning the Philippines Islands,” 1–2, 41. 78League of Nations, “Report Concerning the Philippines Islands,” 38. 79League of Nations, “Report Concerning the Philippine Islands,” 37. 80League of Nations, “Report Concerning the Philippine Islands,” 39.

84League of Nations, “Report Concerning the Philippine Islands,” 42–44.

91League of Nations, “Report Concerning the Philippine Islands,” 37. 92Jose Fernandez Uy Tana v. The Insular Collector of Customs, G.R. No. L-35129, Aug. 15, 1931, Republic of the Philippines, Supreme Court, accessed July 1, 2017 http://www.lawphil.net/judjuris/juri1931/aug1931/gr_l-35129_1931.html.

81“Five Cantonese Firms Will Run Grand Hotel,” Tribune, Mar. 23, 1935, 4. 82League of Nations, “Report Concerning the Philippine Islands,” 40. 83Rodríguez García, “League of Nations and the Moral Recruitment of Women,” 117. See https://treaties.un.org for the International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age, Geneva, Oct. 11, 1933.

87Prentiss B. Gilbert, American Consul, Geneva, to Secretary of State, Wash ington, DC, May 15, 1933, RG 59, Department of State, Box 2575, NARA.

93Annual Report of the Governor General, Philippine Islands, for the Calendar Year 1933 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1935); League of Nations, “Report Concerning the Philippine Islands,” 7. 94See “Act. No. 3815, December 8, 1930,” Supreme Court E-Library, http:// elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocs/28/20426.

Journal of Women ’s History90 Winter 95Engineer Island became Baseco Compound. “Immigrants Will Lose Old Rights,” Tribune, Jan. 9, 1932, 6. 96“New Immigrant Station to Open,” Tribune, July 20, 1933, 8; “Girl Slaves Will All Be Rounded Up, Office of Governor General Informed of Illicit Entry of Chinese Victims,” Tribune, Sept. 30, 1933, 14. 97“Arrest of 200 Chinese Girls in City Ordered,” Tribune, Oct. 4, 1933, 2. 98“Bureau Deports 3 Chinese Girls,” Tribune, Oct. 12, 1933, 3; “Man Wants to Be Deported to China,” Tribune, Dec. 13, 1933, 8; “Nine Chinese Are Deported to Amoy,” Tribune, Dec. 23, 1933, 8. 99“Mrs. Kwong Heads Party of Visitors to Immigration Detention Station,” Tribune, Feb. 27, 1934, 6. 100“The Local Chinese White Slave Traffic,” Scandal: The Combative Weekly, Mar. 2, 1935, 7. 101“Local Chinese White Slave Traffic.” 102“The Woman’s Forum: Waifs and Strays,” Tribune, Feb. 18, 1934, 25. 103Sofia Reyes de Veyra was born in Iloilo City in 1876. She married Jaime Carlos de Veyra and in 1917 moved to Washington, DC. Titchie CarangdangTongson, “Biographical Sketch of Sofia Reyes de Veyra, Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1009656501. Pilar Hidalgo-Lim, born in 1893, had a bachelor of arts degree from the University of the Philippines, worked as a math instructor, and married Brigadier General Vicente Lim (son of a Chinese immigrant father and a Chinese mestiza mother). On Chinese mestizo elites, see Julian Go, American Empire and the Politics of Meaning: Elite Politi cal Cultures in the Philippines and Puerto Rico during U.S. Colonialism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 23. 104“Members of Woman’s Club of Manila Champion Reform of Extant Evils,” Tribune, Nov. 11, 1932, 5. 105“Opening of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs Proves Auspi cious,” Tribune, Feb. 3, 1933, 5. 106Deirdre Clemente, “‘Prettier than they used to be’: Femininity, Fashion, and the Recasting of Radcliffe’s Reputation, 1900–1950,” New England Quarterly 82, no. 4 (Dec. 2009): 637–666, 639. 107Xiaojian Zhao and Edward J. W. Park, eds., Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2014), 426. 108Encarnación Alzona, The Filipino Woman: Her Social, Economic and Political Status, 1565–1933 (Manila: University of the Philippines Press, 1934), 72. The 1932 Revised Penal Code addressed the vagrancy issue. 109Alzona, Filipino Woman.

110

116League of Nations, Conference of Central Authorities in Eastern Countries, Traffic in Women and Children, Bandoeng (Java), February 2–13, 1937, 67, File 29125, 11B, LON Archives.

117“Plot to Smuggle Chinese Girl Foiled,” Tribune, Apr. 23, 1936, 1.

114League of Nations, Conference of Central Authorities in Eastern Countries, Traffic in Women and Children, Bandoeng (Java), February 3, 1937, File 26240, 11B, LON Archives. YWCA attendees included Woodsmall, Augustine Leonore Fransz (Netherlands Indies), Jeanne Bayley Perkins (Shanghai), and Carolina Gunning.

112Ruth F. Woodsmall, YWCA, New York, to E. Ekstrand, Aug. 14, 1935, Con férence en Extrême-Orient (Far East Conference), 1937, File 15411, LON Archives.

113Biographical Note, Katharine F. Lenroot Papers, 1909–1974, accessed Sept. 4, 2019, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/archival/collections/ldpd_4079022.

111Manuel Quezon, quoted in War Department, Washington, DC, to Secretary of State, Jan. 27, 1936, RG 350, Box 455, NARA.

115Katharine Lenroot to Anne Guthrie, c/o American Consulate, Java, May 1937, RG 350, Box 455, Entry 5, NARA.

Julia T. Martínez2021 91

The Tydings-McDuffie Act (Philippine Commonwealth and Independence Act, 1934) provided for Philippines autonomy leading to independence on July 4, 1946. See Dean Kotlowski, “Independence or Not? Paul V. McNutt, Manuel L. Quezon, and the Re-examination of Philippine Independence, 1937–9,” International History Review 32, no. 3 (2010): 501–531, 504–506.

Introduction At the turn of the twentieth century, Lee Sam, a young Chinese woman born to Cantonese-speaking parents in the kingdom of Siam, journeyed by train across intercolonial borders into the British-controlled state of Perak.1 Settling in Batu Gajah, a booming tin-mining town in the northwestern region of the Malay Peninsula, she labored as a gardener over the next few decades. Like many migrant women residing in the interior, she likely engaged in subsistence farming, tending to cabbages, eggplants, and chilies in her vegetable garden while rearing pigs and poultry. On the precipice of the Great Depression, with a global drop in tin prices, British colonial authorities encouraged Chinese gardeners in Perak like Lee Sam to also cultivate cash crops such as tobacco, groundnuts, and tapioca, hoping to diversify the tin-dependent economy of the hinterlands.2 It is likely that Lee Sam led a modest and somewhat arduous life punctuated by periods of economic hardship and uncertainty. In the summer of 1932, the year she turned fifty-five, her quiet world turned upside down.

Intimate Itinerancy: Sex, Work, and Chinese Women in Colonial Malaya’s Brothel Economy, 1870s–1930s Sandy F. Chang This article examines the rise and destruction of Chinese women’s in timate labor networks in colonial brothels across British Malaya in the early twentieth century. Drawing on police files, travel documents, peti tions, temple inscriptions, and the League of Nations’ trafficking reports, it situates women’s cooperative economies within the global history of Chinese migration. It shows how migrant women’s myriad roles in the brothel economy—as sex workers, seamstresses, servants, and coffee house owners—served as crucial linchpins that sustained the Chinese overseas community in colonial Southeast Asia. Chinese diaspora studies seldom include women who engaged in migratory prostitution in their purview, emphasizing instead the circulation of capital, merchants, and contract laborers during Asia’s “mobility revolution” (1840s–1940s).

Yet, these women’s experiences of sexual commerce, serial migration, and alternative socialities complicate existing migration narratives by illuminating how gender shaped border-crossing experiences and livelihood opportunities in unexpected ways.

That year, Lee Sam was convicted of procuring women and assisting in the management of a small brothel.3 She was subsequently transported to Pudu Prison in Kuala Lumpur, in the state of Selangor, to serve a “rigor ous” three-month sentence.4 Upon her release, the deputy commissioner of Selangor issued a life-banishment order, an unusually harsh punishment that until then had been highly uncommon for female convicts. In 1920, for example, of the 215 ethnic Chinese who were permanently exiled from Perak, only one was a woman.5 Under colonial law, banishment for life was highly gendered in its application, almost exclusively penalizing men who committed the most heinous crimes. In the second and third decades of the twentieth century, permanent exile was almost always reserved for habitual criminals convicted of physically violent or politically subversive crimes.6 Lee Sam, then, did not fit the profile of a typical colonial banished criminal. Her stringent punishment instead signaled a watershed moment in the history of prostitution and migration control in British Malaya. The exile of a middle-aged woman who was both a gardener and a brothel as sistant underscored a shift toward increasingly draconian colonial laws in the 1930s that aimed to abolish the regional sex trade by criminalizing all brothel-related activities across the peninsula.7 Many migrant women, like Lee Sam, struggled through these seismic legal changes, as one vital source of their economic livelihood—the commercial sex industry, which previously had been sanctioned by the colonial regime—became delegitimized. This article traces the rise and decline of Chinese women’s participa tion in the colonial brothel economy in British Malaya during Asia’s “mo bility revolution” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.8 In the period from 1840 to 1940 approximately eighteen million people from coastal China journeyed on junks and steamships across the South Seas to Southeast Asia.9 Their mobility was spurred in part by the advent of steamship technology, the opening of treaty ports in the aftermath of the Opium Wars, political unrest and economic instability in southern China, and colonial labor demands across Southeast Asia.10 The Malay Peninsula, with its production of tin, opium, pepper, gambier, and rubber, attracted the highest number of Chinese migrants: close to seven million disembarked on itsWhileshores.11some historians have deepened our understanding of the social lives of Chinese indentured laborers, merchants, artisans, and entrepreneurs, they have tended to cast Asian migration as an exclusively masculine enter prise centered on productive labor.12 This, in turn, renders all other forms of labor—the sexual, reproductive, and affective, among others—invisible and thus inadvertently illegitimate. Much of the labor migrant women performed was not quantifiable and could not be enumerated as evidence

Sandy F. Chang2021 93

For the purposes of analysis, I first examine the vibrant commercial sex industry that stretched across the western coast of the Malay Peninsula in the late nineteenth century, illustrating how Chinese women acted as key stakeholders in the colonial brothel economy. I then trace the vicissitudes in colonial prostitution debates during the second and third decades of the twentieth century, which reconfigured prostitution from the problem of white slavery to one of yellow traffic, culminating in a series of targeted immigration reforms designed to curb Chinese mobility. These legal enact ments ultimately led to the destruction of Chinese women’s intimate labor networks across colonial brothels, leading to their exile and disenfranchise ment. Lastly, I explore how these women challenged and negotiated the legal abolition of brothels by adopting fictive kinship ties, fostering alternative socialities, and establishing coffeehouses to evade new laws. In doing so, I highlight the dissonance between the moral boundaries invoked by the colonial state and the economic and cultural motivations of migrant women.

By foregrounding the moral economy of itinerant women in the colonial sex

Journal of Women ’s History94 Winter of surplus. Moreover, yoking migration exclusively to the performance of productive work overlooks how the brothel functioned as a key node in the larger colonial economy that was dependent on the capital and labor of the Chinese in Malaya. Colonial brothels, owned and operated almost exclusively by women, not only played a critical role in the reproduction of migrant male labor but also functioned as sites of female cooperative economies, where women like Lee Sam lived, worked, and retired. Lee Sam’s life thus illuminates the myriad roles of Chinese migrant women in British Malaya’s regional sex trade. They worked as prostitutes, entertainers, servants, seamstresses, cooks, coffeehouse attendants, and brothel owners, bolstering and sustaining the migrant community.

This article uses intimate labor as an analytical lens, considering work that attends to the sexual, bodily, health, emotional, and care needs of in dividuals. The concept of intimate labor, as theorized by Eileen Boris and Rhacel Parreñas, is most commonly associated with economic neoliberalism and the feminization of global migration in the late twentieth century.13 Yet intimate labor also has historical applicability, allowing historians to recover previously neglected migration narratives. Adopting a more capacious understanding of labor enables us to move beyond traditional migration paradigms that categorize border-crossing women in binary ways: as free or unfree, exploitative or exploited, and most commonly, agents or victims.

Viewed through the lens of intimate labor, itinerant Chinese women in the brothel industry emerge as labor migrants whose economic endeavors, from selling sex to serving drinks, were often imbued with moral implications in ways that challenged the agendas of the colonial state.

During her lifetime, Ah Su collaborated with a European man to procure young women for her brothels. She also maintained a close relationship with the Chinese Protectorate—the very colonial department tasked with surveiling and regulating brothel keepers like her in order to prevent abuses such as kidnapping and the employment of minor girls. In 1894, a detective in the Malayan Civil Service described Ah Su in a confidential report as “showing intimacy to Mr. Hare [the Acting Assistant Protector of the Chinese] by her frequent visits to the office and her boldness to sit on a chair, cock up her legs and smoke cigarettes with no one daring to check on her.”18 Such charges of corruption within the Chinese Protectorate were not unusual, and throughout the late nineteenth century, rumors and gos sip about bribery abounded among employees at all levels, from assistant

Sandy F. Chang2021 95 trade, this article illuminates the complex choices that shaped their liveli hood strategies as they navigated a colonial world marked by steep racial hierarchies and an ever-shifting sexual and legal order.14

Like brothels in colonial Hong Kong, those in Malaya were homosocial workspaces, managed and operated almost entirely by women.16 In particu lar, some female brothel keepers wielded immense political and economic power. Kwok Ah Su, an infamous brothel keeper in Penang, owned several properties, and at the time of her death in the 1890s, she possessed a fortune of over $192,000 Straits dollars—an astronomical figure at the time, when midlevel civil servants earned less than $2,000 Straits dollars per annum.17

In the late nineteenth century, the brothel industry in British Malaya was a lucrative one. Under the Contagious Diseases Ordinance (1870–87), a system of state-regulated prostitution flourished in the Straits Settlements, particularly in Singapore and Penang. In port cities and frontier towns, where the gender ratio of the Chinese migrant community was heavily skewed toward men, commercialized sex was a booming industry. From 1887 to 1894, a total of 2,650 women from mainland China and 1,946 from Hong Kong arrived in Singapore and proclaimed themselves to be “willing prostitutes.”15 Collectively, migrant Chinese women represented the major ity of women in sexual commerce in the Straits Settlements, as they worked within an intricate multiethnic brothel network that included Japanese, Tamil, Malay, Eurasian, Arab, and European women. With few opportunities for wage labor or the accumulation of property, migrant Chinese women engaged in a range of brothel-related activities, including sex, domestic work, and business management.

Sex, Mobility, and Colonial Brothels in Southeast Asia at the Turn of the Century

Sexual mores, after all, were often dictated by class. Among the working class, it was not uncommon for a woman to engage in prostitution or have more than one sexual partner over the course of her lifetime. Indeed, many women could and did marry and divorce multiple times. Moreover, married working-class women sometimes continued to sell sex in colonial brothels to support their families.21

The political influence of brothel keepers was in many ways predicated on the social capital some women accrued in the colonial brothel economy. Donor inscriptions in nineteenth-century Daoist temples in Penang and along the west coast of Malaya, including the states of Perak and Selangor, bore the names of brothels and women who were labeled prostitutes.20 Engravings on the walls of Penang’s Tua Peck Gong Temple, for example, include pseudonyms of women who sold sex such as Dong Mei (Winter Plum), Qiu Ju (Fall Chrysanthemum), and Qiu Yue (Autumn Moon), among others. Brothel names, like Giuxiang Lou (Osmanthus Flower Hall), Qunyu Lou (Jade Hall), Aiyue Lou (Love Moon Hall), and Zhixiang Lou (Fragrant Hall), appear alongside a list of donors from other business enterprises. These poetic references to scented blossoms, the moon, and above all romance, were unmistakably Chinese cultural euphemisms for sex and sensuality. Collectively, these traces of Chinese women in colonial temple inscriptions reveal a dynamic sex trade that spanned the 1,000-mile coast of western Malaya, where some Chinese women who sold sex and operated brothels accumulated a degree of wealth, social visibility, and respectability through philanthropy within the Chinese migrant community. Selling sex in exchange for money did not preclude migrant Chinese women from playing key roles in religious and sociocultural institutions as donors. As evidenced by the temple inscriptions, female promiscuity was not always incompatible with the religious ethics of Chinese migrant com munities.

In addition to selling sex, low-skilled Chinese migrant women partici pated in the brothel economy in other ways. In police reports, court cases, and colonial petitions, women who have hitherto remained marginal in histories of prostitution emerge as vital figures whose intimate labor sup ported the commercialized sex industry. They included women like Lam Tai Yi, who in 1890 worked as an apprentice under her aunt. They offered beauty services, including tailoring and hairdressing, to women selling sex on Campbell Street in Penang, who catered to an upper-class clientele.22

Migrant women like Lam and her aunt were itinerant laborers who lived off-site, but many women also resided in brothels, providing a range of

Journal of Women ’s History96 Winter protectors to interpreters and clerks. Despite the state regulation of sexual commerce, well-connected brothel keepers found ways to create aliases for minor girls, expedite the opening of new establishments, and pay fees to colonial officials to look the other way.

In addition to mobility between the occupational categories “pros titute” and “servant,” Chinese women in the commercial sex trade also moved physically across the Malay Peninsula from brothel to brothel.

While studies of colonial prostitution often focus on the plight of brothel “inmates,” cast as destitute and deprived of agency, this characterization obscures women’s itinerancy as both a livelihood necessity and an economic strategy.26 Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Chinese women engaged in serial migratory prostitution, embarking on transcolonial journeys. While serial migration is most commonly associated with the mobility patterns of Chinese male sojourners that are reflected in colonial immigration and police records, it is evident that Chinese women often embarked on similar journeys. Many traversed maritime and inter colonial borders across different empires, from Hong Kong to Burma and from Siam to the Federated Malay States, seeking to maximize their profits in the regional brothel economy.

Sandy F. Chang2021 97 intimate labors such as cleaning, cooking, and running errands. For the fifty-five brothels registered in Kuala Lumpur in 1894, 696 Chinese women were listed as prostitutes, while 282 women worked as live-in servants.23 Elsewhere across the peninsula, the ratios between women identified as prostitutes and servants were similar.24

While it is possible that servants also engaged in sex work, their separate categorization in the colonial records indicates that at least onethird of brothel workers also performed nonsexual labor. Their prevalence highlights not only the significance of nonsexual labor in sustaining the daily operations of brothels but also the mutual dependence of women’s intimate labor within the brothel economy. The boundaries around what constituted sex work in brothels were, after all, highly porous. In addition to carnal intimacy, women also provided what Luise White called “comforts of home”—food, conversation, and bathwater.25 Colonial social distinctions between the categories “wife,” “servant,” and “prostitute,” thus failed to capture the fluid ways migrant Chinese women moved among them and at times occupied more than one. Catering to a transient, migratory, and disproportionately male population, Chinese women in colonial brothels offered a range of intimate services and domestic comforts.

In the colonial archives, Chinese women undertaking serial migration are rendered legible in the fragments. In these vestiges, one example shows six women from varied southern Chinese dialect groups who departed from Hong Kong together and sold sex at brothels in Rangoon, Malacca, and Ser emban over a five-year period.27 In another instance, ten Cantonese women, including Yeung Sz, who was visibly pregnant at the time, boarded a train in Bangkok bound for Bukit Mertajim in Penang, seeking to earn wages sell ing sex.28 A more revealing case was that of sixteen-year-old Wong Shun Li.

Journal of Women ’s History98 Winter

While colonial officials portrayed Wong Shun Li as a trafficked victim, her grandmother praised her as a dutiful granddaughter who deployed her sexual labor to support her impoverished family. In her petition, the grand mother alluded to a series of family tragedies and economic hardships that had led Wong Shun Li to choose prostitution over marriage. According to the petition, after hearing of the zhan yang (great admiration) for prostitutes in Southeast Asia, Wong Shun Li had sought to make her fortunes in British Malaya.29 If colonial officials drew on the language of criminality, then the grandmother harnessed the familiar Confucian cultural script of filial piety.

The intentions, sentiments, and desires of women like Wong Shun Li remain unknown and perhaps unknowable; their voices are largely absent in official records. Yet this very uncertainty about whether she was a “traf ficked” victim or a voluntary migrant is itself instructive. The blurriness of such categories is an apt reminder of the discrepancy between how the colonial government defined sex trafficking and how some female migrants or their kin may have perceived these border-crossing experiences. More over, these silences that fill the archives orient historians toward the limits and possibilities of a radical reimagining of migration stories, one that circumvents the rigid and ultimately unsatisfactory narrative framework of coercion and consent.30

As the cases of Wong Shun Li and Ho Kwai Min illuminate, women selling sex in urban centers sometimes left brothels of their own volition in search of more appealing labor opportunities elsewhere. For Chinese women, then, itinerancy was as much a livelihood strategy as it was for

She sailed from Guangxi, China, to Singapore in 1901, working selling sex in brothels in order to send remittances back to her aging grandmother in China. When she became “displeased” with the brothel conditions in Sin gapore, she traveled to the British-protected state of Selangor to seek new employment at a brothel in Kuala Lumpur. After colonial officials detained her in the new brothel for selling sex as a minor, her grandmother filed a petition through the British Consulate in China to appeal for her release.

Only on rare occasions were migrant women’s forceful claims of agency documented. Ho Kwai Min, who traveled from Hong Kong to Singapore to sell sex in 1940, repeatedly insisted that she had traveled of her own voli tion. Given a choice between entering into a loveless, arranged marriage—in her own words, “having to wash [her prospective husband’s] face and clothes”—and “com[ing] into society” as a prostitute, Ho chose the latter. She eventually married a client and continued to work in a brothel after her marriage, retiring from prostitution only when her daughter turned nine. In her later life, she maintained that she had exercised “free will” when she engaged in migratory prostitution, emphatically stating that “whether my life is good or bad, it’s my decision.”31

In the late nineteenth century, more than four thousand Chinese women were added to the brothel registry in the Straits Settlements, while only five European prostitutes were listed.33 Despite the miniscule number of European women in the sex trade, they nonetheless elicited disproportion ate concern from government officials, missionaries, philanthropists, and journalists. This was by no means unique to the Malay Peninsula. Histo rians have spilled much ink on the presence of white women selling sex in European colonies of Asia and Africa, and the colonial racial order their sexuality threatened to disrupt.34 After all, the availability of their sexuality “distorted the ways whiteness could be represented politically,” as both a marker of racial superiority and a justification for long-term colonial rule.35 Thus, while colonial officials treated Asian women selling sex, and especially the Chinese, as culturally normative and therefore difficult to regulate, they considered European women identified as prostitutes in the colonies as an aberration to be reckoned with.

From 1870 to 1877, the Straits Settlements implemented a controver sial state-sanctioned system of prostitution under the Contagious Diseases Ordinance that treated women in the sex trade as vectors of disease and a population that required regulation. Across the British Empire, from India to

Migrant women performed a range of intimate labors affiliated with the sex industry and by no means remained in brothels.

Sandy F. Chang2021 99

their male counterparts who labored on plantations and under trade ap prenticeships in colonial Southeast Asia. Like sojourning men, Chinese women through their remunerative activities supported themselves and their kin, both in Southeast Asia and back in their home villages in China.

As the western coast of British Malaya underwent a rapid economic expansion in both tin and rubber production in the late nineteenth century, attracting hundreds of thousands of Chinese and Indian migrants, colonial brothels burgeoned. Brothel keeping was a profitable business and one of the easiest ways for women to accumulate capital during this period.32 Migrant women crossed multiple political borders and navigated complex colonial jurisdictions, participating in a range of brothel-related activities from one city to the next. However, in the first decades of the twentieth cen tury, they encountered a series of colonial legislative reforms that not only circumscribed their mobility within the peninsula but eventually eroded their intimate labor networks within the brothel economy. In the next sec tion, I examine shifting colonial discourses on prostitution that served as a precursor for the incremental progression toward brothel suppression.

From White Slavery to Yellow Traffic: Reconfiguring the “Problem” of Prostitution

Singapore, variations of these laws came into effect throughout the 1860s and 1870s, mandating the registration of brothels and the compulsory medical examination of prostitutes.36 Its passage was motivated by concerns about the high levels of venereal diseases among European military troops, as well as by the maintenance of white prestige through the promotion of a racial hierarchy of brothels and their patrons. In particular, European women were subjected to individuated surveillance. The policing of European prostitutes was part and parcel of a broader white slavery panic that swept across Europe and the Americas in the late nineteenth century.37 In the Straits Settlements, and especially in Singapore as an emerging entrepôt, sensationalist reports of white slavery at the turn of the century captured the public imagination. The 1912 publication of The White Slave Market, penned by Olive Christian Mackirdy and W. N. Willis, described encounters with “white girls in the dens of infamy” during the authors’ travels to Singapore.38 Filled with wildly exaggerated anecdotes, the book included dubious accounts of thousands of European girls from Germany, France, Austria, and Russia, tricked into selling sex along Malay Street. To the embarrassment of the colonial government, Singapore was cast as the “Babylonia Hell of the East,” where “poor, painted creatures bedecked in their tinsel, sit sipping coffee, smoking cigarettes, and accost ing passer-bys.”39

While the colonial government was quick to deny instances of white slavery in the Straits Settlements, insisting instead that such anecdotes were spiced up to generate sales for the book, the publication nonetheless tarnished the reputation of the port city. In 1913, a year after the book’s publication, Governor Arthur Young ordered the termination of all Euro pean brothels. Not only were European women suspected of migrating as prostitutes barred from entry into the Straits Settlements, but by December 1915, the government had issued a free passage home to all remaining white prostitutes in the colony. With the assistance of the Russian Consul General, the colonial government repatriated a total of thirty-two European women in 1916, including twenty-nine Russians, two Romanians, and one Frenchwoman.40

Around the same time, the Japanese government, seeking to protect its reputation as a modernizing empire, collaborated with colonial officials to repatriate all karayuki-san, or Japanese women working in the brothels of Southeast Asia.42 By 1920, of the 182 Japanese prostitutes and brothel keepers listed in the city, half had been deported to Japan, while those remaining had turned to domestic work to support themselves.43 The overlapping re patriation of Japanese and European prostitutes underscores how women’s sexuality was frequently used as a litmus test to evaluate civilizational

Journal of Women ’s History100 Winter

Soon after that, colonial officials confidently proclaimed the sight of white women in the city’s brothels as “a thing of the past.”41

At the turn of the century, yellow peril represented a gamut of socioeconomic, racial, and political anxieties about Asian immigration to the “West,” which was imagined as an “invasion” or a “flood.”

In British Malaya, a region that had an “open” immigration policy until the 1930s, the specter of the yellow peril operated less as a racial threat of an “Oriental invasion” than as a demographic crisis hinged on the vast disparity between men and women in Chinese communities. In gendering the yellow peril, colonial officials saw a male-dominated immigrant population prone to social vices and divided political loyalties as the main threat. The shortage of Chinese women in the colony was thus imagined as the catalyst for rampant prostitution and sex trafficking, as well as a hindrance to the project of grooming immigrants into loyal British subjects.

Throughout the 1920s, terms like “yellow traffic” and “yellow peril” emerged in colonial discourse, which blamed the dearth of Chinese women

The Abolition of Brothels and a Colonial Experiment in Demographic Engineering

44 These fears relied on an ideological separation between European and Asian forms of mobility: the former were seen as “free migrants” or “pioneers,” while the latter were considered “unfree” and trafficked in underground criminal networks. While historians have written at length on how the yellow peril panic operated in white settler societies and colonies, justifying an era of exclusionary immigration laws targeting Asians, much less consideration has been given to how these racial exclusions operated in a plantation colony like British Malaya. Characterized by an absence of a large white settler population, such colonies were oriented toward resource extraction and labor exploitation for the mass production of commodities like rubber, opium, and tin.

Sandy F. Chang2021 101 progress and imperial prestige. The presence of these groups of women posed a threat to the standing of Britain and Japan on the global stage; both nursed increasingly bold imperialist ambitions in Asia.

While the second decade of the century saw the exodus of Japanese and European women who sold sex from the colony, other brothels, most notably Chinese-owned ones, were left alone by colonial officials to operate. But in the 1920s, the enduring presence of Chinese brothels led colonial officials to target prostitution as a uniquely “Chinese” problem. Moreover, growing international anti-sex trafficking campaigns dovetailed with transnational “yellow peril” paranoia, both focusing on Chinese women as victims as well as perpetrators of the colonial sex trade. These twin forces ultimately led to the abolition of brothels across the Malay Peninsula, with devastating consequences for many migrant women.

Journal of Women ’s History102 Winter in the colony for the bustling brothel economy. The Slave Market News, a Christian illustrated newsletter published from 1924 to 1936, frequently disseminated information about trafficked Chinese and Japanese girls “res cued” from a life of degradation and drudgery in Hong Kong and South east Asia.45 In a 1922 article in the Straits Times, an anonymous contributor highlighted the distinct demographic differences between Malaya and the rest of the British Empire: “The total Chinese population of Singapore is given as 217,000 and of these about 216,000 are males. . . . The problem in Singapore belongs neither to India nor Ceylon and no man who wants to face it honestly will draw red herrings across the path of discussion. We have an abnormal, and, in fact, an unnatural ‘social complex’ to deal with. We have a population that holds totally different views . . . on questions of sexuality morality. There is no question of [the existence of] white slave or yellow traffic.”46 So prevalent was this belief in yellow traffic that even the secretary of state for the colonies, L. S. Amery, confidently asserted that pros titution in the Straits Settlements was “an exclusively Chinese problem.”47

In response to the sex-ratio imbalance within the Chinese community in Malaya, the colonial government implemented a two-pronged policy based on the recommendations of the Social Hygiene Committee. First, it amended the Women and Girls’ Protection Ordinance in the Straits Settle ments, restricting the entry of foreign prostitutes and initiating the closure of all brothels in the colony over a three-year period.48 By 1931, the policy of suppression had been extended to the rest of the Malay states, rendering illegal a wide range of brothel-related activities, from soliciting to living off the income of prostitutes. In conjunction with brothel abolition, colonial officials also aimed to promote Chinese female immigration in hopes of creating a stable, selfreproducing Chinese laboring population. To incentivize Chinese female settlers, the secretary of Chinese affairs in the Federated Malay States in 1926 proposed giving temporary plots of land to newly arrived female mi grants for subsistence farming and poultry rearing. These garden reserves, he hoped, would encourage women to settle with their families in the inte rior of the Malay Peninsula and deter them from selling sex as a livelihood strategy.49 Moreover, in a radical attempt at demographic engineering, in 1928 the government passed the Immigration Restriction Ordinance, which was replaced by the Alien Ordinance in 1933, officially bringing an end to the policy of free immigration.50 The ordinances were explicitly gendered, imposing immigration quotas for Chinese male migrants, while enforcing none for women. The effect was dramatic. The number of Chinese female migrants rose rapidly, accounting for nearly 50 percent of the total annual Chinese immigration in the years following 1933, and for the first time the sex disparity within the Chinese population began to level out.

While the number of brothels in the port cities of British Malaya dwindled in the 1920s, they thrived in the hinterlands, springing up in various protected Malay states. In 1894, for example, there were only eleven registered prostitutes in the entire state of Perak, nine Chinese and two Japanese women, in just three brothels.52 Yet by 1931, as the Kinta Valley became the most productive alluvial tin-mining region in the world, there were a total of 197 brothels and 651 registered prostitutes listed in official records.53 The development of the tin-mining industry no doubt attracted many women migrating for prostitution, since the discrepancy in sex ratios in towns heavily populated by men, such as Batu Gajah, created favorable economic conditions for women selling sex to earn a living wage.

These interventionist policies accelerated the widespread transfor mation of the regional sex trade and the urban landscape. When Bruce Lockhart, a former British civil servant, returned to Malaya after a decade in the mid-1930s, he noted the absence of Singapore’s once famed red-light district: “Malay Street . . . brought me face to face with the new Singapore. Gone was Madame Blanche with her collections of Hungarians, Poles and Russian Jewesses—the frail army of white women . . . from the poorest population of Central and Eastern Europe. . . . Gone, too, were the long rows of Japanese brothels. Today all this tolerated sordidness has van ished.”51 The closure of brothels not only altered the demographic makeup of the city, leading to an exodus of European and Japanese women; it also disbanded the intimate labor networks of Chinese migrant women who had relied on the brothel economy for their survival. As prostitution was driven underground during the 1920s and 1930s, Chinese women, both sinkeh (newly arrived migrants) and Malayan-born settlers, found other ways to profit in sexual commerce. Many attempted to evade colonial sur veillance by establishing coffeehouses and unorthodox households as sites for clandestine prostitution.

From the outset, however, brothels in the interior Malay states stood in stark contrast to the densely populated, two-storied buildings that dotted Chulia Street in Penang and Malay Street in Singapore. Brothels in the protected states were often makeshift and thus more difficult for colonial officials to identify, register, and, in the aftermath of abolition, remove. In a 1931 report submitted to the League of Nations Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, British officials described “colonies of hutment brothels” around the towns of Kuala Lumpur, Seremban, and Ipoh, that were frequented by Chinese laborers from the nearby plantations and tin mines. These hutments were, according to officials, crowded spaces typi

Sandy F. Chang2021 103

Coffeehouses and Communal Houses as Sites of Evasion

In the tin-mining towns, particularly in Perak, where there were few wage labor opportunities for women, operating a coffeehouse was more profit able and less strenuous than the backbreaking and sometimes dangerous work of dulang washing [panning].60 Coffeehouses also fulfilled an economic demand in tin-mining towns, providing food and domestic intimacies for the large pool of unmarried, laboring Chinese men. Lastly, in the late 1920s

Not surprisingly, the colonial state’s attempt to identify who was a prostitute in hutment brothels was met with challenges. After all, a “known prostitute” was not a fixed social category or personal identity to which migrant women subscribed. Rather, it merely described one form of work some women performed during their lifetime.55 Chinese women were thus able to turn the narrow colonial legal definition of a brothel to their own advantage. As long as women sold sex individually or operated a brothel disguised as a lodging house, they could evade the colonial crackdown on brothels.Establishing communal lodging houses was one of many ways migrant women responded to the disenfranchisement of their intimate labor net works. Throughout the 1920s, sex work also spread to other sites of leisure and entertainment, with kopi-tiam/kedai-kopi (coffeehouses), restaurants, and cinemas operating as sites for “sly” prostitution. In 1922, W. T. Chapman, the secretary for Chinese affairs in the Federated Malay States, observed the proliferation of “sly” prostitution among Chinese women in the interior, who plied their trade in coffeehouses with lodging units upstairs.56 In an effort to sanitize coffeehouses, as a precursor to the large-scale effort to abolish brothels, Chapman urged that licenses to public spaces of entertainment only be granted after the Chinese Protectorate had inspected the sites and verified that they were not used for “immoral purposes.”57

The ubiquity of coffeehouses owned and operated by Chinese women during this period, across villages and town centers in British Malaya, can be attributed to several factors.58

Journal of Women ’s History104 Winter cally inhabited by many tenants, with only one “known” prostitute. Since by legal definition brothels were sites in which two or more prostitutes resided, these hutments could not be officially removed in the aftermath of abolition, much to the frustrations of colonial officials.54

First, the low start-up and operational costs of these small-scale enterprises meant that in times of financial difficulty they became a viable way to obtain supplementary income. Wong Ah Ho, for example, left her village in Kaiping, China, for Malacca in 1935 and opened a coffee stall to supplement the meager wages she earned telling fortunes and performing séances at the temple.59 Second, intimate labor in coffeehouses, whether preparing beverages, cooking food, providing conversation, or soliciting sex, offered migrant women more flexible work options than did “official” brothels in the cosmopolitan port cities of Singapore and Penang.

In response to the government’s encroachment on their intimate lives and livelihood strategies, migrant Chinese women also established communal female residences and adopted fictive kinship ties that mirrored colonial ideals of domesticity. One residence of this sort, located in the northern state of Kedah, illustrates the adaptive strategies Chinese women used in the face of brothel abolition and labor precarity. In a building located on Jalan Langgar in the city of Alor Star, a coffeehouse operated on the ground floor; the upper levels were divided into several cubicles, with “beds in each, but no luggage of any sort” to indicate permanent residence.62 However, a number of Chinese women and girls lived in the adjacent building, and a handful of them managed the coffeehouse.

Among the female residents in the communal home were three middleaged Chinese women who all claimed to be the wives of Hoh Yi, an engine driver who supposedly labored in the southern state of Selangor. Perhaps most noteworthy is that during a government inspection officials observed that one woman was blind, another was “witless,” and the third, Lau Tai Yi, was a brothel keeper who managed the operations of both the coffee house and the lodging units. Living with them were several other women, including one who had formerly been registered as a prostitute in a brothel in Penang. When brothels were outlawed in the Straits Settlements in 1927, she likely had relocated to the Unfederated Malay States to circumvent the legal restrictions on prostitution in the colony.

Sandy F. Chang2021 105 and 1930s, as brothel suppression became the official policy across British Malaya, migrant women who were squeezed out of the brothel industry turned to coffeehouses for work. Many continued selling sex, using cof feehouses as a strategic site of evasion from the interventions of a colonial state keen on channeling the labor of female migrants to the household or to productive industries, such as mining or construction.61

Many communal lodging homes were established with the intention of operating as a brothel in disguise by blurring the boundaries between spaces of work, home, and leisure. Female residents performed fictive kin ship relations that modeled the heteronormative household promoted by the colonial government—one defined by conjugality and family formation. They did so in part to deflect the suspicions of government officials who were intent on sanitizing British Malaya through the removal of brothels. But beyond serving as a strategy of deflection, coffeehouses and lodging homes were also crucial institutions, both socially and economically, for unattached Chinese migrant women who had no conjugal relations or chil dren of their own. Like Cantonese amahs in domestic work, many secured their own welfare in Malaya through rituals of sworn sisterhoods and the creation of vegetarian halls.63 Similarly, coffeehouses sometimes served as a form of social insurance for disabled and elderly migrant women, as

Journal of Women ’s History106 Winter demonstrated by the presence of blind and “witless” women in Jalan Lang gar. These women relied on the pooled income of others who engaged in a range of intimate labors, including but not limited to prostitution, for their survival in British Malaya. Seen in this light, these spaces functioned as cooperative economies for migrant women; they offered an alternative form of intimacy and sociality to the heteronormative familial model upheld by the colonial Throughoutstate.the 1920s, these living arrangements for migrant Chinese women flourished in the interior Malay states. Under colonial law, it was illegal for men, but not women, to live on the earnings of prostitutes, so women selling sex and working as servants and coffeehouse attendants could collectively pool their earnings as an economic strategy. Thus, when the 1927 Women and Girls’ Protection Ordinance and its equivalent in the Federated Malay States in 1931 outlawed these communal spaces of work, home, and leisure, women who depended on these arrangements—namely, the elderly, the impoverished, and the disabled—were the most adversely impacted.

Lee Sam: Brothel Worker, Gardener, and Stateless Subject

In the years preceding Lee Sam’s arrest, the global drop in tin prices wreaked havoc on the tin-mining industry in Malaya. In 1931, Perak’s la bor force in tin mines decreased by more than one-third.64 The layoff of tin miners was part of a broader economic displacement that resulted in the repatriation of more than fifty thousand Chinese workers in the Federated Malay States from 1930 to 1932, with Perak bearing the brunt.65 The economic hardships endured by Chinese migrants in Perak were exacerbated by the abolition of brothels in 1931, which closed down a vital source of economic opportunity for women. For Lee Sam and others, subsistence farming in the 1930s was likely not enough to lift them out of their impoverished condi tions, particularly after the Department of Agriculture ordered the removal of Chinese agricultural squatters. Participating in the illicit brothel economy was one way to collect additional wages.

The criminal file of Lee Sam provides historians with few clues to the extent and duration of her involvement in the local brothel economy. Her participation may have been after the collapse of the tin market in the late 1920s, but it could have been much earlier, perhaps during the prolifera tion of coffeehouses and other service-oriented industries in Perak. As an assistant and procurer for a small establishment, she probably recruited newly arrived women in the city and neighboring villages to sell sex in one of the hutments that lined the town center. Perhaps she also scrubbed pots, pans, and dishes, swept floors, and ran errands for the women and their

Whilemalnourishment.66wemaynotknow

the full scope of Lee Sam’s involvement in the small brothel, her arrest and banishment nonetheless help shed light on the sweeping efforts of the colonial regime to expel Chinese vagrants and beggars, as well as unattached elderly women affiliated with the brothel economy. The criminalization of brothels resulted in a surge in the banish ment of Chinese women across Malaya. From 1923 to 1929, no banishment orders were issued for Chinese women in the Federated Malay States. In 1932, a year after the enactment of the Women and Girls’ Protection Ordi nance, nine women from Perak were exiled to China for offenses related to brothel keeping.67 That same year in the Straits Settlements, fifty-six women, including thirty-seven Cantonese, were banished; the oldest woman was sixty-nine years old.68 Eight years later, a total of fifty-eight Chinese women were deported for brothel-related offenses across Malaya, compared with sixteen men.69 The number of Chinese women banished for trafficking and brothel-related offenses was almost always more than double that of men. This represented a dramatic reversal of colonial banishment patterns from earlier decades. Across the Malay Peninsula, from Penang to Taiping, Chi nese women, who formed the bulk of the brothel economy, experienced an upheaval in their economic livelihoods during the 1930s. After Lee Sam’s imprisonment, she was scheduled to be deported from Kuala Lumpur in October 1932. What happened after her release from prison, however, is far from clear. Here is where the paper trail concerning her fate ends with a strange twist. After the police in Selangor, where she served her sentence, filed for her banishment to Kedah (the state of her birth), the latter government refused to accept her. The British adviser in Kedah pointed to a section in the 1910 Banishment Enactment that prohibited a person banished from one Malay state to be transferred to another. The banished were instead to be sent back to their home country. Banishment, as the colonial law at the time implicitly suggested, could not be applied to a Malayan-born subject, irrespective of race, who had no home country to return to. Banishment, it turned out, was not supposed to be applied to a person like Lee Sam at all. In the months following her release, Lee occupied a liminal status as a stateless subject. Banished from one place and rejected both by the state of her birth and the state of her residence, she represented a conundrum for the governments of Perak, Kedah, and Selangor. The colonial correspondence

Sandy F. Chang2021 107 clients in the brothel. That she continued to labor primarily as a gardener even while she worked for the brothel suggests that the wages she earned were meager and insufficient to support herself and her family, if she had one. Indeed, the “scars on her left cheek and back” and her frail frame of a mere seventy-one pounds seem to attest to a life of strenuous physical labor and

Across the British Empire in the 1920s and 1930s, at the height of antivice campaigns, the extralegal status of brothels was subject to renewed scrutiny, resulting in protracted and heated debates in the metropole and the colonies among feminist abolitionists, missionaries, medical doctors,

The bureaucratic conundrum in Lee Sam’s banishment is instructive of the racial politics that underwrote prostitution regulation and migration control. While both Malayan-born and sinkeh Chinese were commended for their contribution to the development of Malaya and at times praised as an “industrial backbone” of the region, their status in the peninsula was nonetheless ambiguous. For Lee Sam, despite her birth in Kedah, her Chi nese descent marked her in many ways as an “essential outsider.”70 This mistake was not merely a bureaucratic accident; it had been spurred by the rhetoric of yellow peril and the conflation of the colonial sex trade with the “problem” of unfettered Chinese immigration.

Journal of Women ’s History108 Winter surrounding her case was marked by a chaotic confusion, a political volley ing back and forth, among three states, none of which wished to claim legal responsibility for her. In mistaking Lee as an immigrant from China and thus an alien, rather than a Malayan-born Chinese woman and therefore a British-protected person, the colonial regime rendered her an abandoned subject with no home to which she might return.

This misidentification underscored the ill-defined legal rights of sub jects, nationals, and citizens, particularly of the Chinese in colonial Malaya. That same year, in a separate case overseen by the Supreme Court of the Straits Settlements, colonial chief justices debated the effects of banishment law on “overseas Chinese and local-born Chinese” and pointed to the difficulties in establishing a distinction between the two.71 For Lee Sam, despite her status as a British-protected Malay subject, it was her being Chinese that ultimately mattered in the colonial state’s decision to banish her from her homeland for life. At the same time, in the highly transient world of colonial Southeast Asia the relationship of migration, nationality, and subjecthood was complex and a source of great confusion. While the colonial government aimed to construct sociolegal distinctions between “alien” and “indigene,” itinerant Chinese women like Lee Sam sometimes muddled these categories through their border-crossing journeys. Moreover, the political borders they crossed sometimes shifted during their lifetimes. At the time of Lee Sam’s birth, Kedah was a part of Siam, but by 1909 it had fallen under British indirect rule. The colonial confusion over the fluid political boundaries of the British Empire and thus Lee Sam’s citizenship is laid bare in the criminal file by the ink blots, scratch marks, and corrections to her place of birth. It was first recorded as Siam, which was subsequently crossed out and replaced with the city Kulim in Kedah; chaos over her banishment ensued.

Conclusion Lee Sam’s story straddled multiple scales. It was at once personal, local, and regional, but also imperial and transcolonial.76 Her conviction, dispossession, and eventual statelessness were the result of sweeping legal changes that targeted Chinese women during an era of economic precar ity and mass migration. Her shift in fortunes in many ways embodied the disenfranchisement of women working in the colonial brothel economy. As this article has argued, Chinese women in the late nineteenth century were key actors in the brothel economy in British Malaya, establishing labor and social networks, accumulating wealth, and navigating the shifting legal regimes of prostitution control in the peninsula.

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The prosperous colonial sex trade, with migrant women at its center, however, underwent a massive transformation in the 1920s and 1930s as renewed debates about prostitution led to a large-scale crackdown on the regional sex industry. During these two decades, colonial officials, feminist abolitionists, and international anti-sex trafficking campaigners recast the “problem” of prostitution from an issue of white slavery, common in the earliest years of the twentieth century, to one of yellow traffic. This discursive shift, where global yellow peril paranoia intersected with anti-sex trafficking campaigns, and its attendant policy transformations had profound impacts on the lives of women working in the brothel economy.

British parliamentarians, and colonial administrators.72 By the early 1930s, across British Asia from India to Hong Kong to Singapore, a policy of tacit brothel toleration was replaced by a policy of active and aggressive sup pression.73 These sweeping legal changes, celebrated by a leading women’s moral-reform organization as an “abolitionist victory,” had profound and enduring consequences for Chinese migrant women like Lee Sam, whose lives had become intricately linked to the colonial brothel economy. Thus, Lee’s life was both exemplary and exceptional. From a comparative, transcolonial perspective, her life mirrored that of many women who participated in the brothel economy across the British Empire and who were, according to Stephen Legg, “civilly abandoned” by the colonial state in the 1930s.74 Yet the specific, localized context of Lee’s life as a Malayan-born Chi nese woman living in a tin-mining village also distinguished her experiences from those of women plying their trade in the brothels of Falkland Road in Bombay.75 In British Malaya, the discourse around the colonial sex trade during the 1920s and 1930s was underpinned by racialized assumptions that conflated prostitution with “yellow traffic,” treating it predominantly as a “problem” of unfettered Chinese immigration. Lee Sam’s sentencing, like many others, was ultimately part of the broader racialization of prostitution and imperial crackdown on the commercial sex trade.

Journal of Women ’s History110 Winter

By looking at a range of intimate labors migrant women performed, this article has highlighted the limitations of migration histories that have hitherto portrayed Chinese women as either left-behind wives or marginal figures in Asia’s mobility revolution.78 Instead, I have uncovered a dense network of itinerant Chinese women by weaving together seemingly disparate narratives of female migrants, from seamstresses to prostitutes, coffeehouse attendants to domestic servants. Their fragmented stories, strewn across archives in various geographical locales, in both the metropole and the colony, in the colonial and the vernacular, invite a new retelling of Chinese migration histories that insists on the importance of women as labor migrants in their own right. In the late nineteenth and early twenti eth centuries, Chinese women traveled, worked, and forged new relations across the Malay Peninsula; their intimate labors served as crucial linchpins that sustained the overseas migrant communities. Through their distinc tive gendered community formation, they navigated an era of economic precarity and growing state intervention in sex work, and in turn defied colonial categorical distinctions between prostitute and servant, ingénue and procurer, trafficked victim and free migrant.

As the colonial state consolidated power and exerted greater surveil lance and control over the lives of Chinese women, it targeted brothels precisely because they blurred the boundaries of home, workplace, and sites of leisure. The liminality of the brothel, which was both a site of labor and a place of interiority, unsettled colonial demarcations of public and private.77 Thus, colonial officials made the abolition of brothels a part of their social and moral reform agendas throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The 1930s ultimately wreaked havoc on the livelihoods of women who had depended on the brothel for their survival, leading to their dispossession and displacement from the colonial state. Nonetheless, migrant women adopted creative strategies to thwart the changing legal regimes by forging alternative familial bonds and exercising entrepreneurial skills as the sex trade was driven underground into coffeehouses.

Notes Warm thanks to those who offered their generous comments on various versions of this article, including Philippa Levine, Jack Neubauer, Sarah Mellors, Jeffrey Guarneri, Joanna Batt, Elizabeth O’Brien, Christina Villarreal, and Snehal Shingavi. Special thanks to the Journal of Women’s History special issue editors, Julia Laite and Philippa Hetherington, and the reviewers, for their insightful suggestions. Research for this article was supported by the International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Sciences Research Council and a Doctoral Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

5Annual Reports of the Federated Malay States, 1920–1938, William Blythe Collection, University of London, School of Oriental and Africa Studies Archive, PP/MS/31, Box 1, File 5, 5.

1Lee Ah Sam was born in Kedah, which was part of the province of Monthon Syburi, which was under the control of Siam (present-day Thailand) until 1909, when it was transferred to the British with the signing of the Anglo-Siamese Treaty.

4In 1896, Kuala Lumpur was chosen as the capital of the newly consolidated Federated Malay States (FMS). The FMS comprised the four Malay states of Se langor, Perak, Negri Sembilan, and Pahang, which had been British protectorates from 1874 to 1888.

Sandy F.

Five years prior to the treaty, in 1904, the British colonial government initiated the construction of a railway that would connect Kulim, Kedah—Lee Ah Sam’s birth place—to the Federated Malay States (FMS) Railway via Bukit Mertajam in the province of Wellesley. See “Connection of Kulim to FMS Railway,” The National Archives at Kew (hereafter TNA), CO 273/302/33480.

6The 1888 Banishment Ordinance and the 1890 Secret Societies Ordinance were frequently invoked by colonial officials to thwart rising Chinese nationalism and political activities deemed overtly “revolutionary” or “anti-imperial.” See Ching Fatt Yong and R. B. MacKenna, The Kuomintang Movement in British Malaya, 1912–1949 (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 1990), 19.

Loh Kok Wah, “From Tin Mine Coolies to Agricultural Squatters: SocioEconomic Change in the Kinta District during the Interwar Years,” in The Underside of Malaysian History: Pullers, Prostitutes, Plantation Workers, ed. Peter James Rimmer and Lisa M. Allen (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 1990), 72 97; 90–92.

7The 1930 Women and Girls Protection Ordinance abolished brothels in the Straits Settlements, rendering all brothel-related activities illegal. A similar enactment was passed the following year in the FMS. See “The Women and Girls Protection Enactment,” TNA, CO 717/77/4.

Chang2021 111

3“Banishment of a Female Chinese Named Lee Sam from Selangor to Kedah,” Arkib Negara Malaysia (National Archives of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur; hereafter NAM), 1957/0307312W.

8Sunil Amrith, Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 4–6.

9Southeast Asia accounted for 90 percent of all overseas Chinese migration from 1840 to 1940. For more on the challenges of calculating Chinese emigration from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, see: Adam McKeown, “Chinese Emigration in Global Context, 1850–1940,” Journal of Global History 5, no. 1 (2010): 95–124.

10Shelly Chan, Diaspora’s Homeland: Modern China in the Age of Global Migration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 1. 11McKeown, “Chinese Emigration in Global Context,” 98–99. The Straits Settlements and the Malay Peninsula were by far the most popular destinations

13Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technolo gies, and the Politics of Care (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010). See also Nicole Constable, “The Commodification of Intimacy: Marriage, Sex and Reproduc tive Labor,” Annual Review of Anthropology 38 (2009): 49–64; Thu Huong Vo-Nguyen, The Ironies of Freedom: Sex, Culture, and Neoliberal Governance in Vietnam (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008); and Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002).

12McKeown, “Chinese Emigration in Global Context,” 98–99. See also Sunil Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and Fortunes of Migrants (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); Eric Tagliacozzo and Wen-Chin Chang, eds. Chinese Circulations: Capital, Commodities, and Networks in Southeast Asia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Philip Kuhn, Chinese Among Others: Emigration in Modern Times (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008); and Wang Gungwu, China and the Chinese Overseas (Singapore: Eastern University Press, 2003).

Journal of Women ’s History112 Winter for Chinese migrants, the numbers going there exceeding those going to the Dutch East Indies (4–5 million), Siam (4 million), French Indochina (2–4 million), and the Philippines (750,000).

Sinn, “Women at Work: Chinese Brothel Keepers in NineteenthCentury Hong Kong,” Journal of Women’s History 19, no. 3 (2007): 87 111; 87–88.

15 “Women and Girls Protection Ordinance: Debates 1894,” TNA, CO 273/197/18487.16Elizabeth

Some scholars have offered socioeconomic explanations for the lack of Chinese female mobility overseas. See, e.g., Sucheta Mazumdar, “What Happened to the Women? Chinese and Indian Male Migration to the United States in Global Perspec tive,” in Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology, ed. Shirley Hune and Gail M. Nomura (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 58–76.

14My use of moral economy refers to the ways social norms intersect with economic exchanges, underscoring the mutual imbrication of cultures and econo mies. I borrow the framework from Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Hung Cam Thai, and Rachel Silvey, “Guest Editors’ Introduction: Intimate Industries: Restructuring (Im) material Labor in Asia,” positions: asia critique 24, no.1 (2016): 1–15. Their framework differs from the classic political anthropology’s understanding of moral economy in Southeast Asia, which refers to peasants’ participation and subsequent revolts in the moral economy of patron-client relations. See James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976).

Lai Ah Eng’s important research focuses on the lives of Chinese peasants, factory workers, and prostitutes in colonial Malaya but examines it as a separate issue from broader migration patterns. See Peasants, Proletarians, and Prostitutes: A Preliminary Investigation into the Work of Chinese Women in Colonial Malaya (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1986). My intervention builds on a notable exception that challenges the male-oriented migration paradigm in Chinese-language scholarship: Fan Ruolan, Yimin, Xingbie Yu Huaren Shehui: Malaiya Hauren Funu Yanjiu 1929–1941 [Immigration, Gender, and Overseas Chinese Society: Studies on Chinese Women in Malaya, 1929–1941] (Beijing: Zhongguo Huaqiao Chubanshe, 2005).

27“1931 Report of Federated and Unfederated Malay States,” United Nations Archives (hereafter UNA), R3061, File 11B/38154/38154.

31“Interview with Ho Kwai Min, 1992,” National Archives of Singapore, Ac cession No. 001393, Reel 1. 32Warren, Ah-ku and Karayuki-san, 59.

17“Petition of Ng Then Wi, Chinese Protectorate Detective,” TNA, CO 273/197/1799.18“Petition of Ng Then Wi.”

21“Interview with Ho Kwai Min, 1992,” National Archives of Singapore, Ac cession No. 001393, Reel 10. 22In re Lam Tai Ying (1890), 4 Ky 685. 23“1894 General Return of Registered Brothels and Women of Straits Settle ments and the Protected Native States,” TNA, CO 273/197/18487. 24“1894 General Return.” 25Luise White, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 7. 26James Francis Warren, Ah Ku and Karayuki-San: Prostitution in Singapore, 1870–1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

19“Petition of Ng Then Wi.” For more on bribery charges and the Chinese Protectorate becoming a “disgrace and sink of corruption,” see “Staff of the Chinese Protectorate Singapore,” TNA, CO 273/154/15888.

28“Special Provision for the Repatriation of a Chinese Woman Named Yeung Sz to Canton,” NAM, 1957/0243324W. 29“Li Shi Applies for the Release of her Granddaughter, Wong Shun Li, from the Federal Home,” NAM, 1957/0102892W.

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20I thank Dr. Wong Yee Tuan for first directing me to these inscriptions at the Tua Peck Gong Temple during my research in Penang in the spring of 2017. For a full list of donor inscriptions along the west coast of Malaya, see Wolfgang Franke and Tiefan Chen, Chinese Epigraphic Materials in Malaysia, vol. 3 (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaysia Press, 1985), 1021, 1025, 1100–1102.

33 “Women and Girls Protection Ordinance: Debates 1894,” TNA, CO 273/197/18487.

30On the inadequate framework of coercion and consent in trafficking histo ries, see Elisa Camiscioli, “Coercion and Choice: The ‘Traffic’ in Women and Children between France and Argentina in the Early Twentieth Century,” French Historical Society 42, no. 3 (2019): 483–507.

41“Mr. Cowen’s Summary of His Report on Public Prostitution in Singapore,” Women’s Library, London School of Economics (hereafter WL), 3AMS/D/40/01, Folder 421.“1924

43“1924

35Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York: Routledge, 2003), 232. 36Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics; Philip Howell, Geographies of Regula tion: Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and Their Critics, 1793–1905 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980).

37Julia Laite, “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Women’s Labour Migration and Sex Trafficking in the Early Twentieth Century,” International Review of Social History 62, no. 1 (2017): 37–65; Jessica Pliley, Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Gunther Peck, “Feminizing White Slavery in the United States: Marcus Braun and the Transnational Traffic in White Bodies, 1890–1910,” in Workers Across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History, ed. Leon Fink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 222–241; Eileen Boris and Heather Berg, “Protecting Virtue, Erasing Labor,” in Human Traf ficking Reconsidered: Rethinking the Problem, Envisioning New Solutions, ed. Kimberly Kay Hoang and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (New York: International Debate Education Association, 2014), 76–81. 38Mrs. Archibald Mackirdy [Olive Christian Malvery] and W. N. Willis, The White Slave Market (London: S. Paul, 1912), 54–55. 39Mackirdy and Willis, White Slave Market, 123–124. 40“1917 Prostitution in the Colony,” TNA, CO 273/457/282.

Journal of Women ’s History114 Winter

Letter from Consul General of Japan to Bishop C. J. Ferguson Davie,” WL, 3AMS/D/40/01, Folder 1. On the expulsion of Japanese prostitutes from Singapore, see also Warren, Ah Ku and Karayuki-San, 164–165. For a classic study of karayuki-san in Southeast Asia, refer to Yamazaki Tomoko, Sandakan Brothel No. 8: An Episode in the History of Lower-Class Japanese Women, trans. Karen F. Colligan-Taylor (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999). Letter from Consul General of Japan to Bishop C. J. Ferguson Davie.” According to the records, forty-four were listed as housekeepers, twenty-six as servants, and seven as owners of their own businesses.

34Harald Fischer-Tiné, “‘White Women Degrading Themselves to the Low est Depths’: European Networks of Prostitution and Colonial Anxieties in British India and Ceylon ca. 1880–1914,” Indian Economic & Social History Review 40, no. 2 (2003): 163–190; Ashwini Tambe, “The Elusive Ingénue: A Transnational Feminist Analysis of European Prostitution in Colonial Bombay,” Gender & Society 19, no. 2 (2005): 160–179; Philippa Levine, “‘A Multitude of Unchaste Women’: Prostitution in the British Empire,” Journal of Women’s History 15, no. 4 (2004): 159–163.

Sandy F. Chang2021 115 44The term “yellow peril” was first coined and popularized in the German Kaiser Willhelm II’s commissioned painting Die Gelbe Gefahr in 1895—the same year that Japan defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War. See Erika Lee, The Making of Asian America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 123. 45“Slave Market News Cuttings,” WL, 3AMS/D/20, Folder 1. 46“Shirking Realities,” Straits Times, December 22, 1922. See also “‘Yellow’ Slave Traffic,” Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, January 20, 1921, 6. 47“The Social Evil in Malaya,” WL, 3AMS/D/40/02, Folder 1. 48“1927 Social Hygiene,” TNA, CO 273/539/5. 49“Female Chinese Immigration and its Bearing on the Scheme for Veg etable Garden Reserves and on the Problem of Social Hygiene in FMS,” NAM, 1957/0240794W.50“1933Restriction of Chinese Immigration,” TNA, CO 273/590/3. 51R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Return to Malaya (London: Putnam, 1936), 122. 52“1894 A General Return of Registered Brothels and Women of the Straits Settlements and Protected Malay States,” TNA, CO 273/197/18487. 53“1931 Report of Federated and Unfederated Malay States.” UNA, R3061, File 11B/38154/38154.54“1931Reportof Federated and Unfederated Malay States,” UNA, R3061, File 11B/38154/38154.55White,Comforts of Home; Judith R Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

56“1922 Memorandum on Sly Prostitution in Kuala Lumpur and other Large Towns in the Federated Malay States,” NAM, 1957/0224251W. 57“Cancellation of Non-Renewal of Licenses of Coffee Shops, Eating Houses, and Other Similar Places in the Case of a Successful Prosecution or Representation from the Chinese Protectorate that the Shop is Used for Immoral Purposes,” NAM, 1957/0224251W.58

By the 1950s there were more than two thousand coffeehouses in Singapore alone. See Khairudin Aljunied, “Coffee-Shops in Colonial Singapore: Domains of Contentious Publics,” History Workshop Journal 77, no.1 (2014): 65 85; 70. 59Wong Ah Ho, oral interview by Saunders Chang, 21 and 24 February 2017, Penang, Malaysia. 60Tan Ai Boay, “Bei yiwang de gongzuo nuxing—da xiaotiao shiqi de rongyao ya jingji kejia liu la nu, 1929–1933 [Forgotten Women Workers—The Hakka Dulang Washers in Perak, Malaya during the Great Depression from 1929 to 1933], Overseas Chinese History Studies, no. 2 (June 2015): 56–66. See also: “1935 Death of a Chinese

71“Banishment of Ho Cheuk Khuan, Kuala Lumpur,” in “1932 Review of Chinese Affairs, Part I,” TNA, CO 273/579/5. For more on the difficulty of determin ing subjecthood, nationality, and citizenship in colonial Southeast Asia, see Sunil S Amrith, “Indians Overseas? Governing Tamil Migration to Malaya, 1870–1941,” Past and Present 208, no. 1 (2010): 232. 72Jessica Pliley, Robert Kramm, and Harald Fischer-Tiné, eds., Global AntiVice Activism, 1890–1950: Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and “Immorality” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

66“Banishment of a Female Chinese Named Lee Sam from Selangor to Kedah,” NAM, 671957/0307312W.

Of the fifty thousand Chinese repatriated during this two-year period, thirty-three thousand were from Perak. See Loh, Beyond the Tin Mines, 29.

68“Summary of Annual Trafficking Reports in the Straits Settlements for 1932,” UNA, R4677, File 11B/2425/2070.

63Marjorie Topley, “Chinese Women’s Vegetarian Houses in Singapore,” in Cantonese Society in Hong Kong and Singapore: Gender, Religion, Medicine, and Money, ed. Marjorie Topley and Jean DeBernadi (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011), chap. 6. 64Francis Loh Kok Wah, Beyond the Tin Mines: Coolies, Squatters, and New Villagers in the Kinta Valley, Malaysia, c. 1880–1980 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1988), 28–31.

“Summary of Annual Trafficking Reports in the Federated Malay States 1932,” UNA, R4677, File 11B/2425/2070.

69“Statistics compiled from “Summary of Annual Reports in the SS, FMS, UFMS, 1939–1940,’” UNA, R4712, File 11B/39012/38959.

Journal of Women ’s History116 Winter Woman named Chan Lan as the result of falling in a mining cave at Wang Tangga,” NAM, 611957/0484387W.Ontheprofessionalization

70Daniel Chirot and Anthony Reid, eds., Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011).

62“Two Girls, Her Daughters, Have Been Taken by the Protector of Chinese to Home at Sungei Patani,” NAM, 1957/0408629W.

of domestic work in the 1930s, see Kelvin E. Y. Low, Remembering the Samsui Women: Migration and Social Memory in Singapore and China. (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2015); Andria Crosson, “From Female Sojourner to National Icon: The Samsui Women of Singapore” (un published thesis, University of Texas at San Antonio, Department of History, 2005).

Sandy F. Chang2021 117

73Julia Laite, “The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene: Abolitionism and Prostitution in Britain, 1915–1959,” Women’s History Review 17, no. 2 (2008): 207–223; Ashwini Tambe, Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009).

74Stephen Legg, Prostitution and the Ends of Empire: Scales, Governmentalities, and Interwar India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 41–94.

75Ashwini Tambe, “Brothels as Families: Reflections on the History of Bom bay’s Kothas,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 8, no. 2 (2006): 219–242.

76On scalar analysis of prostitution, see Stephen Legg, “Transnationalism and the Scalar Politics of Imperialism,” New Global Studies 4, no. 1 (2010). https:// doi-org.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/10.2202/1940-004.1103.

77Philippa Levine, “The Cordon Sanitaire: Mobility and Space in the Regula tion of Colonial Prostitution,” in Trans-Status Subjects: Gender in the Globalization of South and Southeast Asia, ed. Sonita Sarkar and Esha Niyogi De (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002) 51–66.

78See, e.g., Shelly Chan, “Rethinking the ‘Left-Behind’: A Case of Liberating Wives in Emigrant South China in the 1950s,” in Proletarian and Mass Migrations: A Global Perspective on Continuities and Discontinuities in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Dirk Hoerder and Amarjit Kaur (Leiden: Brill, 2013); and Huifen Shen, China’s Left-Behind Wives: Families of Migrants From Fujian to Southeast Asia, 1930s–1950s (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2012).

On May 4, 1938, Marie Piquemal, a forty-six-year-old French woman, disembarked in Dakar after sailing on the Banfora from Marseille. Traveling by her side were four French women aged twenty-five to thirty who were venturing to Dakar for the first time.1 In contrast to the younger women, Piquemal had been living on and off in what had been the capital of French West Africa since 1902, where she owned and ran multiple houses of prostitution. The purpose of her recent trip to France had been to supply La Poularde, an upscale house of prostitution, with white women to cater to the growing population of white French men serving in the colonial capital as colonial administrators, merchants, small-time traders, and various other professions. Although no colonial policy set restrictions on who could patronize brothels, Piquemal ensured the exclusion of African men from her business, regardless of their status as French citizens or colonial subjects.2 In doing so, she erected an informal “color bar,” providing white Frenchmen stationed overseas with exclusive access to white women at a time of increased stigma toward interracial sexual and conjugal unions. This article traces the story of Marie Piquemal, a French prostitute turned “colonial madam” who capitalized on the commercialization of white women’s bodies in colonial Dakar. It reveals the key role that brothel

Marie Piquemal, the “Colonial Madam”: Brothel Prostitution, Migration, and the Making of Whiteness in Interwar Dakar Caroline Séquin This article reconstructs the life of Marie Piquemal, a French woman turned colonial madam, to explore the world of white prostitution in colonial Dakar, Senegal, in the first half of the twentieth century. White brothel prostitution required the migration of white French women from the metropole to supply these institutions. By providing white French men with sexual access to white sex workers, brothel keepers like Piquemal helped to curb the development of interracial intimacy at a time when sexual-conjugal unions across the color line were becoming increasingly controversial. This article thus argues that brothel keepers played a key role in reifying racial boundaries upon which colonial rule rested, especially within an empire that claimed to be race blind. Although French authorities were aware of the migration of French women for sexual labor between metropole and colony, they condoned this process in an effort to maintain the racial status quo.

Previous studies have emphasized how white sex workers in colonial settings threatened to undermine the notions of white superiority upon which the colonial order rested.7 Historians have paid little attention, however, to the key distinction between white clandestine sex workers, whose visible presence stained notions of colonial prestige, and white brothel sex workers, whose containment away from the colonized gaze made their la bor not only tolerable but necessary to the French colonial project. Instead of emphasizing how poor whites who did not squarely embody privilege or power threatened to undermine notions of white superiority, this article illuminates the role of “white subalterns,” especially white sex workers, in solidifying whiteness within an empire that claimed to be color-blind.

Caroline Séquin2021 119 keepers played in the hardening of racial boundaries in the French Empire.

Peripheral to these studies, however, is the role brothel keepers played in providing access to commercial sex and, moreover, how their role led to their indirect participation in the construction of racial boundaries.

White brothel prostitution served to alleviate French anxieties about the outcome of interracial intimacy—that is, the emergence of a mixed-race population, the métis, who could make claims to French citizenship—by providing a supervised locus where French men could satisfy their purported sexual needs without risking taking on the responsibility of father hood.3 Despite the growing stigma around interracial intimacy, France’s adherence to republican universalism precluded colonial authorities from banning interracial marriage or concubinage.4 Piquemal, by contrast, in formally enforced a ban of nonwhite clients in her business—and did so brazenly, to the knowledge of local authorities. This tacit racial policy at once allowed Piquemal to maximize her profits by selling the illusion of French exclusivity in an increasingly racially segregated colonial port city, while simultaneously participating in the very production of whiteness in colonial Dakar. The making of racial boundaries in the French colonial context thus occurred through the labor of individuals like Piquemal and the white women she hired to sell sex.

Following in the footsteps of Ann Laura Stoler’s magisterial study, which demonstrates how “sexuality was instrumental to the governing strategies of racialized colonial states,” historians have investigated how the control of prostitution has served to manage colonial and racial relations.

Their analyses have focused mainly on the role of colonial authorities, the police, and medical experts in devising and enforcing prostitution policies that sought to contain venereal disease and control women’s sexuality.

6 By emphasizing how brothel keepers like Piquemal cooperated with various local authorities to promote a racial agenda that went beyond the stipula tions of colonial policy, this article demonstrates how racial boundaries were enacted “from below” and in everyday sexual practices.

Although Piquemal left few traces in her own voice, her life trajectory can nonetheless be reconstructed piecemeal from various archival records scattered across France and Senegal, owing to the “culture of suspicion” that permeated the policies and practices of the colonial state in interwar Dakar.11

Unlike in the British Empire, where many of the white sex workers were from other European countries, in colonial Dakar the majority of the white women who sold sex were French.9 This difference, I suggest, stems from the fact that the brothel keepers and procurers who facilitated the migration of women for sexual labor could more easily evade the various international conventions established in the first half of the twentieth century that re pressed the so-called traffic in women when it involved French women.

Journal of Women ’s History120 Winter

The colonial clauses adopted by France, which prevented the application of these early twentieth-century conventions to the French colonies, meant that intermediaries like Piquemal could leverage their connections with brothel keepers in the metropole to orchestrate the migration of French women to Dakar’s brothels. The relative ease of travel between metropole and colony for French sex workers betrays how the French imperial nation-state, amid mounting national and international pressure to repress sex trafficking, sought to present itself as an active participant in the fight against “white slavery” even while it maintained a system of regulated prostitution in its colonies that hinged upon the emigration, whether free or coerced, of French women for sexual labor.

The Service de la Sûreté Générale [Central Security and General In formation Service] in Dakar produced daily intelligence briefs describing Piquemal’s activity and movement in and out of the colony, while police commissioners in Bordeaux similarly documented her travels back and forth between metropole and colony. Her name appears again in records held at the French National Archives, as she came into contact with suspected sex traffickers under investigation by the Contrôle Général du Service des Recherches Judiciaires (Department of General Security, Service of Judiciary Searches) a service in charge of criminal law offenses, including sex trafficking. From 1921 to 1939, colonial governors collected additional information regarding prostitution and sex trafficking in the colony under their administration, which was then compiled into annual reports sent to the League of Na tions Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children (CTW).

White-only brothels in colonial Dakar were no panacea for the assertion of white colonial dominance, given the persistently low number of European women who could address the demand for commercial sex with white sex workers. Consequently, Piquemal and her counterparts relied on the migra tion of women from the metropole to the colony to staff their businesses.

I use these documents to uncover both Marie Piquemal’s involvement in colonial Dakar’s sex industry and the experiences of the French women

Caroline Séquin2021 121 who engaged in “migratory prostitution” between metropole and colony in the interwar period.

Although few historians have portrayed France as a land of emigration during this time period, hundreds of thousands of French women and men

Piquemal’s journey, however, should not be read as a story of forced migration for sexual labor. Emigration at the time was a tempting option for countless Europeans in search of better lives. From 1815 to 1939, an estimated fifty-five million people left Europe, some never to return.

Becoming a Colonial Madam

Theonward.14circumstances

Marie Piquemal, a French woman born on August 26, 1892, on the outskirts of Bordeaux, opened and ran the first of five white-only brothels that existed in Dakar in the interwar period.13 Her path to becoming a colonial madam, however, remains blurred. We know next to nothing about Marie Piquemal’s youth, as archival records documenting the lives of those involved in the sex trade typically remain silent about aspects that do not directly pertain to their bout in commercial sex. All we know is that some time in her early twenties she moved to Casablanca, shortly after Morocco became a French protectorate in 1912. There, she worked in a brothel, well before the city became home to an expansive red-light district in Bousbir that would become a prime tourist destination for European men from the 1930s

of Piquemal’s journey to Casablanca remain similarly obscure. It is unclear whether she—like the many women she would later hire—was already involved in the sex trade prior to leaving the metropole and planned to pursue her activity on the other side of the Mediterranean or turned to prostitution only once she was living in Morocco. Piquemal’s colonial migration unfolded against the backdrop of international anxiet ies about the so-called white slave trade. From the late nineteenth century onward, large-scale changes resulting from industrialization, urbanization, and rapid technological advances had made traveling across long distances easier, faster, and more affordable. However, the international mobility of white women, especially those who traveled alone or in suspicious com pany, raised concerns about their potential traffic across borders for sexual purposes. The proliferation of tales about white women being forcibly sold into prostitution abroad or in the colonies encapsulated broader fears about national regeneration at a time of European imperial expansion. As the “mothers of the race,” white women carried the cultural and biological burdens of reproducing the nation; at the same time, their potential sexual missteps represented—as eugenicists of the time put it—a threat to the reproduction of a “healthy racial stock.”

19 By contrast, fewer French citizens settled in the French Empire. Even fewer French women did so, despite a discursive shift in co lonial rhetoric that transformed the commonly held vision of the empire as a “no-woman’s land” into a “woman’s haven” at the turn of the twentieth century.20 Although Piquemal’s emigration was not unusual, her destination was, especially given her gender.

Journal of Women ’s History122 Winter opted to try their luck overseas.

The Paris region and the southwest of France, where Piquemal spent her youth, witnessed the highest number of departures, with 120,932 French people leaving from the port of Bordeaux alone from 1865 to 1920.18 Prime destinations included Argentina and the United States.

In 1915, Piquemal resettled in Dakar. First established as a French colonial possession in 1857, Dakar became one of the Four Communes in 1887. It is possible that she selected this destination after witnessing other French citizens move there. Beginning in the nineteenth century, poor rural dwellers from the southwest of France had opted to go to Senegal after their initial exodus to a major proximate urban center such as Bordeaux failed to yield the expected economic outcomes.

Shortly after her arrival in Dakar, Piquemal began to manage an unofficial maison de rendez-vous [“meeting place”], the Maxim Bar, which catered to men seeking young women who sold sex.27 At the time of her ar rival in Dakar in the second decade of the twentieth century, there were no state-licensed brothels in the city, despite the existence of decrees that had tolerated brothels since Dakar became one of the Four Communes. In this context, a man seeking to pay for sex was left with clandestine sex workers, whether they practiced in their homes, in the streets, or in informal houses of prostitution. The Maxim Bar was one such establishment, but there were others as well. Rumor had it that the female artists who performed at the

25 Perhaps Piquemal was inspired by her peers’ search for wealth in the colony. As the few available memoirs written by former sex workers illustrate, the women selling sex routinely resorted to both domestic and international mobility to increase their earnings, to improve their work conditions within the sex industry, and, sometimes, to travel the world.26

21 Commercial ties had linked the two regions since the early nineteenth century, with Bordeaux entrepreneurs leading the peanut and gum production in Senegambia.22 With Dakar’s new designation as the capital of French West Africa in 1902, the city underwent major urban growth, soon becoming a political, commercial, and military hub that attracted colonial administrators, entrepreneurs, and other colonists in droves.23 From approximately 8,700 inhabitants in 1902, its population tripled over the following five years, continuing to grow exponentially in the following decades to reach 100,000 by 1938.24 Dakar’s nomination in 1920 as one of the top four ports serving as French naval bases outside metro politan France further boosted population growth.

Caroline Séquin2021 123 Bijou-Concert, a music hall run by a Madame Pilato, routinely engaged in prostitution to compensate for meager wages.28 Piquemal’s move from sell ing sex to supervising other women providing sexual services was a step up, perhaps aided by her imperial mobility.

Although there were no pimps per se in colonial Dakar, men were often involved in the colonial sex trade as sex procurers.29 Jules Guillem, a French man born in colonial Algeria in 1889, was involved in recruiting “artists” for Pilato. Before moving to Dakar in 1918, Guillem had fought for France in the Great War. In July 1916 he had been declared unfit for military service after an incident that cost him his left hand. Guillem’s transition from war veteran to sex trafficker was not so uncommon. When veterans found themselves in search of a regular income in the aftermath of the war, some became involved in the sex industry, a milieu with which they may have become familiar first as clients during furloughs and then as pimps or sex procurers.30 As was the case with Guillem, the budding sex industry provided the procurer with a means of subsistence in the colony.

Dakar’s brothels were typically owned by French couples; the woman would serve as the madam while also helping her partner recruit new employees. This was true for Piquemal and Guillem, who had first met in Casablanca before their paths crossed again in Dakar, where they quickly became partners both professionally and personally. They combined their savings and their knowledge of Dakar’s nascent sex industry to open the city’s first licensed brothel sometime between 1915 and 1918.31 They were followed in the 1920s by other brothels, all owned by couples from the metropole, some of whom were already involved in the sex industry back in France. For example, Yvonne-Marie Le Dilassert bought and ran the brothel Au Clou, located at 22 rue Raffenel, from 1921 onward. Her lover, Louis Perriot, a former French army pilot who was freed of his military duty in 1922, helped her recruit women from the metropole to work in the colonial brothel. After a violent altercation with a client that culminated with Perriot firing gunshots, he was subsequently accused of attempted murder before charges were eventually dropped.32 Following this incident, Le Dilassert de cided to sell her business, which Piquemal and Guillem bought in 1924. The couple, who had temporarily returned to the metropole after selling their first brothel in Dakar several years earlier, used this opportunity to reenter Dakar’s sex industry.33 Brothel owners and keepers in Dakar presented a similar profile: they were all French men or women who engaged in frequent travel between metropole and colony. These subjects in particular would come to benefit from the hardening of racial boundaries in colonial Dakar.

With its French-style boulevards, elegant architecture, sanitation system, and electricity, the Plateau epitomized France’s supposed modernity and superior civilization and therefore helped to consolidate colonial power.

By the 1930s, the informal project of racial segregation was cemented in the Plateau. After a stroll through the Plateau, the British anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer noted in 1935 that “the color bar is extraordinarily strong in Dakar. . . . The visitor who only spends a few hours at Dakar might reasonably wonder whether he was in Africa at all.”38 Except for the few “boys” and porters, no Africans were to be seen in the Plateau’s cafés, restaurants, and hotels.39 The Plateau had become the place where the white Europeans lived, even though their number never exceeded 10 percent of the overall population in Dakar.40 The other brothels that appeared in the early 1920s were similarly nested on two adjacent streets on the periphery of the Plateau, rue Blanchot and rue Raffenel. Their location, within walking distance of the Governor General’s Palace, various hotels, the police station, the harbor, and military warehouses, hinted at the targeted clientele. Just like other spaces of sociability in the Plateau, licensed brothels were white-only institutions. The women who sold sex in the Plateau’s brothels, as well as their clients, were all considered Europeans, a code word for “white.”

Colonial authorities, however, vehemently dismissed claims that residential segregation and sanitary measures effectively resulted in racial segregation. They insisted that in Dakar “it was not a racial segregation between two kinds of people, but segregation between two kinds of residential forms.”36 Nevertheless, the policies resulted in de facto racial segregation.37

Continuing his description of Dakar, the anthropologist Gorer claimed, “The brothels are naturally stocked with and controlled by French women, and the casual whores in the dance halls are white.”41 In a 1923 annual report submitted to the CTW, French colonial authorities acknowledged the presence of European prostitutes in Dakar as a matter of fact, listing “39 French, 2 Portuguese, 1 Italian, 1 Romanian, and 4 Spanish,”42 for a total of fortyseven registered sex workers. Barring a few foreigners, the large majority of brothel sex workers were French.

The opening of Piquemal and Guillem’s maison de tolérance [licensed brothel] coincided with the informal establishment of racial segregation in colonial Dakar. With the outbreak of the bubonic plague in Dakar in 1914, French authorities forced the displacement of large groups of Africans to the Médina, the African quarter.34 The very tip of the peninsula where Dakar sits became the European quarter, also known as the Plateau. This area accommodated the majority of the European population of Senegal.

Journal of Women ’s History124 Winter

White-Only Brothels and Racial Segregation in Colonial Dakar

Caroline Séquin2021 125

European sex workers helped to strengthen racial and colonial bound aries by providing an alternative sexual outlet to the increasingly stigma tized interracial sexual-conjugal unions that had been a staple of colonial life until the turn of the twentieth century. Unions between European men and African women, known as mariages à la mode du pays, had a long his tory in coastal Senegal, dating from the early Portuguese exploration of the region in the fifteenth century.

With almost exclusively French personnel, brothels in the Plateau were reserved for European patrons even though local prostitution policies did not include language overtly excluding African patrons. Brothel keepers nevertheless painstakingly and openly enforced racial barriers, even un der the watchful eyes of the republican colonial administration. In 1938 a French woman named Suzanne Méroux requested permission to open a brothel in Saint-Louis du Sénégal, a few hundred miles north of Dakar. As the governor general of French West Africa approved her business, he noted in a confidential letter that “this brothel would be, like those in Dakar, forbidden to indigènes [“natives”].”43 White-only brothels sold the illusion of white exclusivity to French clients.44 Ann Laura Stoler has emphasized that the very sight in the colonies of white women with “low morals” compromised the notions of colonial respectability and moral superiority supposedly incarnated by white women.45 Yet, white prostitution, when properly contained within the confines of a brothel discreetly tucked away in the French quarter, could also help to buttress colonial and racial hierarchies. Unlike clandestine prostitution, brothel prostitution concealed the presence of white women of “low morals” from the colonial population. In addition to local decrees banning women deemed prostitutes from booking a hotel room or renting a furnished room, as well as from patronizing bars, brothel keepers monitored their employees, preventing them from exiting their establishment.46 By contrast, Louis Charles Léonce Ponzio, a top colonial official in the Service de la Sûreté Générale, noted that African clandestine prostitution “escapes all control, administrative or medical.”47 Such a discrepancy suggested that race informed local authorities’ approach to regulating prostitution. When prostitution regulation operated successfully, it enabled a level of control over white colonial sexuality.

48 Historians have described these unions, which were sanctioned by neither the Catholic Church nor French civil law, as mutually beneficial for the partners involved. While French men enjoyed the “comforts of home” through these unions, the elite merchant women, known as the signares, involved with European men could realize significant economic benefits through their role as commercial intermediar ies and cultural brokers.49 Similarly, the mixed-race children born out of these relationships, the métis, gained political and economic power through at

50 As the French consolidated colonial rule in the last decades of the nineteenth century, however, French attitudes towards temporary unions between French men and African or métis women gradu ally began to shift.51

White brothel prostitution presented several benefits to colonial admin istrators cautious about upholding colonial hierarchies within the broader paradigm of universal republicanism. It not only turned white French men away from sexual-conjugal relationships with African or métis women but also helped to quench French men’s putative sexual needs while keeping them away from sexual practices perceived as even more deleterious, such as masturbation and homosexuality.56 Sexual continence for French men ran counter to prevailing discourses about masculinity and virility. Medi cal experts alleged that any healthy man had “innate” sexual needs that prostitution would help “canalize.” For one doctor, “Without a doubt, it would be better to be chaste, but chastity is like peace, we always talk about it, and we don’t often keep it.”

Despite the growing stigma toward interracial unions, French laws could not ban interracial marriage or concubinage, since France’s adherence to postrevolutionary republican universalism translated into the impossi bility of using race as a legal category. As the 1921 annual report from the Ministry of the Colonies to the CTW put it, “The French administration’s respect toward local customs does not allow it to intervene in indigenous marriages or mixed unions; forbidding the latter to Europeans is out of the question, given that our laws do not tolerate differentiations based on color or race.”54

Another colonial doctor asked ironically, “Are the colonial troops chaste? It may be a good title for a novel, but this question is too ridiculous to even think about it seriously.”58 To be sure, white endogamy stood as the ideal avenue for French men to satisfy their

least the mid-nineteenth century, when the end of the slave trade negatively impacted their community.

Journal of Women ’s History126 Winter

The French insistence on race blindness thus precluded laws that overtly curtailed racial mixing, which existed in the United States and parts of the British Empire, where anti-miscegenation policies were part and parcel of the national project of white supremacy and racial purity in each country.55 However, French officials could promote other forms of sexual and conjugal unions that would deter Frenchmen from mingling with African women. Commercial sex with white women was one of them.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Dr. Louis Joseph Barot’s view that “for those who lack the moral strength necessary to endure two years of absolute continence, only one line of conduct is possible: a tempo rary union with a well-chosen native woman” had become the exception rather than the norm.52 As rigid racial boundaries became increasingly important to asserting French colonial rule, mixed unions shifted from appearing in consequential to being regarded as controversial and, indeed, threatening on both sides of the colonial divide.53

Sometime in the late 1920s or early 1930s, Guillem and Piquemal split up. It seems that Piquemal took over the various establishments they ran to gether, while Guillem left Dakar for a few years before eventually returning in 1931 to manage a music hall and continue in the traffic in women—two industries that, in France, had been intimately connected since at least the eighteenth century.61 Later, Piquemal temporarily left the colony to resettle near her family in Bordeaux, where she became involved in the wine busi ness. It was while in Bordeaux that Piquemal met and fell in love with Henri Cadilhac, a French man ten years younger from Montpellier, in southern France, who had experience in the service industry and the military. After marrying in 1934, Cadilhac and Piquemal moved to Dakar in 1936.62 By the late 1930s, they owned at least two restaurants, a bar, and a brothel called Lily Cernay, all located in the Plateau. Piquemal and Cadilhac’s ability to move in and out of the sex industry hints at the way individuals involved in the sex trade, whether brothel keepers or sex procurers, often complemented their activity in the sex industry with other trades. In other words, Piquemal and Cadilhac were not marginal actors isolated from their communities, but instead fully immersed in a milieu that recognized their professional identities.

Caroline Séquin2021 127 sexual and emotional needs. But in the context of colonial Dakar, the number of white French women remained too low throughout the first half of the twentieth century to guarantee each male colonist a white wife. Among the 2,550 Europeans who lived in the “imperial city” in 1907, only four hundred were women.59 Thus, for every one French woman, there were six French men in Dakar. By the early 1940s, there were 17,500 French people living in Dakar, but only 2,000 were women.60 White-only brothels thus provided a place where French men could have sex with white women, despite the uneven gender ratio among the French population in colonial Dakar.

Piquemal’s rise from French sex-worker in Casablanca to colonial madam in Dakar offers a rare example of a woman who achieved economic autonomy through colonial migration, and more specifically, through her involvement in the colonial sex trade. Despite the legal marginality of whiteonly brothels, Piquemal capitalized on increasingly rigid racial boundaries in colonial Dakar to maximize her profit. By ensuring Frenchmen’s access to sexual encounters with white sex workers in the heart of the French quarter, she advanced the colonial project of white dominance, whether intentionally or inadvertently. A close analysis of white-only brothels thus illuminates how the management of prostitution, conducted by both local authorities and brothel keepers themselves, was key to the making of whiteness in a so-called color-blind French imperial context.

Despite French reformers’ active role in the elaboration of these international agreements, France either delayed adopting or only partially adopted these texts, betraying the key role that colonial prostitution played in the making of the imperial nation-state. France ratified the 1904 and 1910 conventions in 1912 but postponed their application to the French Empire until 1922. Most significantly, the later conventions would never be extended to overseas France; when France adopted the 1921 and 1933 treaties, in 1926

Colonial Migration for Sexual Labor

Journal of Women ’s History128 Winter

Piquemal’s enterprise hinged upon the sexual labor of other white women. But just as there were not enough white women to serve as wives to the various French colonists in Dakar, staffing white-only brothels with European women remained a challenge. To palliate this need, Piquemal orchestrated the migration of white women from the metropole in the in terwar period despite the proliferation of international conventions against the traffic in women across national borders. While such an activity was profitable for Piquemal, the women involved rarely achieved a markedly better socioeconomic standing through their role in colonial sexual labor. Imperial mobility entailed the risk of losing the little savings and belongings one had, in addition to being away from one’s support network of friends and family, for the chance to profit. Although the women who worked in colonial brothels contributed to the colonial project, colonial migration typically held disappointing outcomes for the women whose sexual labor helped to reaffirm racial hierarchies.

Starting in the 1870s, social reformers had denounced the so-called white slave trade, which they linked to the prevalence of regulationist re gimes. Their mobilization spearheaded several international conferences, first in Geneva in 1877, then in London in 1899, and finally in Paris in 1902. Delegates from a dozen countries participated, eventually producing the 1904 International Agreement for the Suppression of White Slave Traffic, which was ratified by all twelve.63 This agreement established special bureaus dedicated to the collection and exchange of information about the traf fic in women. It also set up booths in ports and railway stations for advising and warning women and girls about the risks that traveling alone entailed. In 1910, the International Convention for the Repression of the White Slave Traffic, negotiated in Paris, made the traffic in underaged girls (eighteen or younger) and nonconsenting adult women a punishable offense. In the wake of the First World War, the newly created League of Nations took on the work initiated by those against sex traffickers, creating the Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children. The 1921, International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children raised the age of consent to twenty-one, while the 1933 treaty repressed the migration for sexual labor of any woman, whether or not she consented.

Port commissioners and police officers charged with reporting poten tial cases of white slavery repeatedly claimed that most of the women who ended up in one of Dakar’s brothels had willingly moved to Dakar to sell sex. Often, the fact that a woman had engaged in prostitution prior to her arrival served as evidence that she was migrating for sexual labor on her own volition. Among the fifty-five cases of women suspected of moving to Dakar to sell sex that I have identified in the archives, thirty-one fell into this category. Consider, for example, the cases of Marguerite M., twentyfive, and Gabrielle M., twenty-two. The two French women were stopped and questioned in the Atlantic port of Bordeaux on January 17, 1932. The port commissioner suspected that they were planning to join one of Dakar’s brothels. He reported that Gabrielle had already worked in a metropolitan brothel. As for Marguerite, she “was over the age of majority and her desire to go and prostitute herself was evident.”64 The two women’s assumed willingness to migrate to Dakar to sell sex precluded French authorities from launching an investigation into sex trafficking. French authorities reported that prior connections and hearsay per suaded some women to try their luck overseas. When a port commissioner interrogated Eugénie L. and Anne D., both aged twenty-six, as they em barked on the steamship Asie in Bordeaux in November 1932, they confessed their intention to join a brothel located at 19 rue Raffenel in Dakar. At the time of their interview, they had just finished working in a brothel in An goulême. By continuing in the sex trade in the colony, they hoped, on the basis of one of the two women’s past experience, to increase their gains in a colonial brothel.65 In a similar case, Henriette and Germaine C. set sail on the Asie on July 19, 1933. The two sisters had worked in a brothel in Paris for about a year before transferring to the same brothel where Eugénie L. and Anne D. had worked in Angoulême. They planned to continue their activity overseas, where “having learned from friends practicing the same job that in Dakar, where the latter had gone, one could make more money than in France, they found a way . . . to also reach the port city.”66 Over and again, port commissioners heard the same story of economic opportunity overseas. From 1932 to 1935 alone, twelve women suspected of moving to Dakar to pursue sexual labor reiterated similar motives.67

Caroline Séquin2021 129 and 1947, respectively, it did so under the condition that a colonial clause exempt France’s colonies from the scope of the conventions. As a result, only the forced migration of adult women was repressible in the colonial context, meaning that those who willingly moved to imperial spaces to sell sex did not fall under the purview of the 1904 and 1910 conventions. The limited legal apparatus in place to repress the traffic in women in the colo nial context suggests French officials’ tacit recognition that regulationism in the colonies relied on the emigration of French women for sexual labor.

Although women described the allure of financial gain as a primary motive for selling sex in Dakar, such an idealist vision often remained just that. First, while steamship travel gradually became more affordable to the average French person, it remained expensive. In 1932 the cost of a oneway journey to Dakar was 1,560 francs, or the equivalent of two and a half months’ salary for an unskilled worker.68 Second, each passenger had to pay a 2,500-franc security deposit to the shipping company, which would cover repatriation costs should their stay in the colony go wrong—another cost that sex procurers initially took upon themselves.69 Third, the brothel keeper was to be reimbursed for living expenses during their stay in Da kar, such as personal products, food, and clothing, usually with interest. Together, these various costs made it challenging for a woman working in a brothel to make any profits from her labor. Even if these women did choose to move to Dakar to sell sex, their experiences once there often fell short of their initial expectations of relatively easy financial gains.

As a registered sex-worker, Mireille first experienced the invasive medical visit provided by the Service de Prophylaxie des Maladies Vénériennes (Prophylaxis Service for Venereal Diseases) a few days after New Year’s Day 1937. The eight examinations she underwent in the following months kept her from any mandatory stay at the Saint-Jean Hospital, where the women affected with syphilis or gonorrhea were confined for treatment.71 Although Mireille was spared the dreaded lock hospitals, life may have been fairly monotonous, between clients’ visits, monthly medical checkups, and a lot of waiting and sitting in between.72

Even as some women openly rejected assumptions that prior involve ment in the metropolitan sex trade necessarily marked them as potential colonial sex workers, authorities by and large did not take action against those accused of sex trafficking, revealing, once again, the reluctance of French authorities to act against migratory prostitution between the metro pole and the colonies. For example, in 1938, Mireille R., a French prostitute, accused Piquemal of deception: the young woman claimed that she had been offered a job as a waitress in Dakar only to find herself in one of Piquemal’s colonial brothels. Piquemal, though, avoided any prosecution despite her long and well-known history in facilitating the migration of French women to the colony for the purpose of selling sex. The misadventure of Mirelle R., which I reconstruct below, illuminates the police’s disbelief that sex workers could be deceived. For the women who did not easily fit into the trope of the innocent, virgin white slave victim, sympathetic ears were hard to come by.

Journal of Women ’s History130 Winter

Like most women selling sex in Bordeaux, Mireille R., twenty-one, lived in Mériadeck, a working-class neighborhood notorious for its nightlife, brothels, and crime.70 The brothel where she worked, located on 57 bis rue Saint Sernin, was owned by the infamous Corsican sex and drug trafficker Barthélémy Guérini, also known in the business as “Mémé” or “La Terreur.”

If Mireille had imagined a brighter future in the tropics, her hopes no doubt quickly vanished.

Caroline Séquin2021 131

73 Consequently, meeting individuals other than clients and ultimately leaving the sex-work industry proved particularly challenging. Piquemal embodied Mireille’s chance to exit the world of prostitution and start anew, or so it seemed. Mireille was one of the four women mentioned above who, on May 4, 1938, disembarked from the Banfora to set foot on the African continent. Mireille and the three other French women—Marie J., Gabrielle A., and Georgette B.—had all been registered as sex workers in Bordeaux and Mar seille. Piquemal had supervised the trip, ensuring that the four women on board the steamship did not draw unsolicited attention and made it safely to Dakar. Even though they were accustomed to close oversight, the lack of autonomy experienced by the four women certainly tamed their excitement about overseas travel.74 Mireille’s enthusiasm quickly faded upon reaching La Poularde, her ultimate destination. This was not the typical bar she had expected to work in but a maison de rendez-vous not so different from what she had just left behind in Bordeaux To her dismay, she and her three travel compan ions were swiftly registered in the city’s police records as filles publiquesh [public women].

After a year and a few months of this routine, Mireille likely felt ready for a change. When Marie Piquemal and Mireille crossed paths in the spring of 1938, during one of Piquemal’s regular visits to Bordeaux, Mireille decided to try her luck. Piquemal promised her 5,000 francs to work as a waitress (entraîneuse) in Dakar. How could Mireille say no to such an appealing offer? She finally had a chance to escape life in a brothel, make more money, and discover a new part of the world. Such opportunities rarely presented themselves, she must have thought, particularly because the rules regulating women’s exits from a brothel were strict and required the approval of the brothel keeper.

75 In the colonial city as in Bordeaux, the police recorded her identity and the address of the brothel where she worked and issued a card that she had to present on the occasion of her mandatory sanitary visits with the local physician, a Mr. Sibenaler. Since her last medical visit in Bordeaux had shown her to be clear of any venereal diseases, Mireille could now officially figure in Dakar’s police registers. She would once again be subjected to restrictions she knew all too well. Her presence in public spaces would be closely monitored and restricted. Soliciting passersby was strictly forbidden, as were standing in the streets, forming groups, and patronizing bars, theaters, music halls, and cinemas. Local decrees also prohibited the renting out of hotel rooms for the purpose of selling sex. She was allowed to work only in her room at the brothel, so long as the louvered shutters concealed from curious bystanders all profane activities taking place inside.

Life in a colonial brothel was not any easier than life in a brothel in the metropole; in fact, it was quite the opposite. The atmosphere within La Poularde was tense. Within a few weeks, Mireille got into a physical fight with Gabrielle A., one of her companions on the Banfora. Henri Cadilhac, Piquemal’s husband, was just as short tempered; annoyed by the women’s unruly behavior, he struck them both in the face to put an end to the alter cation. After this incident, Mireille became adamant about returning to the metropole. Her demands certainly did not please Cadilhac and Piquemal, given their financial investment in the young woman. “For ten years I have spent money on people like you and you can do nothing against me,” Cadil hac spit out. “You owe me money, you won’t leave.”

Journal of Women ’s History132 Winter

76 Without the brothel keeper’s consent, her chances of leaving the brothel were extremely dim.77 Escaping life in a brothel was even more difficult for Mireille, given her quickly rising popularity among the European men allowed to patron ize the Plateau’s brothels. With eleven “passes” performed in the span of three weeks, she was at the time, according to a local intelligence report, “the woman the most in vogue”—a modest performance that nonetheless contrasted with her counterparts’ complete lack of activity.78 In the years leading up to 1938, business had been so slow that Marie Piquemal had considered selling two of her insolvent businesses and trying her luck in the town of Kaolack, in southern Senegal.79 This gloomy economic reality did not play in Mireille’s favor. But this assessment did not take into account the connections Mireille had made in both the metropole and Dakar. After a mere three weeks at Piquemal and Cadilhac’s brothel, Mireille and another brothel inmate, Ma rie J., eventually succeeded in negotiating their departure, likely thanks to Guérini, the dreaded sex trafficker mentioned earlier.

80 On May 30, 1938, the two hopped on the Kerguelen, a steamship that connected South America, West Africa, and France. They boarded with “no money or luggage” for the ten-day long journey that awaited them. They planned to settle in Paris and Marseille, where they hoped to start life from scratch—yet again. Mireille’s medical reports, however, imply that she failed to reach Paris. A gynecologi cal exam she underwent in Bordeaux in mid-June 1938, shortly after she set foot in the port city, suggests that she at least temporarily went back to selling sex. Three additional medical visits, from 1938, 1939, and 1941, indicate that she continued to work as a prostitute at 57 bis rue Saint-Sernin for several years, though their lack of regularity suggests that she may have done so only sporadically.

81 Upon her return from Dakar in May 1938, Mireille reported to the agent who stopped her in Bordeaux that she had been deceived into sell ing sex under horrendous conditions in the colony. The way she framed her story strongly echoed the trope of the white slave victim—perhaps a

Although Mireille indicted Piquemal, and not Antoine Mur, the man the police thought was behind Mireille’s unfortunate experience, Piquemal never faced prosecution. Following Mireille’s testimony, the police commis sioner in Bordeaux concluded that Piquemal was unknown to the Préfecture de police (the main police services at the national and departmental level), even though she had by then been involved for the past two decades in brothel keeping in Dakar and in migratory prostitution.83 Piquemal’s gender perhaps made her an unlikely sex trafficker in the eyes of the police investigators, though it is just as likely that authorities simply dismissed the incident as inconsequential.

In general, women working in colonial brothels could hardly rely on authorities to help them escape situations in which they faced unfair or harsh treatments. Brothel keepers were sometimes in collusion with physicians and the police to discipline and control unruly women. In a letter to the district attorney (procureur de la République), the special commissioner in Angoulême reported that after some young women found out they had been deceived into accepting less favorable work conditions in Dakar’s brothels, one of them discreetly inquired about ways to return to the metropole. “She was not surprised to learn that [the women] who requested repatriation would immediately be sent to the hospital for 41 days.”84 Brothel keepers cooperated with medical authorities to lock up rebellious women in hospitals. Doctors in charge of their sanitary control “never observe anything abnor mal unless for rare exceptions. Most of the time they do not bother visiting and simply ask the brothel keeper if everything goes well. If not, they find the smallest spot, sometimes invisible in the microscope but which they guess” to be a contagion, in order to justify holding a brothel prostitute for an extended duration.85 The police suspected similar connivance between Piquemal, Cadilhac, and the doctor charged with medically inspecting the couple’s registered women.86 When two brothel prostitutes, Marie J. and Fhima E., got into a fight, Cadilhac “threatened Marie J. with being sent to the hospital for eight days if she did not keep quiet,” a sentence that no registered woman would take lightly.87 Brothel keepers and medical and police authorities worked together, rather than against each other, to keep white brothel prostitutes in their place, thus limiting the negative impact these women’s unruly behavior could have on notions of colonial prestige and on brothel keepers’ profit.

Caroline Séquin2021 133 strategy she purposely used to gain the sympathy of French authorities.

Unlike Piquemal, who at once benefited from and strengthened the un written racial hierarchies in Dakar through her role as the owner and keeper of white-only brothels, white French women who migrated for sexual labor rarely met with a happy ending. As white women who represented notions of white prestige and as sex workers who then subverted such notions, those

Journal of Women ’s History134 Winter who worked for Piquemal discovered that their positions were liminal and that they were subject to additional surveillance once in the colony. At the same time, authorities on both sides of the Atlantic consistently dismissed French women’s involvement in migratory prostitution as voluntary, thus allowing intermediaries like Piquemal to seamlessly proceed with their activity—especially since the international conventions of the 1920s and 1930s, which repressed sex trafficking, only served to condemn the forced migration of women for sexual labor. Although French sex workers helped to advance the colonial project of white dominance in interwar Dakar, they did not directly benefit from belonging to the racially dominant group of white Europeans.

Conclusion Piquemal and Cadilhac’s involvement in the sex trade came to an abrupt halt after the Law of April 13, 1946, which banned brothels in France and was extended to include French West Africa on the eve of 1947. The closing of Dakar’s tolerated brothels effectively put an end to the migratory prostitution of French women to the colony. For years, Cadilhac and Piquemal energetically challenged the law, but to no avail. The demise of their business perhaps put a strain on their relationship, as the two filed for divorce in February 1950. From then on, Piquemal vanishes from the archive. Piquemal’s white-only brothels in interwar Dakar were not simply the result of tacit racial segregation in the colonies. Rather, Piquemal’s work actively helped to establish and strengthen racial boundaries in the colonial city. In enabling white French men to fulfill their purported sexual needs within the confine of her brothels and without “crossing the color line,” Piquemal contributed, whether intentionally or not, to the making of Dakar’s white enclave.88 Although informal, the racial politics of commercial sex in Dakar had similar effects to those of the racially exclusionary policies that elsewhere affirmed the desire to police race more openly. As with the mis cegenation laws in the United States or the sexual panics around the Black Peril in Southern Rhodesia, the informal racial politics that undergirded commercial sex in colonial Dakar “provided the foundations for the larger racial project of white supremacy and white purity.”89

Piquemal’s success as a madam came at the expense of other white women who shared her mobile aspirations. Like Mireille, the metropolitan women who moved to Dakar to sell sex hoped to increase their earnings, only to find that the grass was not any greener in the colony. The reports produced by local police officials as well as French authorities stationed in metropolitan and colonial harbors to detect cases of “white slavery” provide a valuable—although mediated—insights into these women’s motivations

5Ann Laura Stoler, Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 307. See also Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

2On the special status of African men and women in the Four Communes of Senegal, see Mamadou Diouf, “The French Colonial Policy of Assimilation and the Civility of the Originaires of the Four Communes (Senegal): A Nineteenth Century Globalization Project,” Development & Change 29, no. 4 (Oct. 1998): 671–696.

A sample of the scholarship on prostitution in the British and French colonial contexts includes Philip Howell, Geographies of Regulation: Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Diseases in the British Empire (New York: Routledge, 2003); Caroline Séquin, “The Moving Contours of Colonial Prostitution (Fort-de-France, Martinique, 1940–1947),” Clio. Femmes, genre, histoire 50, no. 2 (Nov. 2019): 19–36; Stoler, “Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th-Century Colonial Cultures,” American

1Renseignements, n.d., 14MIOM3071, Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer (ANOM).

3Owen White, Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Soci ety in French West Africa, 1895–1960 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999); Emmanuelle Saada, Empire’s Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

Caroline Séquin2021 135 for pursuing sexual labor overseas. However, France’s half-hearted adoption of the various international conventions repressing the traffic in women and children, as well as their limited application to the French Empire, often limited the scope of French authorities’ intervention, thereby enabling in dividuals like Marie Piquemal to thrive on the commercialization of white women’s bodies in interwar Dakar. Notes Cyril Olivier’s help was crucial in locating the documents about Marie Pique mal in the Archives Départementales de la Gironde. I also thank Leora Auslander, Elisa Camiscioli, Philippa Hetherington, Julia Laite, Jaime Wadowiec, the anonymous reviewers for this article, as well as the participants in the Transnational Approaches to Modern European History Workshop at the University of Chicago for their astute observations and advice, which helped me improve this article.

4Traite des Femmes et des Enfants: Réponse au questionnaire de la Société des Nations pour l’ensemble des possessions et territoires français administrés par le Ministère des Colonies, 1921, 4M11836, Archives Départementales de la Marti nique. On France’s color-blindness, some early scholarship includes Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall, eds., The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); and Herrick Chapman and Laura Frader, eds., Race in France: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Difference (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004).

Biographies of brothel keepers have been written mostly in the context of the United States. See, for example, Emily Landau, Spectacular Wickedness: Sex, Race, and Memory in Storyville, New Orleans (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013); Maryann Wall, Madame Belle: Sex, Money, and Influence in a Southern Brothel (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2014); and Penny Petersen, Minneapolis Madams: The Lost History of Prostitution on the Riverfront (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Alain Corbin devotes a few pages to brothel keepers’ sociological profile in Les filles de noce : Misère sexuelle et prostitution (19e et 20e siècles) (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1978), 99–108. For other contexts, see Elizabeth Sinn, “Women at Work: Chinese Brothel Keepers in Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong,” Journal of Women’s History 19, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 87–111; Nancy M. Wingfield, The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

Journal of Women ’s History136 Winter Ethnologist 639, no. 4 (Nov. 1989): 634–660; Christelle Taraud, La prostitution coloniale: Algérie, Tunisie, Maroc (1830–1962) (Paris: Payot, 2003); and Isabelle Tracol-Huynh, “Between Stigmatisation and Regulation: Prostitution in Colonial Northern Viet nam,” Culture, Health & Sexuality 12, no. 51 (Aug. 2010): 573–87; Christina Firpo, Black Market Business: Selling Sex in Northern Vietnam, 1920–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020).

8Harald Fischer-Tiné, Low and Licentious: Race, Class, and “White Subalternity” in Colonial India (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2009).

9Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics; Fischer-Tiné, Low and Licentious.

Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power, 61.

10The historical scholarship on the phenomenon of “white slavery” is expan sive. Key works include Edward Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight against White Slavery, 1870–1939 (New York: Schocken Books, 1982); Elisa Camiscioli, “Coercion and Choice: The ‘Traffic in Women’ between France and Argentina in the Early Twentieth Century,” French Historical Studies 42, no. 3 (Summer 2019): 483–507; Jean-Michel Chaumont, Le mythe de la traite des blanches: Enquête sur la fabrication d’un fléau (Paris: La Découverte, 2009); Donna Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prosti tution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991); Philippa Hetherington, Victims of the Social Temperament: Prostitution, Migration, and the Traffic in Women from Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, 1885–1935 (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2014); Liat Kozma, Global Women, Colonial Ports: Prostitution in the Interwar Middle East (Albany: SUNY Press, 2016); Stephanie Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010); Kate Marsh, “‘La Nouvelle Activité des Trafiquants de Femmes’: France, Le Havre and the Politics of Traffick ing, 1919–1939,” Contemporary European History 26, no. 1 (Feb. 2017): 23–48; Jessica R. Pliley, Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Ruth Rosen, “White Slavery: Myth or Reality?,” in The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900–1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 112–135; Keely Stauter-Halsted, The Devil’s Chain: Prostitution and Social Control in Partitioned Poland (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 117–195; Brian Donovan, White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender, and Anti-Vice Activism, 1887–1917 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006); and Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

Caroline Séquin2021 137

20Marie-Paule Ha, French Women and the Empire: The Case of Indochina (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 16. See also Margaret Cook Andersen, Regeneration through Empire: French Pronatalists and Colonial Settlement in the Third Republic (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015).

13Etat civil Marie Madeleine Piquemal, 4E18288, Archives Départementales de la Gironde (ADG). 14Commissaire Central to the Mayor of Dakar, Aug. 9, 1925, 14 MIOM 3025, ANOM. On Bousbir, see Jean-François Staszak, “Planning Prostitution in Colonial Morocco: Bousbir, Casablanca’s Quartier Réservé,” in (Sub)Urban Sexscapes: Geog raphies and Regulation of the Sex Industry, ed. P. Maginn and C. Steinmetz (London: Routledge, 2014); Taraud, La prostitution coloniale 15Cecily Devereux, “‘The Maiden Tribute’ and the Rise of the White Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century: The Making of an Imperial Construct,” Victorian Review 26, no. 2 (2000): 1–23; 14. 16Donna R. Gabaccia, Dirk Hoerder, and Adam Walaszek, “Emigration and Nation Building during the Mass Migrations from Europe,” in Citizenship and Those Who Leave: The Politics of Emigration and Expatriation, ed. Nancy L. Green and François Weil (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 63–90; 63. 17Exceptions include Francois Weil, “The French State and Transoceanic Emigration,” in Green and Weil, Citizenship and Those Who Leave, 114–131; and J. P. Daughton, “When Argentina Was ‘French’: Rethinking Cultural Politics and European Imperialism in Belle-Epoque Buenos Aires,” in “Metropole and Colony,” special issue, Journal of Modern History 80, no. 4 (Dec. 2008): 831–864.

11Kathleen Keller, Colonial Suspects: Suspicion, Imperial Rule, and Colonial So ciety in Interwar French West Africa (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 4.

23Voyage d’enquête de la commission de l’A.O.F. [Afrique Occidental Fran çaise]: Port de commerce de Dakar, 1937, Commission Guernut/13, ANOM.

12I use the term migratory prostitution as a more neutral way to refer to the migration of women for sexual labor, since the terms white slavery and traffic in women imply a level of coercion. Saheed Aderinto, “Sex Across the Border: Research ing Transnational Prostitution in Colonial Nigeria,” in The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Ayodeji Olukoju, ed. Aderinto and Paul Osifodunrin (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), 76–94; 80–81.

21Rita Cruise O’Brien, White Society in Black Africa: The French of Senegal (Evan ston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1972), 56. 22Hilary Jones, The Métis of Sénégal: Urban Life and Politics in French West Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013).

18Philippe Roudié, “Long-Distance Emigration from the Port of Bordeaux, 1865–1920,” Journal of Historical Geography 11, no. 3 (1985): 268–279; 277. 19François Weil, “French Migration to the Americas in the 19th and 20th Centuries as a Historical Problem,” Studi Emigrazione 123 (Sept. 1996): 443–460.

37On residential segregation and urban planning in colonial Dakar, see Liora Bigon, A History of Urban Planning in Two West African Colonial Capitals: Residential Segregation in British Lagos and French Dakar (1850–1930) (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009); O’Brien, White Society in Black Africa; David Nelson, “The Construction of French-Dominated Colonial Dakar, 1857–1940,” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques 33, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 225–255.

35Betts, “Dakar,” 199.

24Raymond Betts, “Dakar: Ville Impériale (1857–1960),” in Colonial Cities: Es says on Urbanism in a Colonial Context, vol. 2, ed. R. J. Ross Gerard Telkamp (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1985), 193–206; 196. 25Note sur la défense des côtes coloniales, Mar. 4, 1934, GR/7N/4193/10, Service Historique de la Défense, Vincennes.

Journal of Women ’s History138 Winter

38Geoffrey Gorer, Africa Dances: A Book About West African Negroes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1935), 73–74. 39Gorer, Africa Dances, 73.

30Julia Laite, “Traffickers and Pimps in the Era of White Slavery,” Past & Pre sent 237, no. 1 (Nov. 2017): 251–252 ; Sylvain Pattieu, “Souteneurs noirs à Marseille, 1918–1921: Contribution à l’histoire de la minorité noire en France,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 64, no.6 (Nov.–Dec. 2009): 1361–1386.

Edmond Fortier to the Governor General in AOF [Afrique Occidentale Française], Dakar, Nov. 17, 1924, 1F99, Archives Nationales du Sénégal (ANS).

Archival records provide conflicting information regarding the opening of the first brothel in Dakar, dating it 1915, 1916, or 1918.

32Individual report on Louis Perriot, Dakar, June 15, 1923, F/7/14862, Archives Nationales de France (AN).

29This is also true for other colonial cities, such as Nairobi. Luise White, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).

27Commissaire Central to the Mayor of Dakar, Dakar, Aug. 9, 1925, 14 MIOM 3025, ANOM.28

26Marthe Hucbourg Watts, The Men in my Life (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1960); Marie-Thérèse Cointre, Vie d’une prostituée (Geneva: Gonthier, 1964).

33Commissaire Central to the Mayor of Dakar, Dakar, Aug. 9, 1925, 14 MIOM 3025, ANOM.34Myron Echenberg, Black Death, White Medicine: Bubonic Plague and the Politics of Public Health in Colonial Senegal, 1914–1945 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002).

36Liora Bigon, French Colonial Dakar: The Morphogenesis of an African Regional Capital (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 10.

54Ministère des Colonies, Traite des Femmes et des Enfants : Réponses au questionnaire de la Société des Nations pour l’ensemble des possessions et territoires français administrés, 1921, 1AFFPOL/3444, ANOM.

Louis Charles Léonce Ponzio to Gouverneur Général de l’AOF, Dakar, Nov. 17, 1936, Commission Guernut/51, ANOM.

52Dr. Louis Joseph Barot, Guide pratique de l’européen dans l’Afrique occidentale à l’usage des militaires, fonctionnaires, commerçants, colons & touristes (Paris: Flammarion, 1902), 328, italics in the original.

Caroline Séquin2021 139 40Betts, “Dakar,” 199. 41Gorer, Africa Dances, 74. 421923 Annual Report by the Governor General of French West Africa to CTW, 2K1, ANS.

48George Brooks, Eurafricans in Western Africa: Commerce, Social Status, Gender, and Religious Observance from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003).

The phrase comforts of home comes from Luise White, Comforts of Home.

53Jones, Métis of Sénégal. On changing attitudes toward interracial intimacy in French West Africa, see Emily Osborn, Our New Husbands Are Here: Households, Gender, and Politics in a West African State from the Slave Trade to Colonial Rule (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011); Stoler, “Making Empire Respectable”; and Owen White, “Conquest and Cohabitation: French Men’s Relations with West African Women in the 1890s and 1900s,” in The French Colonial Mind: Violence, Military Encounters, and Colonialism, vol. 2, ed. Martin Thomas (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 177–201. In French Equatorial Africa, see Rachel Jean-Baptiste, “‘A Black Girl Should Not be With a White Man’: Sex, Race, and African Women’s Social and Legal Status in Colonial Gabon, c. 1900–1946,” Journal of Women’s History 22, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 56–82.

Lettre confidentielle du Gouverneur Général de l’AOF to Directeur du Cabinet, Dakar, June 27, 1938, 14 MIOM 3071, ANOM. In the British imperial context, clients, rather than prostitutes, tended to be racially segregated. Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics. Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power, 61. 46Arrêté relatif à la surveillance de la prostitution, Jan. 3, 1926, n°14 bis, Journal officiel du Sénégal et dépendances, BIB AOM/50127/1926, ANOM.

50Hilary Jones, “From Mariage à la Mode to Weddings at Town Hall: Marriage, Colonialism, and Mixed-Race Society in Nineteenth-Century Senegal,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 38, no. 1 (2005): 27–48; 30.

51White, Children of the French Empire; see esp. chap. 1.

58B. Joyeux, “Projet de lutte anti-vénérienne à Hanoi,” Bulletin de la Société Médico-Chirurgicale de l’Indochine June (1934), 904, in Tracol-Huynh, “Between Stig matisation and Regulation,” 580. 59Betts, “Dakar,” 199. 601941 Annual Medical Report, 2G41/7, ANS, and 14 MIOM 1835, ANOM.

61Renseignements, Dakar, May 30, 1938, 14 MIOM 3071, ANOM.

On the laws forbidding interracial marriages in the United States, the book of reference is Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). On Southern Rhodesia, see McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902–1935 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000). On the management of interracial intimacy in other parts of the British Empire, see, for example, Carina E. Ray, Cross ing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2015).

Renseignements, Dakar, n.d., 14 MIOM 3071, ANOM. Piquemal adopted her husband’s last name following their marriage in 1934. For the sake of consistency, I use her maiden name throughout this article.

64Commissaire divisionnaire de Police Spéciale to Préfet de la Gironde, Bor deaux, Feb. 5, 1932, 4M340, ADG.

Inspecteur de Police mobile Dejean to Commissaire Divisionnaire in Bor deaux, Feb. 22, 1935, 4M88, Archives Départementales de la Charente.

56Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality (London: Routledge, 2003).

Journal of Women ’s History140 Winter

Marsh, “‘La Nouvelle Activité des Trafiquants de Femmes,’” 27.

70Léon Bosredon, Péril vénérien et prostitution (medical thesis, Bordeaux: G. Gounouilhou, 1906), 60. I have chosen not to divulge Mireille’s last name in order to maintain her anonymity as a potential sex-trafficking victim.

68Un comité pour la lutte contre la prostitution réglementée to le Chef Adjoint du Cabinet de la Préfecture, Bordeaux, Oct. 27, 1932, 4M340, ADG.

57Dr. Le Pileur, Indications sur la prostitution vulgivague à Paris depuis le début de la guerre (Paris: Tancrède, 1918), 15, quoted in Michelle K. Rhoades, “Renegotiating French Masculinity: Medicine and Venereal Disease during the Great War,” French Historical Studies 29, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 293–327; 293.

Commissaire divisionnaire de Police Spéciale to Préfet de la Gironde, Bor deaux, July 21, 1933, 4M340, ADG.

67This number is based on reports available in 4M340, ADG.

Commissaire divisionnaire de Police Spéciale to Préfet de la Gironde, Bor deaux, Nov. 28, 1932, 4M340, ADG.

81Fiche médicale, Mireille R., 619AW, ADG. 82Elisa Camiscioli discusses this strategy in Camiscioli, “Coercion and Choice.”

89Pascoe, What Comes Naturally, 14.

Germaine Aziz has powerfully described in her memoirs the mechanisms by which women found themselves unable to leave prostitution. Germaine Aziz, Les chambres closes: Histoire d’une prostituée juive d’Algérie (Paris: Stock, 1980; Paris: Nouveau Monde Editions, 2007 Citation refers to Nouveau Monde edition.).

77Article 18 of the local decree of 3 January 1926 required brothel keepers to accompany the women leaving their business to the police to officially declare their departure and the reason behind it.

Caroline Séquin2021 141 71Fiche médicale Mireille R., 619 AW, ADG.

Commissaire central to Inspecteur Général Chargé des Services de Police Criminelle, June 27, 1938, Bordeaux, F/7/14862, AN. 84Commissaire Spécial de Police to Procureur de la République à Angoulême, Angoulême, Oct. 8, 1932, F/7/14862, AN. 85Commissaire Spécial de Police to Procureur de la République à Angoulême, Angoulême, Oct. 8, 1932, F/7/14862, AN.

78Renseignements, Dakar, n.d., 14 MIOM 3071, ANOM.

88I borrow this phrase from Ray, Crossing the Color Line. The original phrase color lines comes from W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (Chicago: McClurg, 1907).

87Renseignements, Dakar, n.d., 14MIOM3071, ANOM.

80Renseignements, Dakar, May 30, 1938, 14 MIOM 3071, ANOM.

For a description of brothel prostitutes’ daily lives, see Laure Adler, La vie quotidienne dans les maisons closes, 1830–1930 (Paris: Hachette, 1990).

Administrateur de Ière classe to Directeur de la Sûreté Générale, Dakar, May 14, 1938, F/7/14862, AN.

76Renseignements, Dakar, n.d., 14 MIOM 3071, ANOM.

79Renseignements, Dakar, Sept. 3, 1938, 14 MIOM 3074, ANOM.

86Renseignements, Dakar, May 17, 1938, 14MIOM3071, ANOM.

75Administrateur de Ière classe to Directeur de la Sûreté Générale, Dakar, May 14, 1938, F/7/14862, AN.

In their report, the diplomats expressed their disgust at what they had observed at Alamo. They were struck by the cabaret’s class, its clientele, and its location at the edge of the red-light district, and they compared it to cabarets of the lowest category in the most impoverished neighborhoods in Mexico. The patrons, they wrote, “are soldiers and sailors of the US Army, that is, customers from the lowest type.” They were also shocked at the show itself: eight dancers “moved in vulgar ways” while wearing traditional costumes in the colors of the Mexican flag. They remarked on the “embarrassing spectacle, night after night; in one of the numbers a part of the Mexican national anthem is played in a disrespectful way.” They noted that the main reason for having the troupe on the cabaret premises was not to present this “pseudo-artistic spectacle” but to force cabaret members to earn money soliciting drinks for a percentage of their sales. For the diplomats this constituted “scandalous white slavery, because none of the dancers can leave if the client does not pay the ‘fee’ assigned by the cabaret owner.” They talked to one of the “exploited women deceived by Mrs. Pérez Caro,” and while it is not clear exactly what she said or how much was the two men’s interpretation, the report mentions that when the

Pamela J. Fuentes This article examines a story that appeared in various Mexican news papers and magazines from 1940 to 1943: Mexican dancers were being taken to the Panama Canal Zone not only to work in cabaret shows but also to offer sexual services to US military men. Using this case study, this article shows that discourses of “trafficking” were as much about the transnational entertainment industry as they were about the sex industry. Policy makers, who viewed with suspicion venues that employed women and offered alcohol, music, and variety performances, often attempted to regulate the social and sexual interactions that hap pened inside, particularly when they attracted people from different social classes, races, and ethnicities. These regulations would also define which women were victims and which ones were responsible for their own situation.

On July 9, 1940, Ignacio D. Silva and Manuel Hernández Velarde, two diplomats who worked for the Mexican legation in Panama, visited the cabaret Alamo, following the instructions of their boss.1 Alamo had caught the attention of Mexican authorities after announcing the debut of a small group of Mexican artists under the direction of Eva Pérez Caro.

“White Slavery” and Cabarets: Mexican Artists in Panama in the 1940s

It is not clear how the scandal broke out in newspapers and weekly magazines, but several of the names, social actors, and dynamics detailed by the Mexican legation appeared in print media in 1942 and 1943. Pérez Caro, US military men, and cabaret spectacles were often named in the accounts of the Mexican press. As the story developed, interpretations about what this case represented varied. In contrast to the fewer than twenty pages filed by the Mexican authorities, newspapers produced several stories discuss ing who was responsible for the alleged sexual exploitation or the reasons behind the demand for Mexican women. The stories were mostly written in a sensationalist tone, constantly expressing outrage about the authorities’ lack of action. However, more than once journalists agreed with the official interpretation or doubted that “white slavery” was taking place in Panama.

Discourses of “trafficking” were as much about the transnational entertainment industry as they were about the sex industry. Theaters, caba rets, and dance halls were under observation by moral reformers. Unlike brothels, whose clear purpose was to sell sexual services and which had been part of cities for decades or even centuries, new forms of commercial entertainment caught the attention of moral reformers at the turn of the twentieth century, when electricity, changes in labor shifts, and technology made urban nightlife available to mixed-gender audiences on an unprec edented scale.5 Moralists viewed with suspicion venues that employed women and offered alcohol, music, and variety performances, and they often attempted to regulate the social and sexual interactions that took place

This case was investigated for about seven weeks by the offices of the Mexican legation in Panama. The documents reveal that some weeks after the cabaret visit, one dancer, Pía Navarro Garnica, asked for protec tion and was sent home by ship. Authorities in Mexico had directed dip lomatic representatives in Panama to extend the protection provided by international conventions to their “fellow countrywoman” and to try, “by all means possible, to stop the abuses that are damaging Mexico’s name and reputation.”3

Pamela J. Fuentes2021 143 dancers were hired, they didn’t know what kind of place it was or the nature of the job: “They are exploited as if they were public women [prostitutes] when most of them are members of the National Association of Mexican Actors.” In their concluding remarks, the diplomats argued that the show was “causing serious damage to the reputation and good name of Mexico, irrespective of the harm to the Mexican women, members of the group we have talked about.”2

There is no indication that the other dancers asked for or were offered protection, but at the express request of the legation, the group stopped featuring the national anthem in their show.4 The documents do not mention anything more related to this case, filed under the heading “white slavery,” except a telegram and a response dated three years later, in 1943.

Countries that did not enact policies to curb prostitution or had no state or local legislation against pimping and procuring, or lacked strict immigration laws—including measures to deport and ban the entry of foreign traffickers and prostitutes—were considered ideal “for introduction of foreign women into the business of prostitution.”7 Mexico included some of these changes in its 1908 migration law, but it wasn’t until 1940, that the government officially abolished federal legislation regulating prostitution. Brothels, perceived as exploitation centers by government officers, were the main target, and women, whether managers or owners, predominantly Mexican, were arrested and sentenced, while pimps—whether Mexican or foreign—were largely ignored.8 For their part, cabarets could elude attempts at regulation on the grounds of particular understandings of respectability, including the so cial class of their clientele or the fact that sexual intercourse did not occur on their premises. However, cabarets were constantly under suspicion in Mexican cities and worldwide. According to the 1927 Report of the Special Body of Experts, trafficking was primarily understood as “the direct or in direct procuration and transportation of women and girls for the sexual gratification of one or more other persons.”9 Scholars such as Donna Guy, Liat Kozma, and Nicole Keusch have already studied how the League of Nations’s definition of trafficking led to a strict monitoring of women’s migration during the interwar period, targeting women traveling alone as prostitutes or potential trafficking victims regardless of their actual oc

Journal of Women ’s History144 Winter inside, particularly when they attracted people from different social classes, races, and ethnicities. As we will see, discourses about trafficking, sexual exploitation, and cabarets differed from those involving brothels because of labor, moral, and migration frameworks aimed at regulating the work of female artists.6 These notions were complicated by specific geographical and political contexts in which cabaret services intertwined with nationalistic or colonial projects that benefited from entertainment circuits, whether to promote a political project, as in the Mexican case, or to protect US soldiers from venereal disease.

The diplomats’ description of the relation between the dancers and the cabaret owner as “scandalous white slavery” reflected transnational discourses about trafficking in women and children, consolidated by the League of Nations in the 1920s. The discourses and reports published by the League’s Special Body of Experts influenced migration and prostitution legislation worldwide and led to the abolition of regulated brothels in the 1930s and 1940s, since they were considered the main trigger for trafficking.

“The Worst Class of Workers”

Pamela J. Fuentes2021 145 cupation, while countries and cities receiving great numbers of European immigrants, such as Buenos Aires, were considered immoral environments in which innocent victims would be corrupted.10

The Mexican diplomats also did not report that explicit selling of sex or sexual acts actually took place in cabarets. This does not mean that artists did not supplement their earnings this way or that they were not financially or sexually exploited; however, it may reveal how cabaret owners understood concepts like trafficking. In its quest to prove that trafficking networks operated all over the world, the League of Nations sent a hand ful of undercover agents to several countries from 1924 to 1926. One agent, Paul Kinsie, visited Kelly’s Cabaret in Panama City, introducing himself as a theatrical agent. In a conversation with the owner, Mr. Kelly explained what trafficking entailed for him. He spoke of the precautions he took to avoid jail and some details about the work of artists in his cabaret: all women had contracts for three or six months that included living upstairs in a hotel, but they were not allowed to bring men into their rooms or to leave the premises before closing time. When Kinsie asked about these rules, Kelly replied: “Hell man! They all lay! (Practice prostitution). I would not want them if they didn’t. The only thing is I don’t let them leave until we close, and then if they are dated they can take them upstairs. We have to take that precaution, otherwise it would mean White Slavery.”13

Kelly also suggested that “real artists” would not work in his cabaret, because they must be willing to drink with patrons, for which they would be paid a percentage of the price of each drink their companions bought. Ideas about cabaret artists were related to what Cristiana Schettini has called the three “morally ambiguous identities” that women in entertainment markets

In the report, women migrating with offers of employment were considered potential victims. Seasonal workers, domestic servants, and even a modiste are cited as examples of women who had been deceived by traffickers with seemingly genuine job offers. However, artists and enter tainers were believed “to run a special risk” because of the huge demand for cabaret shows all over Europe and in Central and South America.11 The constant migration of troupes was considered to be one of the factors that paved the way for trafficking, in addition to the places in which artists per formed, including cabarets and music halls. The report briefly noted that some entertainment companies worked under proper management, but it mostly focused on the “undesirable” nature of the venues in which the cut from alcohol sales constituted a large portion of the artists’ earnings: besides performing on the stage, they danced with patrons and encouraged the sale of drinks. According to the Special Body of Experts, this atmosphere, com bined with the low wages women received, made it “difficult, unless there is careful supervision, for the girls employed to avoid a life of prostitution.”12

Unlike women working in brothels, female cabaret performers signed contracts, which in theory should have provided some rights. However, as Marion Pluskota has explained, intermediaries such as agents, managers, or cabaret owners seemed to be the ones who benefited most when artists performed or sold sex. This was true in the case of the Mexican artists in Panama, who had to pay a fee to leave the premises, whether to have sex with a patron or for any other reason. Ending their shift early meant fewer alcohol sales, thus less revenue for the cabaret, which affected women more since they lost their percentage plus the fee owed to the owner.15

Some cabarets could claim to be respectable because they allowed women as patrons—particularly first-class cabarets, in which male com pany was mandatory for admission. 18 Cabarets also offered “a more subtle approach to sex trade than brothels,” because they offered a flexible schedule for women wanting to supplement their income from their day job as waiters by selling dances or sex. In Mexico City during those years, some feminist groups and state institutions attempted to unionize cabaret workers and get them to sign collective contracts, which could offer better protection against employer abuse, but workers resisted because, accord ing to Katherine Bliss, they feared that unionization would brand them all as prostitutes by association, tying them to a “shameful industry,” when several did not see themselves as such, nor did they desire to stay in their jobs permanently.19 Cabaret workers were in a difficult position, because fighting for better working conditions would mean opposing owners and inviting their retributions; further, feminist groups and the state regarded them as being in need of moral rehabilitation. The declaration of one cabaret

Journal of Women ’s History146 Winter simultaneously embodied at the time: artist, contract worker, and prosti tute.14

Because they signed contracts, the work of cabaret entertainers was legally legitimate. Regulations that attempted to control working conditions in cabarets during the first half of the twentieth century were based on no tions of respectability that involved spaces, services, which jobs were per formed and by whom. Cabarets offered restaurant services, variety shows, and a dance floor. Unlike in regulated brothels, in which men sought the company of women officially labeled by the government as prostitutes, in cabarets the interaction between male patrons and women, who could be waiters, entertainers, sellers of drinks, dances, or sex, was mediated by the fees paid for dancing and alcohol consumption.16 Cabarets provided space for different kinds of jobs, like cook, waiter, ticket seller, security guard, or manager; even among artists, there were musicians, dancers, chorus girls, comedians, and magicians. However, the jobs performed by women were more closely scrutinized. In Mexico City, for instance, in the 1930s, the government enacted laws mandating that women could work as waitresses during the day but should be replaced by men in the evening.17

Mexican Dances

In the report of their visit to the cabaret Alamo, the Mexican diplomats expressed the same outrage at the possible harm women might be enduring as they did toward the possible damage to the good name and reputation of the country because the troupe used national symbols in a discreditable way, inside an undesirable venue. During the interwar years, ideas of prostitu tion and migration were tied to notions of nationhood and national culture, and governments of countries sending and receiving women working in the sex and entertainment industries considered any departure from con ventional sexual norms as a general failing of their countries and culture.23 The diplomats described the artistic director of the troupe, Eva Pérez Caro,

Paradoxically, the recognition of entertainers as professional workers would weaken their chances of being recognized as victims of trafficking by the Mexican state, because that would mean accusing state actors—or actors with close ties to the state—as complicit, particularly in a moment when the Mexican government was solidifying its international image by signing international agreements, like those ending regulated brothels, or sponsoring international tours, through which Mexican symbols and ideas of nationhood were exported. The migration circuits created by the entertainment industry were explored by the League of Nations in the 1920s only when they involved the movement of European women inside that continent or from there to the Americas. Particularly, certain Latin Ameri can countries were considered in the 1927 report as unsafe destinations or central nodes of international trafficking networks.

Pamela J. Fuentes2021 147 worker to the press during these debates illustrates these struggles: “Not everybody can be what they want to be and, as regard to us, we are work ers, the worst class of workers.”20

22 Drawing on her analysis, the next sections of this article explore a migration circuit ignored by the League of Nations report: one between two Latin American countries, in which non-European women were at the core. To do this, we will look at the close relationship between cabaret spectacles and cultural expressions of the Mexican state and what trafficking meant in this context.

Donna Guy’s pioneering reflections on the region’s place in traffick ing debates highlighted that only countries receiving large numbers of European migrants (Argentina, Uruguay, or Brazil) received the attention of the Special Body of Experts, “while countries like Guatemala, whose bordellos were filled with [Indigenous] women were not studied.”21 She also has pointed out the connection of prostitution to debates about family, nation, and popular culture in regards to local meanings of the global traf ficking rhetoric.

Journal of Women ’s History148 Winter as a well-known woman, “firstly for her work on the stage and lately as the manager of a house of prostitution.”24 To date, sources have not provided any evidence that she ever worked in a brothel, but there is a trail pertain ing to her work in cabarets and government-sponsored cultural activities that shows the close connection between cultural and cabaret performances.

During the 1930s, the revolutionary administrations wanted to show the world that the time of social unrest of the revolution’s armed phase had passed and Mexico was ready to participate in the international arena. The country strengthened its ties to international organizations not only by join ing the League of Nations in 1931, but also by signing agreements and show ing a willingness to collaborate to combat international crime, for example, by ending regulated prostitution in the capital.25 Postrevolutionary govern ments also sought to extend diplomatic ties by actively promoting images and representations that eventually would be internationally recognized as representative of the country. Landscapes, traditional costumes, songs, and dances were all part of the repertoire of folkloric images that from late in the second decade of the twentieth century were actively promoted by the government at international fairs, on postcards, and in tourist guides, the cinema, and magazines. The revolutionary process, connected as it was with academic and popular culture, resulted in an official appropriation of the artistic expressions of rural and underprivileged groups as the state adapted and endorsed them as symbols of Mexican authenticity.26

Among these national images, one woman, the china poblana, stands out. In the nineteenth century, key intellectuals, both Mexican and foreign, described her as a free woman who lived comfortably thanks to a husband or lover. The origins or details of why she is called china poblana, or how her outfit came to be, have been lost. However, writers’ descriptions of her body and her personality helped assemble a stereotype of an attractive, sexually available young woman with a distinctive way of dressing.27 She was often depicted as someone who could not go unnoticed, owing to her “slim, rounded, and well-defined silhouette,” “feverish eyes,” and “small feet.” Commonly known as gracious dancers, particularly of rhythms known as jarabes, the chinas poblanas’ attractiveness often contrasted with their perceived loose morals and social class. For instance, the German traveler Lucien Biert described their way of walking as “queen-like even when they are the most vulgar women,” while the Mexican Manuel Payno character ized them as poorly educated. Frances Calderón de la Barca mentioned in her letters that Mexican elites tried to discourage her from wearing a china poblana dress because it was worn by women of lower classes and dubious reputation.28

The alluring outfit included a blouse embroidered in silk and beads, a shawl, silk shoes, a petticoat, and a sequin-embroidered skirt that sparkled with every movement.

Historian Amelia Kiddle documented Pérez Caro’s career as a success ful professional dancer in state-sponsored events. In her research, Kiddle tracked down photographs showing Pérez Caro posing “alone seemingly topless (with a carefully placed sombrero), and with her sisters, scantily clad.”32 During the 1930s, Pérez Caro’s spectacle was advertised as the main attraction in theaters and cabarets, along with supporting artists. Ac cording to the venues and audiences, she and other dancers modified their movements and outfits in order to make the performance more sensual, particularly at a time when cabaret spectacles in which women danced to rhythms from different parts of the world were in high demand. In the summer of 1934, the Mexican cabaret Karl’s Palace advertised the Pérez Caro sisters as the main stars of a spectacle that included a singer, a group of six dancers, and a comedian. The newspaper ad invited people to revel in “the most enticing Mexican and Spanish dances, Cuban rumbas, American, Hawaiian, and Oriental dances, in brief, an excess of joy!”33 Very likely, the

Pamela J. Fuentes2021 149

Some elements of the outfit have varied over time, but a defining feature has always been the Mexican flag’s colors: green, white, and red. This may have been one of the elements that facilitated the consolidation of the china poblana stereotype as representative of Mexican women in the twentieth century. Against the backdrop of the construction of revolutionary nationalism, the images of the china poblana and the Mexican charro (traditional horseman) were highly visible and widely disseminated in the country and abroad. One of the ways of promoting these images was through musical and dance performances in diverse scenarios, from elementary schools to political events; in fact, Eva Pérez Caro played a central role in this process. By the time the scandal broke in the Mexican press, she was well known in the country’s cultural circles since she had danced professionally for more than twenty years. One of the highlights of her career was teaching the jarabe tapatío dance to Anna Pavlova.29 The Russian prima ballerina had a successful visit to Mexico in 1919, when, with the support of Mexican artists, including Pérez Caro, she presented the spectacle, Mexican Dances. In one of the numbers, she performed the jarabe tapatío dressed as a china poblana. From that moment on, the dance was one of the most well known Mexican traditional dances.30 Both Pavlova and Pérez Caro continued their separate careers, but the two popularized the tropes of revolutionary nationalism for audiences around the world. Pavlova included some of these pieces as part of her theater tours in London, New York, and Paris. Pérez Caro, along with her sisters, not only toured throughout South America, but also was part of numerous government-sponsored cultural projects that promoted “the most genuine expression of the popular soul” in events like the reception to honor diplomatic ties between Mexico and Colombia in 1934, or the New York World’s Fair in 1939.31

The Road to Panama Policymakers in the United States, like some of their European coun terparts, viewed trafficking as a threat that needed to be neutralized by creating stricter migration laws, increasing border control, and banning brothels. However, in countries in which imperial powers had established army bases and colonial settlements, brothels and other forms of commercial sex were not only allowed but seen as necessary for the benefit of occupy ing armies. Leisure activities aimed at sailors and soldiers were central to the development of a profitable tourist industry that prompted a migra tion flow in the 1920s and 1930s. Joining the influx started by construction workers and military personnel employed during the construction of the Panama Canal at the turn of the century, people from different parts of the Americas traveled to work in the service and entertainment sectors, including in cabarets.35 Since the end of the nineteenth century, interest in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Panama as territorial possessions of the United States has been shaped by a narrative that equated whiteness with progress. The tourism boom was molded by other processes occurring in the United States dur ing those decades that in Panama gave way to a social organization that would directly influence forms of entertainment, commercial sex, and ideas about trafficking. Two such major processes were Prohibition and racial segregation. With the US constitutional ban on the production, sale, impor tation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages, people traveled abroad looking for an alcohol culture that was illegal at home. As a result, certain Latin American and Caribbean cities grew, as did their reputation as sinful places of moral corruption.36 In the case of Tijuana or Mexicali, located on the US-Mexican border, ethnic and racial divisions in tourist areas and red-

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spectacle the diplomats witnessed in Panama contained erotic versions of the songs that were already recognized as traditionally Mexican, performed by women dressed as chinas poblanas who played the national anthem as another hallmark of authenticity. For the artists, national symbols were a tool that might get them more contracts in Mexico and abroad, while the authorities saw the suggestive use of symbols as tarnishing the country’s reputation. The diplomats also reported that back in Mexico, Pérez Caro had boasted that she would earn a lot of money in Panama because she would bring “cannon fodder . . . for the U.S. sailors,” whom, as mentioned above, the authorities considered “customers from the lowest type.”34 Panama as an attractive destination for spectacles like Pérez Caro’s and the role of the United States in creating sexual and entertainment markets for military personnel are worth exploring further.

In 1947, the Panama Canal Department of the US Army finished a historical overview of the measures taken to control venereal disease and prostitution from 1916 to that year. In this document, military authorities placed the responsibility for venereal contagion among “white troops” on the tropical scenery, the temperament of the Latin American population, and local attitudes toward prostitution, revealing the understanding US authorities had about Latin American entertainers and their place in the sex trade.41 From their perspective, prostitutes, cabaret artists, and, in general, any women considered promiscuous carried venereal diseases and could potentially infect soldiers. Their “original assumption” was that women who sold sex were “100% infected or infectious,” while cabaret artists “in the majority of instances. . . . should be at least under suspicion.”42 When the document mentions “white slavery,” it is in regard to the large migration of women who worked in Panama’s sex and entertainment industries, in particular, the “rotation of prostitutes from one Latin American country to another.” However, no one is accused of trafficking; instead, the expres sions “white slavery” and “human cargo smuggling” are used to describe the migration of women considered prostitutes, particularly those of Latin American origin. In the case of women who supplied “the demand of Ameri cans, both civilian and military,” the study uses a passive voice to mention that “white prostitutes have been largely imported,” but it does not clarify

Pamela J. Fuentes2021 151

light districts informed discourses seeking to safeguard the morality of the United States by protecting the border, and with it, an idea of nation related to whiteness. In Panama, which was undergoing military occupation at the time, the racial structure inherited from Spanish colonialism was used as a point of departure in creating a sociocultural hierarchy modeled on the US segregationist model.37

The control of the Panama Canal by the United States created two distinct and autonomous jurisdictions: the Canal Zone and the Republic, whose authorities formulated often contradictory legislation having to do with leisure.38 However, both jurisdictions agreed that the sex and entertain ment trades should be regulated, and both often expressed concern about the lack of medical inspection of cabaret workers. In the eyes of local and colonial authorities, entertainers escaped strict health checkups because they performed “under the appearance of respectable honesty.”39 Accord ing to Jeffrey Parker, US authorities feared that the colonial project would lead to the “racial degeneration of the ‘white’ race due to interracial sexual contact,” and they blamed local women, who they said were promiscuous, while ignoring the responsibility of soldiers. For their part, Panamanian authorities expressed concern that the occupation would create a sexual market that would be fulfilled by local women, and therefore they accepted the migration of foreign prostitutes.40

Journal of Women ’s History152 Winter who introduced them to Panama or where exactly they came from.43 It only explains that after the Second World War, most women migrants were from Latin America because travel restrictions during wartime facilitated arrivals from Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, and other neighboring countries.

In general, Latin American prostitutes were considered “tempestuous,” and Latin Americans as unafraid of venereal disease and prostitution.44 In the United States and other parts of the Americas, popular culture played a cen tral role in shaping contradictory ideas of exoticism. Cinema and literature portrayed alluring sexual experiences that could only take place overseas; at the same time, the possibility of having those experiences was a constant reminder of the dangers of the recently “tamed” “tropics.” Therefore, ex oticism for white consumption affected the different forms of sexual and erotic services offered in Panama. Cabaret owners profited from creating spaces where their clientele could enjoy “exotic” spectacles in a specially created atmosphere. The respectability or success of the establishments often required offering their clientele variety shows with transnational attributes, featuring women from different backgrounds who could pass as exotic but also as “white.”45 By the mid-1930s and 1940s this demand was fulfilled by women, erotically singing and dancing to “native” rhythms, such as tango, rumba, or “oriental” dances, in cabarets and nightclubs frequented by tour ists, soldiers, and sailors.46 The ads for these vaudeville-like shows overtly referred to the national origin, physical characteristics, and ethnic features of their “artists and señoritas,” who had performed all over the Americas, from Los Angeles to Lima, Peru.47

When the Mexican troupe arrived in Panama, they were following a path forged by the United States that had been known by entertainers like Eva Pérez Caro since the second decade of the century. The construc tion of the canal benefited cities like San Diego, located on the West Coast, which took pride in being the first port of call for ships traveling north after crossing the Panama Canal. The intense naval and industrial activity encouraged business groups to celebrate the completion of the project with the San Diego-Panama-California Exposition in 1915–1916. As part of the exposition’s activities, Tijuana started a Mexican festival, the Feria Típica Mexicana, which offered leisure activities banned in California, prompting

According to US health officers, soldiers, particularly young ones, were unprepared to deal with their sexual desires because they found themselves in a glamorous atmosphere surrounded by exoticism and tropi cal landscapes, which they had only seen in movies. In Panama, they had easy access to sex, whether paid or for free, with blue-eyed, fair-skinned women, “living counterparts of their own movie heroes,” who charged “undreamed-of sums for their favor,” or local women raised in an environ ment that authorities considered more liberal than that in the United States.

Pamela J. Fuentes2021 153 the development of a vast tourist industry across the border.48 In the inter view with the owner of Kelly’s Cabaret, mentioned above, Kelly said that he hired young singers and chorus girls through an agency in New York City.49 Many years later, when remembering the popular cabaret he had owned during the 1940s in Mexico City, José Moselo mentioned that artists and women who encouraged patrons to drink had worked in Panama and ended up in Mexico City after residing in Tampico, a city with a large transient population of Mexican and US men attracted by oil fields.

As a result of these exchanges, a robust cabaret industry flourished in several Latin American and Caribbean cities; often, the borders of respect ability were determined by the social status of the clientele, the location of the venue, or the shows offered. In Panama, those considered to be the most respectable opened their doors to Canal Zone officials, foreign diplomats, members of the local elite, tourists, and US military authorities, while less respectable venues were visited by US Army personnel of lesser ranks. Alamo, the cabaret visited by the Mexican diplomats, belonged to the second category.51

White Slavery, Brown Skin Stories related to cabaret artists in Panama and the dangers of forced prostitution appeared in Mexico City’s newspapers and magazines intermittently from 1940 to 1943. At the time, the press reported on prostitutionrelated topics more than before because of the recent repeal of regulated prostitution and well-publicized closures of brothels.54 Under headlines like “Recruited Young Women Go Through an Ordeal in Hands of Iniquitous Exploiters in Panama,” “Trafficking in ‘Artists’ in Panama. The Ministry of Interior Will Investigate,” and “The Business of Hiring ‘Artists’ is Growing,” the press described transnational trafficking in the entertainment industry in an ambivalent way. Although the Mexican press, greatly controlled by the

When the Mexican press covered the migration and possible exploitation of Mexican artists, several stories centered on the national origin and traits of these women, as well as on the causes prompting the demand for their services, blaming these mainly on the perceived taste of US soldiers and sailors, whose race is not discussed in the articles, as they predominantly focused on their nationality.

Nicole Keusch has explained that globally the status of women in sex markets is defined by markers such as their clientele, age, or appearance “but also by their actual or presumed origin.”52 The way their physical features were perceived created hierarchies used by authorities to stratify the maps of red-light and entertainment districts; in Panama, high-end cabarets privileged “North American performers,” while non-elite cabarets hired entertainers from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Isthmus.53

government at the time, was in an uproar when first reporting on this case, print media presented their analysis of exploitation and “white slavery” from three different angles: the perceived unlikeliness of “white” slavery affecting women with olive skin and black hair; the doubt about the possi bility of entertainers being forced into prostitution, since they were already prone to moral corruption; and the legality of the work permits and visas artists could obtain as a result of being unionized.

Journal of Women ’s History154 Winter

According to media, that small but important change in looks would be enough to sell the fantasy. Even when journalists referred repeatedly to women as morenas or prietas (brown- or dark-skinned), the “authentic” Mexican woman represented in mass media or tourist memorabilia had light brown or olive skin. This construction is not accidental. Mestizaje, that is, the racial myth that all Mexicans, as a result of the Conquest, had Indig enous and Spanish blood in equal shares, dominated intellectual, cultural, and governmental discourses after the revolution. This ideology sought to promote unity and erased a vast complexity of racial and ethnic heritage. The embodiment of this idea would be a person with black hair and dark eyes representing Indigenous ancestry and light brown skin representing the fusion of European and Indigenous heritage. In the case of women, long braided hair would be characteristic.58 Mestizaje, along with the colonial past, would pave the way for the pervasive influence of colorism in Mexican society, that is, the preference for lighter skin color, understood as “a form of symbolic capital” able to affect or determine people’s life opportunities.59 In the case of entertainers, this symbolic capital would allow them to be considered for jobs with prefabricated standards of beauty, intended to pro mote nationalistic representations of Mexicans in the country and abroad.

At the time of the press coverage, skin color had at least two contradic tory interpretations. It was an attribute that made the dancers vulnerable to the sexual demands of foreign sailors and soldiers, but it also made them “authentically” Mexican. As such, they deserved empathy and justice. It was also a feature that cast doubt on the veracity of the alleged trafficking claims. A satiric weekly column signed by Carlos Denegri gave readers the

In explaining the causes for the presence of Mexican dancers in the Canal Zone, stories highlighted that cabaret managers preferred women with a “latino aspect” to women whose appearance was “purely North American,” because the latter would not get the attention nor the money of soldiers and marines.55 Newspapers pointed out that soldiers’ familiarity with women back home—implicitly understood as white—made them less interested in the same when abroad, which prompted a high demand for exotic-looking women, who would be handsomely paid.56 One story, for instance, claimed that women with fair hair had to dye it black in order to be hired because agents were not interested in “blondies,” only “brown-skinned women.”57

By the time of the coverage, the term “white slavery” had been largely replaced by “traffic in women and children.” In 1921, the League of Nations had made the change with the intention of eliminating the racial connota tion.64 However, in 1926, federal officials in Mexico from the Departments of Health, Immigration, and Foreign Affairs, still assumed that white slavery involved European women forced into prostitution. Since their records

The often tongue-in-cheek column uses irony and double entendre: Denegri begins by subtly informing readers that located in the same building as the Panamanian consulate were apartments for rent “in case you have a lady you are fond of.” The diplomatic office in which, according to the column, all those beautiful ladies got together would be the headquarters of Eva Pérez Caro and, therefore, an immoral place to bring any woman the reader cared about. In Denegri’s setup, Pérez Caro would not even need to leave the building to hire women to work in Panama, because Panama would literally be next door and the women would come to her on their own. The column even claims that the consulate was a “direct competitor” of what probably was the Regis Hotel, whose lobby and cabaret were known as places of solicitation for foreign women selling sex.61 In the context of satire, the author used the expression “white slavery of brown-skinned women” as an oxymoron: given the color of their skin, they could not be victims of white slavery.62 The contradiction of white slavery affecting brown-skinned women is clearer in a sarcastic fictional story published by a different author in 1943. This little piece belongs to a group of very short stories that used mockery to describe incidents that supposedly happened at police stations. The au thor uses names clearly invented, such as Guadalupe Navajas (Guadalupe Knives) or Bernabé Pistache (Bernabé Pistachio), and portrays absurd situ ations with humoristic intent. In one such story, the cabaret worker Martha Sifones (Martha Siphons), tired of being forced to give all her earnings to a pimp named Agustín Cebolla (Agustín Onion), accuses him of “white slave trade.” When the two fictional characters appear before the judge, Agustín asks for a water bucket and a soap bar to wash Martha’s face. After her makeup was removed, Agustín “proved that the fine lady was very darkskinned, therefore, no white slavery can be committed against her.” At the end of the story, the pimp is freed, and his friends prepare a taco feast to celebrate both “his success and wits.”63

Pamela J. Fuentes2021 155 address of the Panamanian consulate and claimed that Eva Pérez Caro “has been associated to the ‘white slavery of brown-skinned women’ to Panama. You do whatever you want to. I am going to 18 Liverpool because, it is said, almost every day beautiful young women get together in that splendid building, direct competitor of certain hotel on Juarez Avenue.”60 This piece did not intend to defend Pérez Caro or to portray the dancers as victims.

For instance, officials from the Mexican legation in Panama considered it “shameful” that Pía Navarro Garnica, the woman who asked

In the Panama case, deception was discussed in the press with reference not only to the respectability of the artists and their profession but also to the fact that they traveled with legitimate contracts, as well as with visas and travel permits issued by the Mexican government. In its quest to elucidate whether women were actually being exploited and by whom, the press focused attention on paperwork and migration procedures.

Two decades later, print media constantly referred to trafficking and prostitution as trata de blancas and to pimps, madams, and procurers as tratantes de blancas. These Spanish terms, that directly translate as “white slavery” and “traders of white women,” appear in a wide range of sources, from sensationalistic stories to official documents and declarations, and they often imply a degree of deceit and coercion to induce a woman to sell sexual services. Trata de blancas could indicate the transnational or local movement of women across countries and states, but it was also used to describe situations in which women stayed in their hometowns. The term stuck, and even nowadays it is common to hear trata de blancas used in colloquial or official language, interchangeably with tráfico de mujeres (traffic in women), to refer to forced prostitution of local or foreign women, regardless of their race or ethnicity.

Journal of Women ’s History156 Winter did not show many foreign women selling sexual services, and since they assumed that women registered in the system of regulated prostitution by their own free will, officers denied the existence of traffic in the country.65 Government projects did not openly encourage migration into Mexico, contrary to practices in countries such as Argentina, thus since Mexico did not receive as many European immigrants as other places in Latin America, local authorities did not consider “white slavery” to have taken place at the time.

The Passports are Correct When reporting about Alamo cabaret, the diplomats shared their alarm at having seen the members of the troupe, who also belonged to the National Association of Mexican Actors, drinking with clients and leaving the premises only after their companions had paid a fee.66 In their remarks they sought to emphasize a distinction between two types of women who sometimes shared working spaces but did not belong to the same moral category: prostitutes and cabaret performers. The latter, even while receiving more consideration, were still not deemed respectable, because they were considered prone to corruption. The follow-up investigation of the case, as well as the press coverage, proved the capriciousness of authorities and the public with respect to whom they considered victims of trafficking and exploitation.

The burden of responsibility was also put on the artists themselves: some days later, the same newspaper, La Prensa, published a long story in which a foreign couple—the Colombian Ernesto Tanco and his wife, Antonieta Lorca, “the Andalusian doll”—were identified as the main culprits. According to La Prensa, Tanco and Lorca wanted to hire a group of artists for three dollars per day. However, Jorge Mondragón, secretarygeneral of the National Federation of Actors in 1941, “disagreed” with the payment because union bylaws stipulated that unionized artists working abroad should have a daily salary of five dollars. The couple managed to deceptively persuade the women, making them “confront” the secretarygeneral and demand fast approval of their contract. Under such pressure, he consented, “provided that the furious infantry signed a letter stating they were in conformity with the payment.”71 The story ends by reporting

Pamela J. Fuentes2021 157 for protection, had been hired as a dancer and was obliged to act in a way completely unrelated to her profession.67 However, when the entertainers were summoned for an interrogation, the government officials concluded that “whether because of Ms. Perez Caro’s presence . . . or because with time cabaretistas get used to coexistence with the lowest social elements in the place where they perform, most of them seemed to agree with staying in Panama.” The dancers did not deny that they drank with patrons; in fact, they said that they had accepted such impositions from cabaret owners.68 With suspicion, the authorities accepted the women’s declarations as evidence of their own volition, instead of looking into exploitative work conditions or into possible coercion by the director. At the time, the au thorities limited their intervention to ensuring Navarro Garnica’s return to Mexico and to investigating migratory documents, particularly a suspicious passport, that turned out to be legitimate.69

In their quest for those responsible for the alleged traffic, print media questioned who was behind the contracts, work permits, and the issuance of passports that allowed women to leave the country. This inquiry lasted just a few weeks, however, before the media directed readers’ attention to elusive foreign characters. The newspaper La Prensa affirmed that contracts like the one for the nightclub Refugio, in Panama City, had a clause that read, “The company will not obligate the artist to socialize with patrons. If she does, it would be by her own free will.” According to the story, the document was endorsed by both the Consulate of Panama in Mexico and the Theater Federation. On top of that, the newspaper continued, the chief of police had issued “a charter of good conduct and morality” to the artists to help get their passports. The contact between the cabaret owner and the entertainers was the Agencia Teatral Panamericana, a theatrical booking agency that had close connections with renowned artists belonging to the National Association of Mexican Actors.70

The statement, of course, contrasted with evidence the authorities had gathered just a year earlier. Nonetheless, Pérez Caro was not accused of trafficking, and her career seems not to have been severely affected. Even when some articles like Denegri’s questioned her morals, she continued performing at state-sponsored events, and in 1957, she received a medal for artistic merit from the National Association of Mexican Actors.73 In that same ceremony, the famous actor Mario Moreno (a.k.a. Cantinflas) received an award, and while his name had been mentioned in connection with the trafficking accusations, he was quickly cleared by the press. Moreno was secretary-general of the National Federation of Actors from 1942 to 1944, and his brother was the chief manager of the agency in charge of hiring women; therefore, the two brothers and Pérez Caro were the link between cabaret owners in Panama and the Mexican government. Their names, however, only appeared in the press a few times. For instance, a very short report stated that Moreno had slapped the director of the magazine Diversiones for accusing his union of sending young back-up singers to Panama.74 In the same month, a popular weekly magazine, Detectives, stated that Pérez Caro and Moreno’s brother had nothing to do with the “disgusting white slave trade” that sent entertainers as “gifts” to sailors and soldiers stationed in Panama.75 This lack of accountability may be related to the close connec tions both Pérez Caro and Mario Moreno had with the state. During his film career, Moreno had his own political aspirations and worked with people at the highest levels of government.76 The acquittal of these characters by the press, as well as the authorities’ failure to investigate them, reveals potential corruption but also conceptions of who was an “ideal” victim of trafficking. As mentioned above, lead singers, back-up singers, actors, and dancers all worked in cabarets that were regarded as either respectable or places of vice. In Mexico, these places—before and after the end of regulated prosti tution—were not subject to the same regulations as brothels.77 Prostitutes also worked in cabarets, drinking and offering sexual services to patrons, and 1940s cinema portrayed cabarets as places of both corruption and re demption for women with a pure heart. However, cabarets could survive and even prosper after the end of regulated prostitution because, unlike brothels, whose main business was selling sex, they offered several varieties

first, she had a troupe called “Show Eva Pérez Caro,” which had toured the main cities of the continent; second, at great sacrifice she had maintained her show and had never thought to use it to conceal “the white slave trade”; and last, while it was true that she and her troupe had been invited to perform in Panama, she had “categorically” rejected the proposal. “In a few words,” the last paragraph reads, “she is quite apart from what has been published and the alleged accusations.”72

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that Eva Pérez Caro had visited the paper’s offices in order to make three clarifications:

Because of the moral ambiguity of vaudeville shows, some women tried to establish a moral hierarchy in their workplace, their profes sion, and their attitude toward the audience that would demonstrate the difference between prostitutes and entertainers. The US-born artist Yolanda Montes, artistically known as “Tongolele,” became a superstar dancing in Mexican movies, theaters, and cabarets. In an interview, she remembered her debut in Mexico as something she had experienced with “horror” because it was in a “dark cabaret, ugly, with prostitutes and the like . . . I was used to working with big audiences, in theater.” Men definitely desired her, but she asserted her agency: “From a very young age, I knew what I wanted to do, and most importantly, nobody would force me to do anything I did not want to do.”78

With these statements, authorities used the identity of entertainers as workers to place responsibility for labor conditions on the workers themselves. Thus, unionized cabaret artists should not be denied travel

Pamela J. Fuentes2021 159 of entertainment.

The agency of cabaret workers was indirectly questioned in the press when journalists wondered who had the power and means to stop artists from traveling to cabarets where they could be forced to work as prostitutes for the pleasure of foreign men. The pressure was on the federal government and its perceived ability to stop, if not the exploitation, at least the migration of women to Panama.

The press reported on women traveling using tourist visas, therefore without union protection, probably a requirement to discourage women from migrating or to show that the government was taking some action: it was reported that authorities demanded to see women’s contracts as well as making some other requirements, including a round-trip ticket securing their way home.79 Stories highlighted strict new measures, such as the deten tion of Mexican artists at migration stations in Panama for not having proper documentation80 or the government denying permits to leave Mexico.81 The pressure for an official response grew to the point that a representa tive of the secretary of foreign relations had to issue a public declaration to the press. According to the statement, the ministry had no responsibility regarding illegal practices like the “white slave trade,” because it had not issued documents under disreputable conditions. On the contrary, deny ing passports to women who met all the requirements would constitute a grave liability. It clarified that maintaining strict control over entertainers hired to work in the Canal Zone, as some had suggested, was not part of the ministry’s functions. In the event of breach of contract or abuses in the workplace, entertainers must directly ask for the intervention of the union and labor authorities, because the secretary was not bound to proceed with his own motions against these infringements. The representative closed his remarks by assuring his audience that at the time the ministry had no records of any formal complaint.82

In 1943, US authorities in the Canal Zone pressured Panamanian of ficials to make changes to prophylactic measures that had long exempted foreign cabaret artists from gynecological check-ups.83 Mexican authorities were informed that in the light of the “alarming” increase in venereal dis eases, all women working in cabarets must undergo medical examinations. The head of the Mexican legation in Panama reported that a large percent age of women had refused to accept the new measures, arguing that they compromised the reputation of both married women and “señoritas.”84 This defense, while brief, is based on powerful constructs about respectability, as the artists were using “señoritas” with a specific connotation. In Mexico, the word is used to describe women who are both single and virgins, so that a gynecological inspection would be unnecessary and shameful. A similar logic worked for those who sought to defend their reputation as married women. Marriage, a legal union, vouched for the women’s proper behav ior, because it was understood that men mainly married women worthy of respect, who could potentially mother their children. The cabaret artist Yolanda Montes, “Tongolele,” for instance, remembered that people reacted positively to her becoming a mother in 1950: “It was exceptional. They adored me more than before, I was purified, divine as a “señora” [married woman]. Childbirth took away from me a certain ‘diabolic’ halo.”85

A few days after receiving notification of the concerns of Mexican cabaret workers in Panama, the secretary of foreign relations sent back an unyielding response: “If, as is to be supposed, prophylactic measures are going to be . . . applied without distinction, you should intervene only in those cases of honorable Mexicans who prefer to quit their job or to leave the country.”86 In light of the new measures, the government decided not to intervene in foreign policies, defining with this decision who would be wor thy of protection: women who in order to safeguard their reputation would rather stop working as entertainers for cabaret spectacles, or who would decide to return home. Ignoring the possibility of coercion or exploitative work relations, the Mexican government assumed that the one who stayed did so willingly. The entertainers were not complaining of trafficking, but the new measures directly affected their working conditions, and it seems that neither their union nor the authorities got involved. This decision contrasts

Journal of Women ’s History160 Winter documents, but once abroad, if they were victims of forced prostitution, the government would extend protection upon a specific request. From this perspective, artists were to blame for the kind of job they chose to per form, and their contracts would constitute an implied acceptance of their workplace environment; the only victims worthy of protection would be those who managed to contact the authorities about leaving the country. Therefore, staying at the cabaret was seen as a sign of the woman’s own volition, not exploitation.

Pamela J. Fuentes2021 161 with the aggressive campaign authorities were conducting against brothels at the time. In Mexico as in Panama, cabaret workers, as artists, were not subject to the system of regulated prostitution and thus were not required to undergo weekly health inspections. With the new measures in Panama, cabaret workers there would be subject to compulsory examinations that the Mexican federal government had recently revoked for women who sold sex in their home country, and would be labeled as prostitutes. The Panama story gradually disappeared from the press, and names of alleged traffickers, foreign and local, were no longer mentioned.87

The voices of the dancers in Panama are the missing link in this story, as they appeared only twice in official documents: once when officials interviewed Pérez Caro’s troupe in 1940, and again when they reported new measures affecting them. Nor are their voices found in the press. None of the sources used for this article make clear how these women would define exploitation. The only time cabaret workers asked for diplomatic interven tion against gynecological examinations, officials were unable to define a strategy to protect them as workers in another country. Their identity as hired workers in a profession at the edge of morality made them unlikely victims of trafficking in the eyes of the government authorities, who decided

Conclusions

The case of the Mexican dancers reveals specific interactions between local and transnational processes in which the interpretations of traffick ing—or white slavery, as it was widely referred to in Mexico—differed. Discourses about trafficking in women prompted the closure of brothels in several cities in the name of combating sexual exploitation, but ignored exploitation in other forms. Even when cabaret artists could have faced abuses in their workplaces, Mexican authorities did not consider artists in Panama to be victims of trafficking, because as unionized workers they trav eled with proper documentation, so there was no illegal action to prosecute. The press, for its part, also questioned whether brown-skinned women could be victims of “white slavery.” In journalistic articles, entertainers often embodied contradictory identities: ambitious or naive, olive-skinned authentic Mexicans in need of protection from the sexual appetites of US military men, or improbable victims of the “white slave trade” because of their skin color. The word artist often was written in quotation marks to emphasize that their performances were not serious artistic ones and that their job probably was not even a profession. These ambiguous cultural conceptions of cabaret entertainers as potential sex workers shaped the stand authorities took in this regard: staying in Panama would ultimately be an individual decision and therefore would not call for state intervention.

9League of Nations, Report of the Special Body of Experts, 9. 10Donna Guy, White Slavery and Mothers Alive and Dead: The Troubled Meet ing of Sex, Gender, Public Health, and Progress in Latin America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000); Guy, Sex and Gender in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family,

7League of Nations, Report of the Special Body of Experts on Traffic in Women and Children, Part I (Geneva, 1927), 29. 8Pamela J. Fuentes, “The Oldest Professions in Revolutionary Times: Ma dames, Pimps, and Prostitution in Mexico City, 1920–1952” (PhD diss., York Uni versity, 2015).

“Se han Presentado a la Legación de México,” 1940, AHGESRE, III/591.3(66.13)/12529.5PeterC.Baldwin, In the Watches of the Night: Life in the Nocturnal City, 1820 1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

2Ignacio D. Silva and Manuel Hernández Velarde, “Carta al Ministro,” 1940, Archivo Histórico Genaro Estrada de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Mexico City (hereafter AHGESRE), III/591.3(66.13)/12529.

3Ernesto Hidalgo, “Carta al Ministro,” 1940, AHGESRE, III/591.3(66.13)/12529.

Journal of Women ’s History162 Winter not to intervene when a foreign administration enacted rules to perform examinations on the bodies of Mexican women. While those rules would establish a system of regulated prostitution involving migrants, it would not be considered a source of trafficking by US authorities, but a necessary measure for the protection of their troops. Cabaret entertainers navigated working conditions, changing legislation, and borders. Their bodies were at the core of multiple debates, and even when their opinions were not asked for or recorded, their experiences were central for the construction of ideas about trafficking in the first half of the twentieth century. Notes

1At the time, Mexico did not have an embassy in Panama. The group of of ficials who represented the country worked in a legation, which is a representative of lower rank than an embassy.

6Discourses of trafficking and the transnational entertainment industry re main to be studied. Two well-documented articles are Cristiana Schettini, “South American Tours: Work Relations in the Entertainment Market in South America,” in “Mediating Labour: Worldwide Labour Intermediation in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” ed. Ulbe Bosma, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, and Aditya Sarkar, special issue, International Review of Social History 52 (2002): 129–160; 137; and Paul Knepper, “The ‘White Slave Trade’ and the Musk Affair in 1930’s Malta,” Journal of Contemporary History, 44, no. 2 (2009): 205–220.

20Medina Caracheo, “El Club de Medianoche Waikikí,” 39. 21Guy, White Slavery and Mothers, 23. 22Guy, “Sex and Gender.” 23Keusch, “Migration and Prostitution,” 711. 24Silva and Hernández Velarde, “Carta al Ministro,” 1940, AHGESRE, III/591.3(66.13)/12529.25OntheLeague

16Carlos Medina Caracheo, “El Club de Medianoche Waikikí: Un cabaret de época en la Ciudad de México, 1935–1954” (masters thesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2010), 25; Sophia Koutsoyannis, “Immoral but Profitable: The Social and Cultural History of Cabarets in Mexico City (1920–1965)” (PhD diss., York University, 2010), 66. 17Koutsoyannis, “Immoral but Profitable,” 72. 18Koutsoyannis, “Immoral but Profitable,” 51. 19Koutsoyannis, “Immoral but Profitable,” 54; Katherine Elaine Bliss, Compro mised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 200.

of Nations and international crime, see Paul Knepper, The Invention of International Crime: A Global Issue in the Making (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Pamela J. Fuentes2021 163 and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991); Liat Kozma, “Women’s Migration for Prostitution in the Interwar Middle East and North Africa,” Journal of Women’s History 28, no. 3 (2016): 93–113; Nicole Keusch, “Migration and Prostitution,” in Selling Sex in the City: A Global History of Prostitution, 1600s–2000s, ed. Magaly Rodríguez García, Lex Heerma Van Voss, and Elise Van Nederveen Meerkerk (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 707–729. 11League of Nations, Report of the Special Body of Experts, 19–20. 12League of Nations, Report of the Special Body of Experts, 20 13Paul Kinsie, Trafficking in Women 1924–1926: The Paul Kinsie Reports for the League of Nations, ed. Jean-Michel Chaumont, Magaly Rodríguez García, and Paul Servais, 2 vols. (Geneva: United Nations, 2017), 1:100–101. 14Schetinni, “South American Tours,” 137. 15Marion Pluskota, “We Use Our Bodies to Work Hard, So We Need to Get Legitimate Workers’ Rights,” in Rodríguez García, Heerma Van Voss, and Van Nederveen Meerkerk, Selling Sex in the City, 622.

26Ricardo Pérez Montfort, Expresiones populares y estereotipos nacionales y este reotipos culturales en México (Mexico City, Mexico: CIESAS, 2007), 268.

41United States Army, Caribbean Defense Command, Panama Canal Depart ment, Historical Section, Control of Venereal Disease and Prostitution (1947), microfilm, Library of Congress. I am grateful to Donna Guy for access to this source and also to Jessica Pliley for facilitating this communication.

39José Guillermo Lewis, “Informe de Panamá,” Boletín de la Oficina Sanitaria Panamericana 7, no. 1 (1928): 217–219; 217. 40Parker, “Sex Work on the Isthmus of Panama,” 167.

42United States Army, Control of Venereal Disease and Prostitution, 9, 36.

Journal of Women ’s History164 Winter 27María del Carmen Vázquez Mantecón, “La china mexicana, mejor conocida como china poblana,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 22, no. 77 (2000): 125–129.28Vázquez Mantecón, “La china mexicana,” 135; Pérez Montfort, Expresiones populares, 136–137. 29Pérez Montfort, Expresiones populares, 287; Amelia Kiddle, “Cabaretistas and Indias Bonitas: Gender and Representations of Mexico in the Americas during the Cárdenas Era,” Journal of Latin American Studies 42, no. 2 (2010): 263–291; 277. 30Pérez Montfort, Expresiones populares, 138. 31“Tratará de extender Colombia el espíritu de la Revolución Mexicana,” El Nacional, July 13, 1934, sec. 1, p. 2; Kiddle, “Cabaretistas and Indias Bonitas,” 277–279, Pérez Montfort, Expresiones populares, 268–269. 32Kiddle, “Cabaretistas and Indias Bonitas,” 277. 33El Porvenir, July 28, 1934, 8. 34Silva and Hernández Velarde, “Carta al Ministro,” AHGESRE, 1940, III/591.3(66.13)/12529.35BlakeC.Scott,“Tourism in the History of U.S. Relations,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 1. See also Scott, “From Disease to Desire: The Rise of Tourism in the Panama Canal,” Environ mental History 21, no. 1 (2016): 67–74. 36Eric M. Schantz, “Behind the Noir Border,” in Holiday in Mexico: Critical Re flections on Tourism and Tourist Encounters, ed. Dina Berger and Andrew Grant Wood (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 131–160; Vincent Cabeza de Baca and Juan Cabeza de Baca, “The ‘Shame Suicides’ and Tijuana,” in On the Border: Society and Culture between the U.S. and Mexico, ed. Andrew Grant Wood (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 145–176. 37Jeffrey Parker, “Empire’s Angst: The Politics of Race, Migration, and Sex Work in Panama, 1903–1945” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2013), 34. 38Jeffrey Parker, “Sex Work on the Isthmus of Panama,” in Kinsie, Trafficking in Women, 1924–1926, 2: 166–167.

60Denegri, “Zig-Zag,” Jueves de Excelsior, November 12, 1942, 8. 61Mexico City, D.F., Mexico, Dec. 5–10, 1924, Traffic in Women and Children, Open Market-Houses of Prostitution, League of Nations Archives, Geneva, Dossier S171, Box S177, File: Mexico.

57“Las muchachas que van enganchadas a Panamá pasan horrible calvario a manos de inicuos explotadores,” La Prensa, 30 July 1942, 3.

55“La policía investiga el caso de los contratos de artistas para Panamá,” La Prensa, July 28, 1942, 25. 56“Salen mujeres para Panamá pero van sin garantías,” Novedades, August 3, 1942, 11; Luis del Oro, “La escandalosa trata de blancas que salen para Panamá que vienen siendo víctimas nuestras vice tiples y hasta nuestras falenas profesionales,” Detectives, no. 533 (16 November 1942): 3, 16; 16; “La Trata de ‘Artistas’ en Panamá,” 12 May 1943, Colección Recortes, Biblioteca Lerdo, Mexico City.

Pamela J. Fuentes2021 165 States Army, Control of Venereal Disease and Prostitution, 13. 44United States Army, Control of Venereal Disease and Prostitution, 13, 38. “Empire’s Angst,”194. 46Parker, “Empire’s Angst ,”194–195. 47Parker, “Empire’s Angst,” 193–196. Antonio Samaniego López, Los gobiernos civiles en Baja California, 1920–1923: Un estudio sobre la relación entre los poderes local y federal (Mexicali, Mexico: Instituto de Cultura de Baja California, 1998), 55. 49Kinsie, Trafficking in Women 1924–1926, 1:100.

59Evelyn Nakano Glenn, “Yearning for Lightness: Transnational Circuits in the Marketing and Consumption of Skin Lighteners,” Gender and Society 22, no. 3 (2008): 281–302; 281-282.

48Marco

50Medina Caracheo, “El Club de Medianoche Waikikí,” 35, 51. 51Parker, “Sex Work on the Isthmus of Panama,” 169. 52Keusch, “Migration and Prostitution,” 724. 53Parker, “Sex Work on the Isthmus of Panama,” 169.

58On hair and nationalism, see Anne Rubenstein, “The War on Las Pelonas: Modern Women and Their Enemies, Mexico City, 1924,” in Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico, ed. Jocelyn Olcott, Gabriela Cano, and Mary Kay Vaughan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006): 57–80.

54For a detailed account of this process, see Bliss, Compromised Positions; and Fuentes, “Oldest Professions in Revolutionary Times.”

45Parker,

43United

69“Se Han Presentado a la Legación,” 22 July 1940; Manuel Tello to head of the Consular Department, 31 July 1940; Mauel Tello, “Carta al Ministro,” 31 July 1940; Manuel R. Cortes, memorandum, August 8, 1940, all in AHGESRE, III/591.3(66.13)/12529.70“Lapolicíainvestiga

67Alfonso de Rosenzweig Díaz, “Carta al Ministro,” July 11, 1940, AHGESRE, III/591.3(66.13)/12529.68“CartaalSecretario de Relaciones Exteriores, Asunto: Trata de Blancas,” July 23, 1940, AHGESRE, III/591.3(66.13)/12529.

el caso de los contratos de artistas para Panamá,” 25.

“Las muchachas que van enganchadas a Panamá,” 13, 2–13. 72“Las muchachas que van enganchadas a Panamá,” 13. 73

77For a detailed account of cabarets in Mexico in the 1940s, see Koutsoyannis, “Immoral but Profitable.” 78Cristina Pacheco, Los dueños de la noche (Mexico City, Mexico: Plaza y Janes, 2001), 27, 29, 31.

Journal of Women ’s History166 Winter 62Denegri, “Zig-Zag,” Jueves de Excelsior, November 19, 1942, 8. 63Pepe M. de la V, “La culpa fue mía,” Jueves de Excelsior, June 1, 1943, 14. 64Magaly Rodríguez García, “La Société des Nations face à la Traite des Femmes et au Travail Sexuel à l’échelle mondiale,” Le Mouvement Social 241 (Octo ber–December 2002): 109–129; 109. 65Kinsie, Trafficking in Women 1924–1926, 1: 461–468.

66Silva and Hernández Velarde, “Carta al Secretario de Relaciones Exteriores,” AHGESRE, III/591.3(66.13)/12529.

Some examples of articles questioning Pérez Caro’s morality are “La artista Eva Pérez Caro es acusada por robo,” El Nacional, November 28, 1945, sec. 2, p. 4; V.V., “Film de la semana,” Mañana, September 10, 1949, 153; and Denegri, “Zig-Zag,” Jueves de Excelsior, November 12, 1942, 8. She performed, for instance, in an event to promote the presidential campaign of Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, president of Mexico from 1952 to 1958. “La gran fiesta del pueblo mexicano en honor a su candidato a la presidencia de la República,” El Nacional, 28 June 1952, 3. Regarding the ceremony in which she received the medal, see “Fue recordado el IV aniversario de la muerte de Jorge Negrete,” El Nacional, December 6, 1957, 5. 74“Noticias cortas,” El Porvenir, November 27, 1942, 2. 75Del Oro, “La escandalosa trata de blancas,” 3. 76See Ilan Stavans, “The Riddle of Cantinflas,” Transition, no. 67 (1995): 22–46; and Jeffrey Pilcher, Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).

Pamela J. Fuentes2021 167 79“Salen mujeres a Panamá,” 11. 80“Las artistas que fueron llevadas a Panamá están detenidas en inmigración,” La Prensa, August 24, 1942, 2, 20. 81“El escandaloso enganche de artistas para cabarets de Panamá continúa,” La Prensa, September 21, 1942, 2, 29; “No saldrán más artistas a Panamá,” El Infor mador, November 5, 1942, 6. 82“Son correctos los pasaportes que se han expedido,” Novedades, October 27, 1942, 7. 83Parker, “Empire’s Angst,” 145–235, 269. 84Telegrams “Complemento del mensaje que la oficina de Panamá transmitió mutilado el día 4 de junio de 1943,” 13 June 1943; and “Memorandum,” 16 June 1943, AHSRE, III/591.3(66.13)/12529. 85Pacheco, Dueños de la noche, 31. 86“Para Cifrar,” June 17, 1943, AHGESRE, III/591.3(66.13)/12529. 87“Crece el negocio de contratar a las ‘artistas,’” June 9, 1943, Colección Re cortes, Biblioteca Lerdo, Mexico City.

It is commonly assumed that during the state-socialist period in Poland the problem of human trafficking ceased to exist. Yet, at least two cases labeled as such were made public in the 1970s and 1980s, spurring vivid debates about the changing sexual mores and the role of the state in controlling migration and foreigners. This article analyzes how human trafficking was understood and debated by journalists, criminologists, and state representatives in the last two decades of state socialism. Thus, it contributes to the scholarship on human trafficking by bringing the Second World into the debates on migration and sex work after the Second World War. This article also showcases how seemingly outdated discourses of “white slavery” could be reapplied to serve the purposes of Cold War competition

In June 1973 a young Polish woman, B., traveled to Dubai accompanied by a gentleman who had paid for her tickets and promised to find her a well-paid job. It was soon revealed that the advertised position of a personal secretary in reality implied other kinds of services—those of a sexual na ture. However, B. was not put off by the kind of work she was expected to perform. In fact, as both her testimonies and police materials suggest, she had had some experience in providing sexual services to foreigners visit ing Warsaw and Wrocław.1 After arriving in Dubai, she spent almost two weeks at the mansion of a man identified in police documents only as “the Sheik,” meeting him daily for sex and enjoying sunbaths, swimming, and good food. But as she stated, she “was very bored in Dubai and felt rather unwell,” so she asked her host for permission to return to Poland to “take care of her sick mother.”2 The permission was granted almost immediately, and after a couple of days B. was back home. Little did she know that soon she would become the first “victim” of human trafficking in the history of state-socialist Poland. As it quickly turned out, she was not the only one. Eight years later the press made public a second human-trafficking affair, known as the Dziwex scandal, which was revealed in April 1981. In this second affair, the Italian Mafia arranged with employees of one of Poland’s state-owned enterprises to hire young women to work in Italian clubs as dancers and, as the media reported, to coax them into prostitution there. It was alleged that as many as fifteen hundred women had left Poland for Italy and that

Anna Dobrowolska

“Everyone dreams about leaving”: Debates on Human Trafficking in State-Socialist Poland

In contrast, the 1980s were a time of crisis. Mounting liabilities to the same Western creditors contributed to a deteriorating economic situation. As a consequence of the workers’ strikes in the summer of 1980, the first inde pendent trade union—Solidarity—was founded and a short period of rela tive freedom known as the Solidarity’s Carnival began. Yet, the opposition was soon crushed when martial law was introduced on December 13, 1981. Political activists were detained, freedom of the press and free movement were further limited, and restrictions on international travel were imposed.

In the public debate, both cases were portrayed as human-trafficking affairs. Despite their similarities, the public understandings of the Dubai and Dziwex affairs differed markedly because of the disparate political and economic contexts of Poland in the early 1970s and Solidarity-era Poland a decade later. The early 1970s are remembered in Poland as a time of relative economic prosperity. Credits from Western banks enabled the Polish government to finance large-scale modernization projects and to supply the market with long-awaited consumer goods such as Coca-Cola.

Martial law remained in place until July 1983, but a growing sense of disillusionment with the system and reliance on the private sphere dominated until the end of the decade.4

All these political and social developments affected popular attitudes toward money, migration, and female labor. Thus, the two human-trafficking affairs serve as perfect lenses through which to view the society of statesocialist Poland in the process of social and economic transformation. They allow me to reflect more broadly on the socialist state’s attitudes toward not only sexuality and gender but also migration and labor.5 Although more universal frameworks of human trafficking were employed as well, the Polish cases had their own, distinctive features, deeply embedded in the Cold War context. Through the analysis of such features, this article contributes to the scholarship on human trafficking by bringing the Second World into the debates on migration and sex work after the Second World War.6 Moreover, this article showcases how seemingly outdated discourses of “white slavery” could be reapplied to serve the purposes of the Cold War competition. The Mythology of Human Trafficking

Anna Dobrowolska2021 169 a majority never returned home.3 As I argue in this article, such timing was not coincidental, and the preoccupation with “trafficking in women” was one of the manifestations of the sense of moral and economic crisis of the late state-socialist period.

Historians of human trafficking have long recognized the problematic character of the category itself. It is deeply embedded in the abolitionist

Journal of Women ’s History170 Winter views on prostitution, in which every instance of migration for sex work equals coercion and exploitation. Scholars such as Donna Guy and Keely Stauter-Halsted have argued that even if evidence of deception or coercion (often by family members) was evident in cases of alleged trafficking it did not justify the scale of the moral panic surrounding so-called white slavery.7 Yet, concern that women’s migration for work would lead them into “debauchery” became one of the defining features of the public debates on the topic. A framework of “white slavery” was employed by conservative intellectuals concerned about their nations’ futures and by early feminist activists who fought against moral double standards and campaigned for the total abolition of regulated prostitution claiming it was the root of all evil.8 They all largely ignored the role women’s poverty and vulnerable position in the labor market may have played in their decisions to engage in migratory prostitution.9 Such approaches contributed to a peculiar un derstanding of women’s agency. According to Magaly Rodríguez García, who analyzed the proceedings of the League of Nations’ Committee on the Traffic of Women and Children, politicians and activists failed to distinguish between exploitative labor conditions and actual trafficking. As a result, women were denied all agency in “white slavery” discourses except “when they decided to leave prostitution.”10

12 Gendered understandings of labor and migration contributed to stigmatizing and discriminatory policies for traveling women, in particular sex workers. The policymakers not only ignored the distinction between voluntary and involuntary prostitution but also purposely blurred the definition of women in “danger” of falling into traffickers’ hands. All types of female migration were viewed as suspect and in need of control. Traveling women—believed to play a special role in sustaining a nation’s future—in fact posed a concern for the national community.13 Analyzing the moral panic surrounding sex work in Argentina, Guy argues that “unacceptable female sexual conduct defined the behavior of the family, the good citizen, and ultimately national or religious honor.”14

The beginning of the twentieth century was marked by a growing preoccupation with the problem of population control in modern western states. Many scholars have thus argued that sex trafficking should be under stood primarily as a migration problem.11 In her analysis of early-twentiethcentury conversations on population control and human trafficking, Julia Laite concludes that the key purpose of “white slavery” discourses was “to create a false dichotomy between the legitimate state’s control of migra tion and illegitimate organized crime’s control of migration.”

Many scholars claim that such a moral panic was fueled by racial prejudices. The language of “anti–white slavery” campaigns stressed the importance of protecting “our” (i.e., white) women from exploitation by men

22 Therefore, a closer reading of the discussions on sex, morality, and women’s emancipation can reveal a lot about the gendered character of socialist regimes in CEE.23 State-socialist sexual histories may help us reconsider the seemingly uniform “Western” patterns of liberation as well as further complicate key concepts such as modernization or emancipation.24

Finally, the scholarship on the history of human trafficking has so far concentrated predominantly on the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen turies. The 1949 United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others marked an interesting caesura both in international law and in the historiography of

Anna Dobrowolska2021 171 of other races.15 Moreover, the campaigns’ focus on oriental licentiousness reinforced colonial hierarchies and incorporated the story of human traffick ing into the wider civilizational discourse.16 As Elisa Camiscioli points out in regard to France, even though in police records sex traffickers were identi fied primarily among “white metropolitan Frenchmen,” the popular press published racialized accounts that presented procurers as Jews, Italians, or men of color.17 Such language fueled the public outrage at the existence of the “traffic in white women” and also justified actions taken by national governments to protect women deemed by society as vulnerable. Yet, the role of this racialized language was also to narrate wider societal anxieties.

All the above mentioned themes—race, migration control, tensions surrounding women’s agency and labor—are visible in the sources that I analyze in this article. However, the new historical context in which they appear has not yet been fully researched in the historiography. Yet, as the growing scholarship on the history of sexuality in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) may suggest, the questions of transnational exchanges be tween East and West as well as within the Communist Bloc are essential to understanding the complex character of state-socialist sexualities.21 More over, Kateřina Lišková points out that “sexuality for socialist states was far from an insignificant private matter.”

According to Stauter-Halsted, in the late nineteenth-century Polish lands “the increase in public concern about trafficking had its roots in a much broader set of fears related to gender roles, female sexuality, and the behavior of single women.”18 Therefore, she argues, such discourses should be treated not as a reflection of actual events but rather as a metaphor or mythology.19 A similar approach was proposed by Jo Doezema, who wrote of the “myth of trafficking in women” in the context of the late twentiethcentury reemergence of “white slavery” discourses.20 Following these approaches, in my study of late state-socialist cases of migratory sex work, I focus on the way human trafficking was understood and constructed in the public debate to reestablish national identities and narrate processes of social transformations of postwar Polish society.

Yet, the Polish expert discourse on the topic was not simply a translation of similar debates taking place in Western Europe. Polish criminology devel oped its own language for speaking about the cases of human trafficking, which were referred to as the “trade in live goods” (handel żywym towarem). This legacy influenced the understanding of this issue in Poland for decades.

Journal of Women ’s History172 Winter this topic.25 The adoption of the seemingly uniform abolitionist framework, as well as the beginning of the Cold War, shifted the attention of policymak ers onto different issues. As a result, very little has been written about the history of sex trafficking from 1945 to 1989, and even less about the (non) existence of this problem behind the Iron Curtain. My article, therefore, aims to bridge both of the gaps in the scholarship and to provide an insight into the debates on human trafficking in that period, as well as to analyze the actual cases of migratory sex work under state socialism.

Polish human trafficking panics can be traced at least to the late nine teenth century, when emigration from (and within) the partitioned Polish lands reached its peak. The scale of public debates on alleged cases of “white slavery” may suggest that they should be read not only as responses to the events of actual human trafficking (which, as Stauter-Halstead argues, were rare and complex).26 The discourses created by journalists, medical doctors, lawyers, and other experts mirrored general anxieties about “national decline and alleged population depletion.”27 Most notably, fin-de-siècle de bates on prostitution and trafficking in the Polish lands had a visible racist dimension. It was Polish women who were said to be trafficked to brothels in South America and the Middle East, while Jewish migration agents came to be seen as primary suspects in the campaigns against “white slavery.”

Similarly, interwar Poland, a poor rural country with high unem ployment, was a place where the human-trafficking market was said to flourish. The problem was very often taken up by the press and remained a recurring topic in the popular culture of that period. Public opinion, as well as international campaigns against the traffic in women and children, led the Polish government to create a separate female police unit. Founded in 1925, the Polish Women Police played a key role in introducing modern anti trafficking measures, and as David Petruccelli has demonstrated, they enjoyed wide investigative powers that were unmatched by any other fe male police task force at the time.29 Petruccelli argues that the special role of the Women Police could be explained by the place that the “trade in live goods” occupied in the national imagination. In the first interwar years, he writes, “the campaign against the vice trade represented a vital step in

“Trade in live goods”: Polish Expert Discourse on Human Trafficking

Not surprisingly, policemen and criminologists in state-socialist Poland did not devote a lot of attention to the problem of human trafficking. Their main focus was prostitution. As Barbara Klich-Kluczewska demonstrates, the post-1956 system was “quasi-abolitionist.”

Although on paper the UN convention had been enforced, and women who engaged in prostitution were no longer registered by officials, in reality the officers employed other methods of controlling and suppressing prostitution, such as public health regulations or alleged protection of the public order.36 Therefore, the ways in which the absence of the problem of human trafficking was explained by the same experts is even more interesting. A 1969 article by Kazimierz Matysiak, a Citizens’ Militia officer and criminolo gist, discussed reasons why no human-trafficking cases had been revealed in postwar Poland.37 Such a situation could be explained, he argued, by the following factors: the abolition of brothels, severe legal sanctions for procuring, lack of women’s unemployment, rigid passport controls, and the absence of private recruitment agencies.38 Some of these factors were certainly unsubstantiated (e.g., the alleged full employment of women), but Matysiak’s words should not be simply disregarded.39 His arguments reflected state institutions’ general approaches onto vice. There was cer tainly a grain of truth in his claim that the new political situation made it substantially more difficult for all kinds of human traffickers to operate.

In Poland, cases of human trafficking had been continuously observed from the nineteenth century up until the Second World War. In this context, it becomes clear how new and peculiar the postwar situation must have seemed. In line with Marxist ideology, the Communist authorities believed the problem of prostitution and hence human trafficking to be nonexistent once the capitalist economy had been overthrown.31 Thus, the authorities and experts portrayed the ratification of the UN anti-trafficking conven tion in 1952 as being in line with the dominant ideology.32 The abolitionist approach to prostitution was portrayed as a logical consequence of the new economic system, and no further discussions or actions—such as the existence of dedicated female police units—were deemed necessary. It soon turned out, at least in the case of prostitution, that such an approach was delusionary and did not take into account the complex state of the postwar Polish society and economy.33 Therefore, by 1956, the Citizens’ Militia (the national police organization) needed to tackle the issue once again. How ever, this time it was only prostitution that the policemen were concerned about.34 As the Communist regime progressed in Poland, the shadow of human trafficking seemed to have faded away.

Anna Dobrowolska2021 173 achieving independence, both from the historical burdens of partition and from unwanted foreign influences.”

In Poland in the 1970s, human trafficking was no longer interpreted only through the lens of migration panics. It was also deeply embedded with shifting understandings of individual consumption and the market economy. The first two decades of state socialism had been marked by strenuous industrialization, postwar poverty, and an economy of scarcity. As a result, social and political tensions had risen.44 In December 1970, workers went on strike because of rising prices and the state’s inability to provide basic products. Although the strikes were brutally suppressed, the popular unrest could not be ignored for long and led to changes in the

Journal of Women ’s History174 Winter

Hence, one can argue that neither the new socialist morality nor the economic system contributed to the virtual nonexistence of human traffick ing in postwar Poland. Rather, the situation was a result of strict control of the borders. Since human trafficking was understood solely in terms of the external movement of people, crimes of “internal” trafficking were rarely identified. The Citizens’ Militia officers labeled traffickers as simply procuring or pimping.40 The disappearance of human trafficking could therefore be attributed solely to the effective control of the borders by the Communist regime. As Dariusz Stola has explained, “An obsessive control of and systematic restrictions on international mobility were among the distinguishing features of the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe.”41 First, the system relied on a highly selective and restrictive passport policy. A passport served not only as a travel document but also as an exit permit, and each trip abroad had to be approved by the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (Security Service or SB).42 Moreover, the bureaucratic measures were supplemented by a strict border-protection system that made an illegal exit virtually impossible and extremely dangerous. As Stola estimated, in the 1950s no more than a dozen people managed to illegally leave the country each year.43 After the death of Stalin and the political thaw of 1956 the controls were relaxed, but the scale of migration did not rise significantly until fifteen years later.

Rising Consumerism and Global Entanglements of the 1970s

The only two human-trafficking affairs in postwar Poland originated in the 1970s—and this was certainly no coincidence. The decade saw a significant relaxation of migration restrictions, which manifested in less rigid passport policies and new possibilities of cross-border movement (such as free travel across the Polish–East German border). This situation bore a striking resemblance to that of Poland in the late nineteenth century, when opening borders and the rise in migration contributed to renowned “white slavery” panics.

Anna Dobrowolska2021 175 party leadership, with Edward Gierek as the new first secretary. His rise to power brought about a significant shift in economic policy, and social ist consumerism became its main focus. According to Andrzej Szczerski, “Luxury . . . acquired a strictly ideological dimension. . . . The visible signs of the regime’s accomplishments were not new hospitals or schools but imported goods in the shops and brand new automobiles in the streets.”45 Consequently, openness to the West facilitated international transfers of consumption patterns and certain practices, including sexual behavior. Polish society could finally feel part of the global phenomena that had de veloped in the West throughout the Global Sixties, such as popular culture and new consumer lifestyles.46 Of course, most of the international travel still took place within the Communist Bloc, but the number of short trips to the West rose as well. It was as high as half a million in 1976, compared with less than two thou sand passports issued for travels outside the bloc in 1951.47 The relaxation of migration control made it easier to leave Poland, especially for tourist or work purposes. For instance, in the late 1970s, more than thirty thousand Polish engineers and other specialists worked on contracts in the Middle East.48 The number of foreigners visiting Poland grew significantly as well. The state-owned travel agency Orbis estimated that the number of tourists visiting Poland rose sixfold from 1971 to 1978.49 Interestingly, the visitors came not only from the West and the Soviet Bloc but also from so-called developing countries, primarily in North Africa and the Middle East. The growing literature on global entanglements of state-socialist countries has demonstrated that various forms of political, scientific, and economic co operation occurred through and beyond the Iron Curtain.50 As this article argues, these encounters had an illegal side as well. Such transnational transfers had an impact on the sex industry of late state-socialist Poland. As the presence of foreigners on the streets of big cities increased significantly in the 1970s, the market of services offered to them expanded as well. The infrastructure improved, for instance, as new, relatively luxurious hotels were built all over the country. However, the unofficial market grew too. Examples included illegal currency exchange and a new type of sexual services offered exclusively to foreigners who could pay for them in dollars; hence the name “foreign-currency prostitu tion” (prostytucja dewizowa).51 The increased demand led to both expansion and diversification of the market.52 Consequently, the number of women registered by the Citizens’ Militia as prostitutes in Warsaw rose steadily throughout the 1970s, while a growing proportion of them specialized in particular “types” of clients. To name just one example, but a very telling one, those who worked for Arabs became known as arabesques.53

The fact that women identified by the officers as “foreign-currency prostitutes” received their wages in dollars (and thus could afford prod ucts inaccessible to ordinary people) made this profession increasingly popular among young women and contributed to the changing image of prostitution in the public discourse. Press and popular-culture portrayals of sex workers stressed their economic emancipation, which enabled them to fulfill consumerist desires that were unattainable by regular citizens. Women who engaged in prostitution were presented as independent, profitdriven individuals. Even the language used to describe them reflected this transformation, with terms such as “business girls” (dziewczyny biznesu) entering the dominant narratives.54 Consequently, sex workers were less often perceived as deviants in need of being saved and more frequently portrayed as successful (yet still despised) individuals who managed to realize their consumerist aspirations in the realities of a shortage economy.

Journal of Women ’s History176 Winter

Of course the newly built hotels were closely observed by the SB, which could surveil foreigners there through a wide network of secret informants among hotel staff. In April 1973 one informant reported that a suspicious man of “Arab citizenship” who had repeatedly visited some of Warsaw’s hotels was allegedly interested in young blonde “girls” and wanted to talk them into becoming courtesans (nałożnice) for the sheik of Qatar.55 As a re sult of these reports, the SB initiated a surveillance operation code-named “Harem.” As the investigation unfolded, it turned out that in fact two men were involved in the scheme: Abdul S. (a citizen of Syria, based in Frank furt) and Zygmunt H. (of Polish origin but holding an American passport), both of whom had visited Poland several times, supposedly for business purposes.56 During their stays in Warsaw, they targeted good-looking Pol ish women and offered them profitable work for the sheik of Dubai (as the investigation later made clear). Significantly, as the SB reported, Abdul and Zygmunt were only interested in fair-haired women, which can be seen as an interesting continuation of the nineteenth-century discourses on innocent blonde Polish victims of foreign traffickers.57

The character of the work the two men advertised was unclear, but most of the women became suspicious when they heard that it would not require any foreign-language skills.58 To make the scheme more convincing, Abdul unsuccessfully tried to find employees through Polservis, a state-owned agency that facilitated foreign contracts for Polish workers.59 Although the proposal may have been tempting (the traffickers offered $100 to each woman as a prepayment for passport-application purposes), the women were reluctant to accept it. Some of them refused straight away, while oth

“Two traffickers from Frankfurt am Main”

The miscreants thus had offended not only the criminal law but also the national community as a whole. Such an evaluation of their actions was made even clearer in the final verdict. The judge stressed that the punishment (Abdul and Zygmunt were sentenced to four and three years’ imprisonment, respectively) needed to be severe not only because of the

Nevertheless, B.’s testimonies, together with statements from at least ten other women, served as justification for arresting Abdul and Zygmunt and charging them with a crime that had not been in judicial use for the past thirty years—human trafficking.63 As a result, the longforgotten “white slavery” discourses were revived by SB officers, lawyers, and journalists who wrote about the case.

It was not solely the charge of human trafficking that incriminated “two traffickers from Frankfurt am Main.” They were found guilty of underrat ing the value of Polish women. In March 1974, Krystyna Barszczewska, a prosecutor, argued: These two traffickers from Frankfurt am Main perceived the coun try on the Vistula river to be cheaper than any else. They believed the Polish women are worth less than for example German and therefore they undertook a large-scale activity in our country to lure and coax young women into traveling abroad to engage in debauchery. The defendants miscalculated because only a few of them gave in to the temptation of an “easy life,” that was supposed to await them on the Persian Gulf.64

Anna Dobrowolska2021 177 ers took the money but later backed out (not without interventions by their families).60

At first, it all seems rather puzzling: an SB investigation lasting almost ten months, nine volumes of files, and dozens of witnesses interviewed only to discover that one woman spent two weeks in Dubai and returned home with some money and new clothes? In her official testimony, B. neither complained about her treatment nor blamed the men who had transported her to Dubai for any abuses. As one may judge after reading her statement, the whole journey was consensual and had very little in common with hu man trafficking as traditionally understood, such as coercion, violence, or misinformation.

Only one woman, B., decided to accept the offer and embarked on a train to Vienna. There she met with Zygmunt, who accompanied her to Dubai, where she stayed for about ten days. She had sex with the sheik once a day, and according to her testimony, apart from that she was free to do whatever she wanted. Both the men who facilitated her trip received financial rewards; B. herself earned a thousand dollars and received several gifts.61 However, after that time, she asked for permission to return to Poland, using “her sick mother” as an excuse. As she told the police officers, the main reason why she wanted to leave was that she was bored.62

Journal of Women ’s History178 Winter social harms caused by their activity but also because “as foreigners they chose the Polish People’s Republic as a location to recruit women . . . who they perceived to be the cheapest products.”65 I argue here that objectifica tion and commodification of women was not a crime in its own right. But the fact that the foreigners had “priced” Polish women too low was seen as an aggravating circumstance. Neither the prosecutor nor the judge objected to such language of commodification. Instead, they reemployed it, but to “protect” national pride and integrity.

Such discourses illustrate the profound ambiguities hidden behind the 1970s modernization project. Gierek’s policies centered on the notion that state-socialist Poland needed to open to the West, at least to some extent, both economically and culturally.68 According to Szczerski, the import of investable goods (feasible thanks to Western credits) had less to do with new technologies than with certain “standards of civilization” represented by the “Western dream.” Such tensions can be observed in the “Harem” investigation, as this “myth of the West” was understood to be the primary reason why Polish women had been eager to accept Abdul and Zygmunt’s proposals.69 Therefore, the trial against the two traffickers was also to some extent a debate about unforeseen results of this modernization project. According to the prosecutor, the defendants had betrayed the trust and hospitality offered to them by Polish society, and such behavior was yet

As the investigation files show, the otherness of the two traffickers was stressed numerous times through the use of words such as foreigners and visitors (even though one of them—Zygmunt—was Polish by origin). Such an attitude was undoubtedly rooted in racial prejudice, as the SB officers constantly referred to Abdul as an “Arab.” Moreover, the legacy of histori cal discourses on human trafficking could also be noticed. It had always been the “other,” the “foreigner” (and in the Polish context very often a “Jew”), who trafficked “our” women and sold them to brothels in faraway, oriental lands.66 Such a strategy allowed the SB to direct responsibility for any wrongdoing away from the national community and to narrate these stories according to a simple us-versus-them paradigm. An illustration of this mechanism is the fact that none of the two “foreigners’” Polish ac complices (such as hotel porters) were charged during the trial. Put more broadly, such narrative strategies of binary conflict translated well into the Cold War black-and-white discourses in which the state-socialist morality was constantly under threat from the capitalists. The affair gained publicity in the midst of the 1973 oil crisis, when Arab states proclaimed an embargo on oil export to the West following the Yom Kippur War with Israel. It is hardly a coincidence that the two traffickers came from West Germany and the United States. Thus, they were dangerous not only as criminals but also as “agents” of a foreign power.67

another aggravating circumstance. As Barszczewska argued, they “visited Poland allegedly for tourist and recreational purposes. They were always welcomed with Polish hospitality, which they misused.”70 The Polish state was presented as an innocent victim of the foreigners’ actions, and its fierce response to the human-trafficking scandal was an attempt to protect itself. On the one hand, the well-being of Polish citizens—symbolized by the in nocent girls who did not “g[ive] in to the temptation of an ‘easy life’”—was at stake. The negative influences of the capitalist consumer culture needed to be counteracted quickly and effectively. On the other hand, the social ist state itself fell prey to this mischievous scheme. The defendants, the prosecutor argued, had abused Polish hospitality and the trust with which the Polish state had welcomed them. Thus, their behavior toward the Pol ish nation was rhetorically equated with the alleged sexual exploitation suffered by their victims. The charge of human trafficking served both as a means of reaffirming the national community and protecting the honor of Polish women as it had in the fin-de-siècle discourses. In the 1970s, it became a useful tool for narrating the Cold War divisions by justifying the role of the state in protecting its citizens from dangers lurking outside the Communist Bloc. The Cold War “myth of human trafficking”

Anna Dobrowolska2021 179

A closer look into how both the investigation and the court trial were narrated may lead us to conclude that the role played by the “trafficked women” is somehow ambiguous. On the one hand, according to the pros ecutor, one can only be “coaxed” or “lured” into being trafficked; by no means does one consciously decide to travel abroad for sex work. Thus, women were presented as passive objects of men’s actions even in the cases in which (as we know from B.’s testimony) they made an informed choice to engage in this type of work. Such a discursive deprivation of agency is, as many scholars argue, a distinguishing feature of the dominant frameworks of speaking about human trafficking and “white slavery.”71 On the other hand, agency reappears when women decide to reject these proposals.72 In such instances, the sources stress their moral integrity and cleverness. This paradox of simultaneous agency and nonagency suggests that the role “traf ficked women” played in these stories was largely rhetorical. Hence, in the 1974 trial, women’s experiences were relevant only to the extent that they conformed with the “mythology” of human trafficking, a framework that resulted from a combination of the fin-de-siècle “white slavery” discourses with contemporary political agendas of the Cold War period. Similar patterns could be observed in the press reports published in major newspapers even though the court proceedings were closed to the

The articles quoted above presented the two traffickers as ineffective, hopeless, and thus easily deceived by their victims-to-be. The journalists seemed to take great pride in the fact that “their” women had managed to make things difficult for the two “foreigners.” Thus, the rhetorical emphasis on women’s agency served as a tool for reinstating the national (and, as we have seen, racial) boundaries rather than a message about their subjectivity or emancipation. There was virtually no debate about the true motives be hind these decisions, and the question of ongoing changes in sexual mores

The penal code was outdated, and the law on human traffick ing did not fit the new situation, in which trafficked women “knew very well what they wanted.”75 She questioned the very definition of human trafficking (as worded in the 1949 UN convention) and thus the thinking that it should be prosecuted regardless of a trafficked person’s consent.

Falkowska’s arguments are to some extent similar to the voices of sexwork activists of today. However, she argued that the new situation was a result of loosened morals, implying that sexual services are a sign of social degeneration. Thus, she opened the floor for questioning the victimhood of the “trafficked women” rather than for a discussion on the problematic definition of human trafficking itself. Moreover, the journalists devoted a lot of attention to the ways women reacted to the traffickers’ proposals. Just as in the court proceedings, in the press, the women who had decided to reject the traffickers’ offers were pre sented as intelligent, independent, or even manipulative. As one journalist observed, “At that point [the women rejected the offers] . . . our clever [nie w ciemię bite] girls knew well what was going on. As they had not planned to become courtesans, they backed out of the deal, and the agent was left in the lurch.”76 The inexplicit question asked by the journalists was whether the women were really victims of the crime or had manipulated the two men to achieve their own goals (such as economic emancipation or traveling abroad) and thus abandoned the plan when they realized what Abdul and Zygmunt were up to. “The two gentlemen became frustrated, especially because a few of the candidates had accepted advance payments, which they were not willing to give back, and the two who had decided to go concluded their journey in Vienna, where they escaped the gentlemen’s tender care.”

Journal of Women ’s History180 Winter public.73 Most often sensational in their tone, the reports dealt with the question of agency and victimhood as well. They often reflected on the fact that the “Harem” case by no means resembled the early twentieth-century trafficking affairs. As the prominent journalist Wanda Falkowska wrote, the women who testified during the trial “had little in common with vulnerable and miserable girls who were kidnapped and transported away from Europe to Eastern harems and American brothels at the beginning of this century. The mores have changed since then and in fact they have rather loosened.”74

The story emerged in the spring of 1981, and the timing certainly was not accidental. As mentioned above, it was the time of the so-called Solidar ity’s Carnival, between the 1980 Gdańsk Agreement and the introduction of martial law on December 13, 1981. According to Andrzej Paczkowski, “It was not so much a carnival in the sense of amusement, but rather more a time when the sanctioned rules of social life were suspended, when people challenged the existing political hierarchy.”79 Although the “carni val” was visible mostly in the sphere of political activism (with Solidarity, the independent trade union, being the most prominent example), it also had a broader impact on the public debate, as the circulation of both legal and illegal publications was unparalleled in that period. New social actors gained visibility in the public discourse, calling for changes that would have seemed unthinkable only a few months earlier, and the debate around Dziwex illustrates these new mechanisms of public discussions.

Anna Dobrowolska2021 181 or women’s participation in the workforce was barely touched upon. In this regard, the press debates did not differ significantly from the nineteenthand early twentieth-century discourses on “white slavery.” However, as my second case study demonstrates, the problem of women’s emancipation through sex work was much more relevant in late state socialism than the journalists and lawyers quoted above were willing to admit. The Italian Mafia and the Trafficking of Polish Women

In April 1981, Antena, a weekly magazine with a focus on TV and radio programs and popular culture, announced that it would soon publish a sensational report on “the biggest human trafficking scandal in the history of Polish criminology.”78 As the magazine declared, the story would feature the Italian Mafia’s operations in Poland and its associations with the stateowned Zjednoczone Przedsiębiorstwa Rozrywkowe (United Entertainment Enterprises, or ZPR). From the very beginning the scandal was given a peculiar name—Dziwex affair. This wordplay itself speaks volumes about the historical context and contemporary attitudes. In Polish, dziwka is a vulgar name for a “prostitute” (comparable to the English noun “whore”), while -ex was a popular ending of company names dealing with interna tional trade in the late state-socialist period (the majority of which were state-owned), such as Pewex. Dziwex was therefore to be understood as a public sexual-services enterprise, which was both shocking and sensational. Moreover, this nickname very well illustrated the popular attitudes toward the “trafficked” women. Even though officially they were proclaimed to be victims, in the media debates there was little room for compassion. Rather, the women were either presented as naive and themselves responsible for their situation or purposely sexualized to attract readers’ attention.

Shortly after the affair was made public, the members of one of the Solidarity branches, employees of other entertainment enterprises, wrote an open letter to the editors of Antena in which they declared that “it was undoubtedly necessary to disclose an affair of such a scale and character to the public. This was made possible because of the changes taking place in Poland after August 1980. However, this case needs to be quickly and carefully investigated. Such socially damaging cases need to be presented to society with a maximum of clarity.”80 The discussions spurred by the Dziwex affair may be understood as a part of this carnival: a call for transparency, accountability, and new public morality. This is even more evident if we consider Solidarity’s preoccupation with morality and sexuality, manifested in calls for the introduction of three-year, paid maternity leave for women (one of the Gdańsk demands) and proposals to restrict access to abortion, influenced by the Catholic Church.81 Sexuality and gender roles therefore offered a perfect field for power play between the Communist regime and the conservative opposition. The rivalry between these two moral systems was well reflected in the Dziwex debates on the state’s responsibility for the demoralization of “our” women.

Journal of Women ’s History182 Winter

As various journalists reported, the entire scheme was based on close cooperation between some employees of the ZPR and an Italian creative agency, Olivero. In the years 1977–80 two Italians allegedly managed to recruit at least fifteen hundred women from across Poland.82 The women were offered artistic contracts and employment as dancers in Italian clubs. The selection criteria were based on their appearance, in particular their height and the color of their hair, which (once again) was to be blonde, although these were not the only requirements. The two Italians were ar rested in March 1981, one of the journalists wrote that “both men were quite successful in their business, collecting subsequent batches of girls according to the Italian market standards: they had to be blonde, not shorter than 168 cm and no taller than 172 cm. Their bust, waist, and hip measurements had to be appropriate, their legs adequately long, and their minds—whenever possible—not too complex.”83 This emphasis on the blondeness of the “traf ficked” women can be interpreted as a reference to the historical discourses on the “traffic in live goods.” It once again enabled the commentators to narrate the story in racialized terms. Like Arabs in the previous case study, Italians were portrayed as foreigners who had attempted to buy “our” blonde (white?) girls and take them abroad by deceit. The “international” part of the scheme allowed the press to make the story much more compel ling to the reader than a usual report about prostitution and procurement at home would have been.

Some of the women had left the country as tourists, while the others had received passports as ZPR employees, a fact that only exacerbated

Anna Dobrowolska2021 183 the popular outrage after the affair was made public amid the so-called Solidarity’s Carnival.84 To fully understand the mechanism of the scam, let us turn to the state-socialist regulations on international mobility. Theo retically, to qualify for an official business passport, a Polish citizen had to be an employee of a state-owned company and receive a delegation to go abroad.85 Often, one had to demonstrate special work-related skills. At that point, cooperation between the Italian “employers” and their Polish intermediaries from the ZPR was essential. However, the qualifying criteria did not include artistic abilities: “Only appearance mattered. Qualifications played no role. Waitresses, news agents, shop assistants, hairdressers, and girls of other professions were offered contracts abroad. After a few days of a fictional training, they received fictional certificates.”86 Soon after the women arrived in Italy, shiny prospects were replaced by dire reality. Their dancing performances turned out to be just a cover-up; in fact, they were expected to entertain the night clubs’ customers in other ways. However, their testimonies regarding this matter varied significantly. Some of the women reported that they were forced (often physically) to offer sexual services. Others claimed that such work was always consensual and that if a woman did not want to engage in it, she could just sit with a client and talk him into spending money on “consumption.”

Nevertheless, the work conditions were far from what had been advertised, and there was undoubtedly deception, a defining feature of human trafficking. Moreover, some of the women reported physical and psychological abuse as well as lasting traumatic effects. As Iwona, one of the victims, recounted in an interview, “Some of the girls were forced to prostitute themselves, not physically, but psychologically. They did not have their passports, had debts with the Italians, had to pay for food and accom modation, so they had to earn their living somehow.”88 Other testimonies confirmed that debt bondage was a popular coercion mechanism employed by the Italian traffickers. Another woman recalled that she “had to borrow money before the travel, because it would be silly to go to Italy not dressed appropriately. Afterwards, it was unthinkable to go back with all these debts. I had been telling all these stories to my family and friends—how could I go back with nothing?”89 On the one hand, the Italians forced the women to stay and “repay” their debts. On the other, the fear of being judged in their home communities prevented the women from returning to Poland when they discovered the true nature of the job. Community consumerist expec tations were a potent factor influencing women’s decisions to stay in Italy.

As another interviewee, Hania, put it, “Nudity, what does it mean in modern times? . . . My butt is my private property, and I do whatever I want with it.”95 Women like Basia or Hania availed themselves of the opportunities their attractive bodies opened to them and thus perceived their sexuality as simply a tool of work. The fact that everyone else dreamt of having similar chances served as an argument for recognition of their profession. In this sense, we may understand the debates about Dziwex not only as discussions on human trafficking itself but as yet another example of the new discourses on sexual services and, more broadly, on economic status and perspectives of social advancement in and beyond the state-socialist reality.

Sexuality and Body in Late State Socialism

Journal of Women ’s History184 Winter

Most of the photos and other illustrations accompanying the publica tions featured scantily dressed women, often in frivolous positions. Nudity was prevalent, suggesting that the stories were interesting not because of

If only indirectly, such comments reflected the significance of socialcontrol mechanisms, which made women eager to leave Poland and then reluctant to go back. Combined with the widespread fascination with the West, it may explain why women decided to migrate and participate in this scheme even if they knew in advance about the true character of the work. Not surprisingly, when the Dziwex affair was made public, this topic was immediately taken up by journalists. Once again, the pernicious dream of traveling to the West was seen as the main reason why women would be per suaded to accept the traffickers’ proposal. One journalist characterized this attitude toward foreign travel as a “blinding mirage” that could only cause harm and misery.90 Thus, the media tried to downplay the significance of the harsh economic situation influencing decisions to migrate and engage in sex work or to present such economic motivations as misguided and naive. Yet, such a propagandistic view of migration was contested by ordinary people, as the number of people traveling to the West in that period may suggest.91 Some of their experiences were also narrated in the official press. Jolka, one of the “trafficked” women, explained that she decided to work in Italy for two reasons: first, to raise a “tidy sum of money,” and second, to see the world.92 In the words of Basia, “everyone dreams about leaving. Because it means money. Men want the same things. But they have to slave away, do this hard work that the local people do not want. Girls are in a better position. They have their own body, it is a marketable product, you can make a lot of easy cash as long as you are young.”93 According to Basia, women’s attraction to the traffickers’ proposals was neither unusual nor a result of their particular stupidity or naiveté. Rather, leaving the country was a widespread aspiration shared by many members of the society, re gardless of their gender.94

Anna Dobrowolska2021 185 their criminal character but rather because of their sexual connotations. Such a visual language was characteristic of the late state-socialist period. In the 1980s, a growing commodification of nudity could be observed both in infor mal circulation (i.e., through the distribution of home-copied pornographic videotapes) and in official media or movie production.96 Some scholars have argued that this “sexplosion” (seksplozja) of the late state-socialist period had a very political origin.97 According to Izabela Kalinowska, nudity in the public sphere may have been purposely used to appease public opinion and divert people’s attention from acute social problems.98 However, as the case of Dziwex may suggest, sexualized media discourses could also offer a platform for voicing disagreement with the political reality. Finally, the above-analyzed media discourses are remarkable for yet another reason: namely, the language employed in narrating the Dziwex story. On the one hand, it was extremely sexist and misogynistic, and this was reflected in headlines such as “Who wants a girl?,” “Long legs, short mind,” or “Blond girls for sale.” This is yet a further example of how the debates on Dziwex contributed to the objectification of women (even if in theory strongly opposing it) as well as to blaming victims instead of offenders. In the media debates, the fact that some of the women “knew very well” what the job was or even had had previous experiences of prostitution was treated as proof that they were themselves responsible for their fate.99 The media often questioned their motives and their background. There was very little space given to the possibility of a woman being a “true” victim of sexual exploitation or human trafficking (as very similar discourses were developed regarding rape survivors).100 In this sense, sexual modernization of the late state-socialist period had its downsides. As the sexual mores relaxed and sex outside marriage became more socially acceptable, the demand for women’s sexual openness rose; hence the “protection” offered by traditional social norms on female sexual behaviors diminished. In this context, sex trafficking could to some extent be narrated as a woman’s in formed choice, but it also meant that the public no longer considered her a proper victim if any exploitation occurred.101

Conclusion

The scholarship on the history of sexuality has long been guided by the assumption of Central and Eastern Europe’s near-complete isolation during the Cold War.102 However, as scholars such as Łukasz Szulc and Kateřina Lišková have argued, such a notion contributes greatly to the myth of Eastern “otherness” and homogeneity and hardly explains the historical processes that took place under Communist rule.103 Szulc’s argument was based on the study of cross-border flows in gay and lesbian magazines. Yet,

Journal of Women ’s History186 Winter as the case studies analyzed in this article may suggest, the phenomenon was much broader, and the Iron Curtain was far from sealed.

As Marcin Zaremba has demonstrated, nationalist discourses were crucial for the legitimization of the Communist regime in Poland.104 In writing about Polish girls lured to the West, journalists skillfully connected finde-siècle narratives of national harm to the modern language of socialist ideology. Thus, socialist (as opposed to capitalist) morality was portrayed as a guarantee for Polish national survival and well-being. The myth of naive women “trafficked” abroad was also employed in discussions about internal political affairs. In the case of Dziwex, the state’s failure to protect Polish women was used as an argument for transparency and democratiza tion in the public sphere as well as to illustrate the sense of economic and moral crisis in the 1980s. Therefore, one can hardly say that socialist societies dealt with the problem of sex trafficking in one certain way. Rather, there were various competing narratives situated within a particular political and social context. The mythology of human trafficking could function as a way of legitimizing the regime, but it could also easily serve as a powerful argument in the hands of its opponents.

Most importantly, “Harem” and Dziwex affairs are both stories of migrations in the era of closed borders and restrictive passport regimes. The dominant narratives on the Cold War migrations emphasize the role of political migrations and the subsequent waves of refugees from behind the Iron Curtain.105 Yet, as these case studies demonstrate, not every migra tion occurred simply in the East-West direction, and not all migrations took place for political reasons. Some migration decisions could be explained by a desire to explore foreign lands and experience new cultures. A rational economic calculation was also at play. Since there were no opportunities to fulfill one’s consumerist aspirations at home, people (and not only women) turned to migration in hope of a better future. Sometimes, with the same rationale, they decided to engage in sex work abroad. However, in the public discourse their motivations and experiences were too often downplayed to conform to the dominant mythology of human trafficking.

Preoccupation with various dangers awaiting women who got “blinded” by the “Western myth” served as justification for state control over the borders and foreigners as well as for the state’s distrust of Western consumerism.

This article has argued that racialized discourses of human traffick ing were reemployed in the postwar period to narrate Cold War divisions.

6Magdalena Grabowska, “Bringing the Second World In: Conservative Revolution(s), Socialist Legacies, and Transnational Silences in the Trajectories of Polish Feminism,” Signs 37, no. 2 (Winter 2012): 385–411.

1Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej (Institute for National Remem brance Archive, hereafter AIPN), Wr 053/2186 Informacje wydziału “B” KWMO we Wrocławiu za 1973 r., k. 96–96.

4See Andrzej Paczkowski, Revolution and Counterrevolution in Poland, 1980–1989: Solidarity, Martial Law, and the End of Communism in Europe, trans. Christina Manetti (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2015).

Anna Dobrowolska2021 187 Notes

5See Kristen R. Ghodsee, Why Women Have Better Sex under Socialism and Other Arguments for Economic Independence (London: The Bodley Head, 2018).

3For the whole story, see Jan Lewandowski, “Blondynki na sprzedaż,” [Blondes for sale] Ekspres Reporterów no. 1 (1982): 107-147.

7See Donna J. Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 7–35; and Keely Stauter-Halsted, The Devil’s Chain: Prostitution and Social Control in Partitioned Poland (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 118–131.

8Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires, 25–35; Magaly Rodríguez García, “The League of Nations and the Moral Recruitment of Women,” International Review of Social History 57, S20 (2012): 97–128; Petra De Vries, “’White Slaves’ in a Colonial Nation: The Dutch Campaign against the Traffic in Women in the Early Twentieth Century,” Social & Legal Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 39–60.

See Jessica Pliley, “Claims to Protection: The Rise and Fall of Feminist Aboli tionism in the League of Nations’ Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, 1919–1936,” Journal of Women’s History 22, no. 4 (2010): 90–113; and Rodríguez García, “League of Nations,” 124–125. 10Rodríguez García, “League of Nations,” 109. 11Stauter-Halsted, Devil’s Chain, 137–138.

2AIPN, BU 0/204/541 t. 5, Protokół przesłuchania świadka B. z dn. 14 września 1973, k. 112. All translations are my own. I do not reveal B.’s personal details as they were not made public during the court proceedings.

This research has been financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland in the “Diamentowy Grant” scheme (research funding for the years 2017–2021). The author would like to express her gratitude to Julia Laite, Phillippa Hetherington, Katherine Lebow, Klaudia Kuchno and two anonymous reviewers for all their insightful comments and recommendations which helped her develop the argument in this article.

Journal of Women ’s History188 Winter

12Julia Laite, “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Women’s Labour Migration and Sex Trafficking in the Early Twentieth Century,” International Review of Social History 62, no. 1 (2017): 37–65, 61. 13Stauter-Halsted, Devil’s Chain, 146. 14Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires, 35. 15As Petra de Vries points out, such thinking did not apply to the other, much more common situation in which it was a white man who sexually exploited a woman of color. See De Vries, “‘White Slaves’ in a Colonial Nation,” 49. 16Laite, “Between Scylla and Charybdis,” 54; Stauter-Halsted, Devil’s Chain, 124–130.17Elisa Camiscioli, Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 106.18Stauter-Halsted, Devil’s Chain, 120. 19Stauter-Halsted, Devil’s Chain, 121, 168. 20Jo Doezema, “Loose Women or Lost Women? The Re-Emergence of the Myth of White Slavery in Contemporary Discourses of Trafficking in Women,” Gender Issues 18, no. 1 (1999): 23–50. 21See, e.g., Alana Harris, ed., The Schism of ’68: Catholicism, Contraception and Humanae Vitae in Europe, 1945–1975 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Kateřina Lišková, Natalia Jarska, and Gábor Szegedi, “Sexuality and Gender in School-Based Sex Education in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland in the 1970s and 1980s,” History of the Family, 25, no. 4 (2020): 550–575; and Lukasz Szulc, Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland: Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

24Dan Healey, “The Sexual Revolution in the USSR: Dynamics Beneath the Ice,” in Sexual Revolutions, ed. Gert Hekma and Alain Giami (Basingstoke, UK: Pal grave Macmillan, 2014), 236–248; Dagmar Herzog, “East Germany’s Sexual Evolu tion,” in Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics, ed. Katherine Pence and Paul Betts (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 71–95; Josie McLellan, Love in the Time of Communism: Intimacy and Sexuality in the GDR (Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

22Kateřina Lišková, Sexual Liberation, Socialist Style: Communist Czechoslovakia and the Science of Desire, 1945–1989 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 31; Kristen R. Ghodsee and Kateřina Lišková, “Bumbling Idiots or Evil Masterminds? Challenging Cold War Stereotypes about Women, Sexuality and State Socialism,” Filozofija i Drustvo 27, no. 3 (2016): 489–503.

23See Shana Penn and Jill Massino, eds., Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

37Kazimierz Matysiak, “Przestępstwa eksploatacji prostytucji i jej sprawcy na terenie Trójmiasta,”[The crimes of exploitation of prostitution and their offenders in the Tri-city Region] Służba MO 72, no. 3 (1969): 342–363, 345. 38Matysiak, “Przestępstwa eksploatacji,” 345–346. Małgorzata Fidelis, Women, Communism, and Industrialization in Postwar Poland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Natalia Jarska, “Gender and Labour in Post-War Communist Poland: Female Unemployment 1945–1970,” Acta Poloniae Historica 110 (2014): 49–85.

Archiwum Główne Policji (Central Police Archives in Warsaw, hereafter AGP) 4/59, Rozkaz Komendanta Głównego Milicji Obywatelskiej z dn. 23.I.1956 nr 2/56 w sprawie wzmożenia walki z prostytucją, k. 20–25.

David Petruccelli, “Pimps, Prostitutes and Policewomen: The Polish Women Police and the International Campaign against the Traffic in Women and Children between the World Wars,” Contemporary European History 24, no. 3 (2015): 333–350. 30Petruccelli, “Pimps, Prostitutes and Policewomen,” 341.

35For the debates on human trafficking in the intermediate postwar period, see AIPN, BU 1550/4509, Handel kobietami i dziećmi, 1948–1949.

33Barbara Klich-Kluczewska, “Unzüchtiger Realsozialismus: Prostitution in Der Volksrepublik Polen,”[The Lewd Side of Real-Existing Socialism: Prostitution in the People‘s Republic of Poland], Osteuropa 56, no. 6 (2006): 302–317; Marcin Zaremba, “Ein Abgrund von Moral- und Machtlosigkeit: Prostitution in Polen Zwischen NSBesatzung und Entstalinisierung,” [An Abyss of Immorality and Powerlessness: Two Documents on Prostitution in Poland 1956–57] Osteuropa 56, no. 6 (2006): 318–323.

36Klich-Kluczewska, “Unzüchtiger Realsozialismus,” 308–309.

For more on the USSR position on the UN convention, see Dolinsek and Hetherington, “Socialist Internationalism and Decolonizing Moralities,” 223–226.

25For more on the UN convention itself, see Sonja Dolinsek and Philippa Hetherington, “Socialist Internationalism and Decolonizing Moralities in the UN Anti-Trafficking Regime, 1947–1954,” Journal of the History of International Law 21, no. 2 (2019): 212–238. 26Stauter-Halsted, Devil’s Chain, 118. 27Stauter-Halsted, Devil’s Chain, 138. 28Keely Stauter-Halsted, “‘A Generation of Monsters’: Jews, Prostitution, and Racial Purity in the 1892 L’viv White Slavery Trial,” Austrian History Yearbook 38, no. 2 (2007): 25–35. 29

On different strategies of coping with the inability of putting Marxist views on prostitution into practice, see Barbara Havelková, “Blaming All Women: On Regulation of Prostitution in State Socialist Czechoslovakia,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 36, no. 1 (2016): 165–191.

Anna Dobrowolska2021 189

See Kristen R. Ghodsee, Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women’s Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019); Małgorzata Mazurek, “Polish Economists in Nehru’s India: Making Science for the Third World in an Era of de-Stalinization and Decolonization,” Slavic Review 77, no. 3 (2018): 588–610; and James Mark and Péter Apor, “Socialism Goes Global: Decolonization and the Making of a New Culture of Internationalism in Socialist Hungary, 1956–1989,” Journal of Modern History 87, no. 4 (2015): 852–891.

Klich-Kluczewska, “Unzüchtiger Realsozialismus,” 314–315.

51For the East German case, see McLellan, Love in the Time of Communism, 100–113; and Ingrid Sharp, “The Sexual Unification of Germany,” Journal of the His tory of Sexuality 13, no. 3 (2004): 351–353.

Journal of Women ’s History190 Winter 40See Matysiak, “Przestępstwa eksploatacji,” 357–363. 41Dariusz Stola, “Opening a Non-Exit State: The Passport Policy of Communist Poland, 1949–1980,” East European Politics and Societies 29, no. 1 (2015): 96–119, 96. 42Stola, “Opening a Non-Exit State,” 97. 43Stola, “Opening a Non-Exit State,” 102. 44Marcin Zaremba, “Społeczeństwo Polskie Lat Sześćdziesiątych—Między ‘Małą Stabilizacją’ a ‘Małą Destabilizacją,’” [Polish Society in the 1960s—between ‘Little Stablization’ and ‘Little Destabilization’] in Oblicza Marca [The Faces of March] 1968, ed. Konrad Rokicki and Sławomir Stępień (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Nar odowej, 2004), 24–51. 45Andrzej Szczerski, “The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s,” Art in Translation 3, no. 2 (2011): 179–212, 182. 46See Timothy Scott Brown, West Germany and the Global Sixties (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c. 1958–c. 1974 (London: Bloomsbury Reader, 2012); Małgorzata Fidelis, “The Other Marxists: Making Sense of Interna tional Student Revolts in Poland in the Global Sixties,” Zeitschrift für OstmitteleuropaForschung 62, no. 3 (2013): 425–449; Judy Kutulas, After Aquarius Dawned: How the Revolutions of the Sixties Became the Popular Culture of the Seventies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018).

47Stola, “Opening a Non-Exit State,” 98, 112. 48Przemysław Gasztold, “Bejrut w Warszawie: Arabski Półświatek Nad Wisłą w Latach Siedemdziesiątych i Osiemdziesiątych XX Wieku,”[Beruit in Warsaw: Arab Underworld by Vistula River in the 1970s and 1980s] in Obrzeża Społeczne Komunistycznej Warszawy (1945–1989), ed. Patryk Pleskot (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2018), 31–51, 33. Paweł Sowiński, “Turystyka Zagraniczna w Polsce w Latach 1956–1980,” Dzieje Najnowsze 34, no. 1 (2002): 135–144, 138.

53Małgorzata Jarocka, “Panienki do wynajęcia,” [Ladies for Rent] Ekspres Reporterów no. 1 (1989): 109–143, 117.

Anna Dobrowolska2021 191 54See Michał Antoniszyn and Andrzej Marek, Prostytucja w świetle badan kryminologicznych [Prostitution in the Light of Criminological Research] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, 1985). 55AIPN, BU 0/204/541 t. 1, Wniosek o wszczęcie sprawy operacyjnego sprawdzenia krypt. “Harem” z dn. 19 maja 1973, k. 7. 56Gasztold, “Bejrut w Warszawie,” 45–49. 57See Stauter-Halsted, “‘Generation of Monsters,’” 27–28. 58AIPN, BU 0/204/541 t. 5, Akt oskarżenia z dn. 20 grudnia 1973, k. 301. 59AIPN, BU 0/204/541 t. 1, Meldunek z dn. 23 maja 1973, k. 34–35. 60AIPN, BU 0/204/541 t. 5, Akt oskarżenia z dn. 20 grudnia 1973, k. 302, 310. 61AIPN, BU 0/204/541 t. 5, Protokół przesłuchania świadka B. z dn. 14 września 1973, k. 112. 62AIPN, BU 0/204/541 t. 5, Protokół przesłuchania świadka B. z dn. 14 września 1973, k. 91–114. 63AIPN, BU 0/204/541 t. 5., Akt oskarżenia z dn. 20 grudnia 1973, k. 297–298. 64AIPN BU 0204/541 t. 1, Informacja z dn. 6 lutego 1974, k. 138. 65AIPN, BU 0/204/541 t. 3, Notatka służbowa z dn. 8 marca 1974, k. 142. 66In this context, it is important to note the role of Istanbul as a hub for traf fic in “white women” in the nineteenth century. See Stauter-Halsted, Devil’s Chain, 146; and Malte Fuhrmann, “‘Western Perversions’ at the Threshold of Felicity: The European Prostitutes of Galata-Pera (1870–1915),” History and Anthropology 21, no. 2 (2010): 159–72. 67Zygmunt, because of his American citizenship, was suspected of being an undercover agent, and much the investigators’ attention was focused on his personal contacts and operations. See Gasztold, “Bejrut w Warszawie,” 49. 68Szczerski, “Decade of Luxury,” 193. 69AIPN, BU 0/204/541 t. 5, Akt oskarżenia z dn. 20 grudnia 1973, k. 300, 335. 70AIPN, BU 0/204/541 t. 3, Informacja z przebiegu rozprawy sądowej w sprawie krypt. “Harem” z dn. 5 marca 1974, k. 139.

72Rodríguez García, “League of Nations,” 109. AIPN, BU 0/204/541 t. 3, Informacja z przebiegu rozprawy sądowej z dn. 12 lutego 1974, k. 123; Informacja z przebiegu rozprawy sądowej w sprawie kryp. “Harem” z dn. 14 lutego 1974, k. 127.

Jo Doezema, “Who Gets to Choose? Coercion, Consent, and the UN Traf ficking Protocol,” Gender and Development 10, no. 1 (2002): 20–27.

Journal of Women ’s History192 Winter 74Wanda Falkowska, “Żywy towar i martwy przepis,” [Live Stock and Dead Letter] Polityka 5 (1974) 9. 75Falkowska, “Żywy towar i martwy przepis,” 9. 76Paweł Ambroziewicz, “Miłość szejka,” [Love of the Sheikh] Prawo i Życie 5 (1974): 16. 77Andrzej Gass, “Szejk i dziewczyny,” [Sheikh and the Girls] Kultura 4 (1974): 11. 78“Dziwex i mafia,” [Dziwex and Mafia] Antena 7 (April 14, 1981): 31. 79Paczkowski, Revolution and Counterrevolution in Poland, 31. 80 “O ś wiadczenie Mi ę dzyzakładowej Komisji Koordynacyjnej NSZZ Solidarność Pracowników Zakładów Rozrywkowych,” [Statement of the Enter tainment Enterprises Solidarność Trade Union Coordinating Committee] Antena, 13 (May 26, 1981), 2. 81Joanna Z. Mishtal, “How the Church Became the State: The Catholic Regime and Reproductive Rights in Socialist Poland,” in Penn and Massino, Gender Politics and Everyday Life, 133–49. 82Lewandowski, “Blondynki na sprzedaż,” 129. 83Bożena Basiewicz, “Długie nogi rozum krótki,” [Long Legs Short Mind] Nadodrze 16 (1981): 8. Basiewicz uses the term krótki rozum (literally, “short mind”) to stress the contrast between the long legs and the stupidity expected of the candidates.

84Wojciech Markiewicz, “Wyzysk człowieka przez człowieka,”[Exploitation of a Human by another Human] Życie Warszawy 128 (1981): 3. 85Stola, “Opening a Non-Exit State,” 105–106. 86Krystyna Świątecka, “Panienki do wynajęcia,” [Ladies for Rent] Tygodnik Kulturalny 28 (1982): 10. 87Consumption meant buying expensive drinks in order to spend more time with a particular woman. See Basiewicz “Długie nogi rozum krótki.” 88Krzysztof Walczak, “Mafia, panienki i pieniądze: ‘Dziwex’ przed sądem,” [Mafia, Ladies and Money: ‘Dziwex’ under a Trial] Życie Warszawy 15 (1983): 3. 89Markiewicz, “Wyzysk człowieka przez człowieka.” 90Jan Śpiewak, “Do redakcji nadszedł list,” [The Editors Received a Letter] Antena 17 (June 22, 1981): 32–31, 32. 91According to Gasztold, more than eight hundred thousand passports for travel to “capitalist countries” were issued in 1980. Gasztold, “Bejrut w Warszawie,” 32. 92Jolka added that her visit to East Germany did not count as a proper foreign trip. See Markiewicz, “Wyzysk człowieka przez człowieka.”

97To date, there has not been a lot of research on the “eroticization” of the public sphere in late state socialism. Case studies concentrated on East Germany and Yugoslavia: Biljana Žikić, “Dissidents Liked Pretty Girls: Nudity, Pornography and Quality Press in Socialism,” Medijska Istrazivanja 16, no. 1 (2010): 53–71; Josie McLellan, “Visual Dangers and Delights: Nude Photography in East Germany,” Past and Present 205, no. 1 (2009): 143–174. 98Izabela Kalinowska, “Seks, polityka i koniec PRL-u: O cielesności w polskim kinie lat osiemdziesiątych,” [Sex, Politics and the End of People’s Poland: Body in Polish Cinema of the 1980s] in Ciało i seksualność w kinie polskim, [Body and Sexual ity in Polish Cinema] ed. Sebastian Jagielski and Agnieszka Morstin-Poplawska (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego, 2009), 63–78, 73.

105See, for example, Anna Mazurkiewicz, ed., East Central European Migrations during the Cold War: A Handbook (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019).

Anna Dobrowolska2021 193 93Basia is most likely a pseudonym. No surnames are given in the article. Mieczysław Olbromski, “Komu dziewczynkę?,” [Who Wants a Girl?] Rzeczywistość 5 (1984): 7. 94See Paulina Bren and Mary Neuburger, introduction to Communism Un wrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe, ed. Bren and Neuburger (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3–16, 12. See also Joanna Zalewska, “Consumer Revolution in People’s Poland: Technologies in Everyday Life and the Negotiation between Custom and Fashion (1945–1980),” Journal of Consumer Culture 17, no. 2 (2017): 95321–39.

100For more on sexual violence and its discursive justifications, see Agnieszka Kościańska, “Gender on Trial: Changes in Legal and Discursive Practices Concern ing Sexual Violence in Poland from the 1970s to the Present,” Ethnologia Europaea 50, no. 1 (2020): 111–127. 101See De Vries, “‘White Slaves’ in a Colonial Nation,” 54–56. 102See Gert Hekma and Alain Giami, “Sexual Revolutions: An Introduction,” in Hekma and Giami, Sexual Revolutions, 1–24. 103Szulc, Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland, 5–7; Kateřina Lišková, Sexual Liberation, Socialist Style, 2–4. 104Marcin Zaremba, Communism—Legitimacy—Nationalism : Nationalist Legiti mization of the Communist Regime in Poland (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019).

99Małgorzata Piasecka, “Dziewczyny na eksport,” [Girls for Export] Sprawy i Ludzie 1 (1983): 1.

Olbromski, “Komu dziewczynkę?” 96Patryk Wasiak, “VCRs, Modernity, and Consumer Culture in Late State Socialist Poland,” in The Socialist Good Life: Desire, Development, and Standards of Living in Eastern Europe, ed. Cristofer Scarboro, Diana Mincyte, and Zsuzsa Gille (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020), 132–161.; Karol Jachymek, “A Train to Hollywood: Porno-Chic in the Polish Cinema of the Late 1980s,” European Journal of American Studies 13, no. 3 (2018): 1–10.

(In)Decent Work: Sex and the ILO

By tracing sex work as it weaves in and out of the actions taken by the International Labour Organization (ILO) from its foundation in 1919 to the present, this article complicates the narrative the ILO tells about itself as well as about the place of what it judged to be prostitution in the making of the larger global labor standards regime. Given the many sections within its permanent secretariat, the International Labour Of fice, as well as its position as an arena serving diverse stakeholders from nation-states, trade unions, employer associations, and, increasingly, women’s organizations and NGOs, the ILO offers a long-twentiethcentury history of the tension between intimate labor and the quest for decent work. Thus, this analysis connects to broader discussions of global labor regulation and its relationship to the international political economy. It provides, furthermore, the first contextualized analysis of sex and the ILO over its entire history.

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García

Introduction In the late 1990s, Lin Lean Lim, a development economist specializing in gender at the Geneva-based International Labour Office (hereafter referred to as the Office), traveled to Washington, DC, to refute the charge by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women that the ILO had called for the legalization of prostitution.1 Lim’s edited book, The Sex Sector, had won the Nike Award, given by feminist sexologist writer Shere Hite, at the 1998 Frankfurt Book Fair. In accepting the prize, Lim reiterated that “recognition of prostitution as an economic sector” was not the same as endorsing legalization. The ILO had insisted that “it is for countries themselves to decide on the legal stance to adopt.” Indeed, the book explained, “The question of legalization is thorny because the human rights concerns are difficult to disentangle from concerns over morality, criminality and public health threats. Many of these concerns would stretch the ILO’s jurisdiction beyond its current mandate.”

2 Lim later would spearhead initiatives on Better Work for Women. Her attributing the sex sector to macroeconom ics, migration, and uneven gender and generational power reflected new trends in feminist research. Her denial that sex work was part of the ILO’s institutional portfolio repeated a nearly century-old mantra.

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García2021 195

This article problematizes that denial by the international organization that for the last century has defined what is work and who is a worker. Pre cisely because the ILO produces the most authoritative information about the world of work, its findings have set the terms for national as well as international debates. Yet ILO information is not neutral, as we show in analyzing its engagement with sex work. In excluding commercialized sex from the rules of global labor standards even when staff like Lim were able to frame it as an economic process, the ILO has allowed nations to at best ignore and at worst punish those who earn their living in the sex sector. By tracing sex work as it weaves in and out of ILO actions over the last cen tury, we more than complicate the narrative that the ILO tells about itself. The place of prostitution in the making of the larger global labor standards regime tells us much about who is deserving of “decent work,” with real implications for those who ply this trade. Here we map the ragged contours of worker protection, criminaliza tion, and moralism that has characterized ILO deliberation over sex work. For us, the ILO offers a way to trace continuities and shifts in discourse as well as to parse forces informing policy deliberations on a global scale. The ILO never saw itself as a leader on the question of sex work and considered sex trafficking to be “of a criminal character” and the responsibility of other international agencies.3 Prostitution and additional forms of commercialized sex, it insisted, belonged to the criminal underside of global exchange rather than to labor relations, its domain. In unraveling this claim, we use ILO history to provide a long-twen tieth-century perspective on the tension between intimate labor and the quest for decent work, that is, employment regulated by wage, hour, health and safety, and other standards. Encouraged by the ILO’s own Centennial Project, researchers over the last decade have mined its archives to produce histories on a range of topics—for example, child labor—including big questions related to globalization, colonialism, the Cold War, and devel opment. Historians debate the ILO’s relative impact, consider the role of various countries in its deliberations, and place this specialized agency of the United Nations in relation to other international entities. As part of the transnational turn in women and gender history, the ILO has become an arena for analyzing forces shaping women’s work and the resulting uneven and unequal trends in gender equity.4 While each of us has considered sex work in our previous research, this article provides the first contextualized analysis of commercial sex and the ILO over its entire history. It does so in relation to the growing scholarship on both trafficking and commodified sex and the role played by international organizations in setting normative frameworks.5

Journal of Women ’s History196 Winter

Generating knowledge about what counts as work and who is a worker, the ILO for most of its history has privileged industrial employment and the formal sector. In this regard, commercial sex appeared as an evil, very different from “respectable work.” That this designation had cracks from the start illuminates the challenges sex as work posed for conventional dichotomies between productive and reproductive labor. Sex work, like domestic work, stood outside the ILO’s tripartite negotiations between governments, employer organizations, and trade unions even though it often involved the crossing of borders or international markets, another criterion for ILO action. That understanding hasn’t kept the ILO from becom ing embroiled in debates over “sexual slavery” pushed by antiprostitution forces, known as abolitionists in the interwar years and neo-abolitionists later in the twentieth century.

Our analysis focuses on three distinct periods. During the first, from 1919 through the founding of the United Nations after the Second World War, the ILO developed its views on women’s labor, sexually transmitted diseases, and prostitution. The linking of labor migration, sexual danger, and trafficking reflected a protective stance toward women workers, whose unorganized status required legal regulation to combat low wages and unhealthful conditions.

6 The ILO expressed the dominant gender ideology, which viewed women’s employment as a failure of male breadwinning. Meanwhile, the problem of the social welfare of seafarers in ports sparked resistance to ILO instruments by both moral reformers and feminists. With the founding of the United Nations, when other agencies became responsible for migration, the ILO responded to measures on commercial sex initiated elsewhere.

Founded in 1919 along with the League of Nations, the ILO addressed the world of work as a norms-setting body that brought together delegates from governments, workers, and employers at an annual International Labour Conference to pass treaty-like conventions. Precisely because of its unique tripartite organization (representing states, organized workers, and employer groups), it offers a unique vantage point missing from the scholarly conversation on sexual labors that, with the notable exception of international treaties, concerns political and social history within nations.

With many branches within the Office (its policy and research component), the ILO was never a unified entity, so NGOs and individual activists from various perspectives found supporters within its ranks. Contestations within the ILO reveal disjunctures between scientific expertise, institutional interests, and global power among member states.

During the second period, after the World Employment Conference of 1976, the ILO investigated the status of women in developing countries. The migration of rural women to cities and a growing tourist sex trade became

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García2021 197 an area of conflict between ILO feminist development experts and more cau tious members of the organization. Two ILO studies, Pasuk Phongpaichit’s From Peasant Girls to Bangkok Masseuses (1982) and Lin Lean Lim’s The Sex Sector (1998), not only illuminate the impact of structural development and modernization on gendered social relations but also exemplify struggles within the ILO over the place of sex in analyzing women’s labor. Moreover, they represent an intellectual shift within the ILO generated by a bottomup approach to commercial sex in Asia, which paralleled the nascent labor view of prostitution in the West.

Fighting the Evil Soon after their founding, the League of Nations and the ILO indirectly addressed the issue of prostitution. States perceived commercial sex to be under their jurisdiction, but both organizations recognized the practice as transcending borders. Prostitution belonged to campaigns against alleged international criminal networks, forced movements of people, and the global spread of bacteria and viruses.7 In this context, the ILO considered prostitution a by-product of women’s emigrating without men in search of work.8

During a period when legal-equality feminists battled the ILO’s laborite supporters of women-only protective legislation, protection framed ILO responses to commercial sex. Each organization could cite authority in its founding documents to tackle social evils. Article 23c of the Covenant of the League of Nations entrusted the organization with monitoring international agreements on trafficking in women and children, while the preamble of the ILO’s constitution charged it with protecting workers against disease and establishing protective labor standards. The League also agreed on the creation of a technical committee to specifically tackle health concerns, founding the League of Nations Health Organization (LNHO) in 1921. To monitor pre war international treaties, the League that year established the Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, which included a rep resentative from the ILO.9

Finally, beginning at the end of the twentieth century, as the organiza tion appeared more willing to expand its understanding of work and work ers, sex work returned to the ILO agenda through questions of HIV/AIDS, child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking. Nonetheless, the implicit definition of prostitution as disreputable work still contradicted the efforts of some of the ILO’s own experts on women, development, and occupational health to address sexual industries and to improve the conditions under which sex workers struggle for dignity and a decent living.

Journal of Women ’s History198 Winter

12 After the Genoa maritime conference of 1920, the ILO attempted to promote itself as one of the key players in an interna tional network for the treatment and prevention of STDs among seamen.

Under the leadership of Director-General Albert Thomas, a French socialist, the ILO created its own medical division. It focused initially on sailors, whose “nomadic” and “promiscuous” life made them particularly vulnerable to infection.

These Geneva-based organizations focused on venereal disease. They continued efforts that had begun at the end of the nineteenth century, when medical authorities, police, voluntary organizations, and others agreed that the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) called for an interna tional response. A healthy labor force and army were crucial to protecting nation-states and to guaranteeing the realization of imperialist projects, but women selling sex, it was believed, spread contagion and thus required containment.10

It surveyed treatment centers in ports and harbors and sponsored the 1924 International Agreement Respecting Facilities to be given to Merchant Seamen for the Treatment of Venereal Diseases. This agreement guaranteed free treatment to all merchant seamen or watermen without distinction, and the ILO issued an individual but anonymous health card that enabled the patient to continue treatment in the next port of call.14 Director-General Thomas deflected pleas by moral reformers, such as the British Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, to abolish prostitution by referring the issue to the Maritime Commission, essentially tabling such requests.

Although the ILO had initially focused on medical treatment and the prevention of STDs, in the late 1920s its discourse became more moralistic. The organization allied itself with religious condemnation of sex outside marriage and notions of bodily control and privacy. This shift probably developed as a result of increased cooperation with the Union Internatio nale contre le Péril Vénérien (UIPV) [International Union against Venereal Danger] and the League’s Traffic Committee. Established in 1923, the UIPV was made up of state representatives, various specialist (eugenicist) societ ies, and technical representatives from the LNHO, the International Council of Women, and the ILO.

The experience of the First World War and the increased mobility of people further propelled local, national, and international ac tion against STDs.

In the early 1930s, the UIPV sought to balance its medical approach with that of social hygiene, a perspective that emphasized the cleansing of “deviant” behaviors. Its proposals served as a basis for the 1936 Seamen’s Welfare in Ports Recommendation (No. 48), in which the ILO suggested, among other things, the regulation of the sale of alcohol, the prohibition of the entry into dock and harbor areas of “undesirable persons,” the supervi sion of persons visiting ships, and an “energetic repression” of soliciting

23 The ILO, it argued, should go further and recommend that individual nations police the work ing conditions of theaters and other amusement sites. The League’s Traffic Committee urged the ILO to establish supervisory regulations including reasonableness of hours and “conditions of contact,” so as to subvert any “attempt by . . . management . . . to induce the girls to lead immoral lives.”

The final instrument was a nonbinding recommendation rather than part of a treaty-like convention, but the League judged any recognition of its position “a success.”

Over the years, the League’s Traffic Committee requested ILO action. As early as 1923 it bid the ILO to consider how governments could warn women and children “against the risk of accepting” work in “theatrical en gagements” abroad that might lead to moral turpitude.

The ILO in turn involved professional organizations of artists to oversee

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García2021 199 and enticing in districts frequented by seamen.

17 Opposition by both moral reformers and feminists led the ILO to retreat from proposed articles that would have impacted women; one called for the regulation, rather than abolition, of prostitution, and the other would restrict women from working in “public houses” near the docks. The ILO dropped the first, and the second turned into a plank barring the employment of minors, a gender-neutral for mulation that, if carried out, would have impacted mostly young women.18

The ILO also saw the extension of labor standards to migrant workers as central to its mission, with women constituting a particularly vulnerable group. The presence of women activists at ILO deliberations ensured that the mostly male delegates could not ignore the trafficking of immigrant women. These women spoke in the name of organized womanhood. Thus, in 1922 Uruguayan feminist Dr. Paulina Luisi, a delegate to both the con ference and the League’s Traffic Committee, shaped how the ILO would compile statistical data requested by the International Emigration Com mission. She insisted that data be collected by intervals of age in order to better capture the exposure of young women to what moral reformers saw as the dangers of travel.

Labor feminist Margaret Bondfield argued for protections of emigrant women. In 1926 she represented British workers as a delegate to the ILO Committee on the Simplification of Inspectors on Emigrant Ships. The League’s Traffic Committee had asked the ILO to gather data on “arrange ments” prior to departure, during the voyage, and upon arrival, especially for obtaining employment. It also wanted information on “treatment of undesirables,” by which it meant procurers and women selling sex.20 Bond field called for female supervisors on such vessels to protect women and children traveling alone from “any dangers or temptations arising out of the traffic in women and children,” an idea that stressed both the alleged moral superiority of women and the potential threat coming from men.

Journal of Women ’s History200 Winter regulation of such employment. Fear that night work bred immorality al ready justified a protective convention limiting hours for women—Night Work (Women) Convention, 1919 (No. 4). Another specific response to these demands was the 1932 Minimum Age (Non-Industrial Employment) Convention (No. 33), which set a minimum age for occupations they judged to be morally as well as physically dangerous, including work in establish ments serving alcohol.25

While the committee’s membership was fairly stable during its inter war life, the attending ILO staff specialists on migration were replaced by specialists on women and social welfare. Among the new participants was Marguerite Thibert, the French socialist and feminist who, beginning in 1933 led the ILO’s Section on Conditions of Employment of Women and Children.30 Thibert seemed more determined to tackle the problems faced by working women, but her conclusions on prostitution resembled those of abolitionists inside and outside the League. At a 1934 meeting of the League’s Traffic Committee, the representative of the International Union of Catholic Women’s Leagues reported findings “that unemployment, and even the inadequacy of women’s earnings, constituted one of the factors of prostitution.” Nevertheless, this representative believed that “the replies of prostitutes were often merely pretexts”; many of them simply “refused to work.”

While the Polish delegate emphasized that unemployment “consti tuted a serious danger” for young women, Thibert argued that her attempt to study the subject had floundered on inadequate statistics.

All participants in these debates rejected seeing commercial sex as work. They defined work in narrow terms, meaning industrial labor and activities unrelated to reproduction and sexuality. They also understood work as something positive that would keep men and women at a safe distance from an immoral life. Since the nineteenth century, voluntary as sociations had established nonprofit employment bureaus and rescue homes offering training and workrooms to women.32 Although certain forms of employment (such as domestic service or jobs in bars, dance halls, and other

By the 1930s, the League’s experts had finalized their inquiries into international trafficking in women and children.26 They concluded that the state regulation system, which registered and monitored sex workers, and the prevalence of intermediaries or procurers were among the main causes of global trafficking and prostitution.27 This finding led the League’s Traffic Committee to call for the abolition of the regulation system, which, it argued, maintained women in “a position of terrible slavery.”28 With the crisis of the worldwide depression, its meetings more consistently addressed the relationship between women’s low wages, unemployment, and commercial sex. Members considered the best means to rehabilitate women newly pro hibited from working in licensed brothels and to “prevent . . . immorality.”

33 However, attention to working conditions was necessary. Wages and the status of some occupations needed improvement to protect women against the “temptation to find a way out by taking up a shame ful but profitable trade.”

The League intended to make work seem attractive to women, but it needed to be monitored. They applauded the efforts of voluntary organiza tions that sought cooperation with ministries of labor and private employ ment agencies to obtain working permits for foreign girls which included “moral guarantees” clauses for jobs abroad.

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García2021 201 public places) “may cause moral danger,” the ILO concluded that a lack of occupation was no less risky. As noted in the ILO’s chapter for a 1939 study by the Advisory Committee on Social Questions, which replaced the League’s Traffic Committee in 1938, the idea was to provide “protection by means of work.”

34 Within the ILO, Thibert attempted to improve domestic work, but she admitted that progress on redefining household labor as worthy was slow.35

36 The ILO too promoted itself as a crucial partner in the task of supervising female labor. It called for monitoring employment agencies, with the goal of abolishing fee-charging; regulating workplace conditions; and protecting nonwork time. Since spare time stood outside the employer-employee relationship, the ILO would bypass that issue. Instead, in 1939 it lauded recreation activities organized by charitable associations and political parties, as well as German, Italian, and Soviet tourist services. These initiatives, it explained, went beyond recreation in aiming to teach “young persons of both sexes to live in normal, healthy friendship.”

Health concerns remained a priority, which explains the ILO’s repeated call for increased cooperation between the League’s Advisory Social Ques tions Committee and the LNHO. In addition, UIPV leader J. A. Cavaillon favored coordinated action between the Geneva specialized organizations, contributing a chapter on the reduction of demand to the League’s study on prevention of prostitution—a Swedish model avant la lettre [before the letter].38 In the immediate postwar period, the ILO joined hands with the LNHO’s successor, the World Health Organization (WHO). As the role played by private associations diminished, the ILO-WHO campaigns against STDs became more technical and based purely on medical grounds.39 ILO staff requested best practices from merchant seamen and shipping officials, but contact with the UIPV declined after the Second World War. At the end of the 1950s, ILO recommended WHO as a more appropriate liaison for action on venereal disease.40

During the early postwar years, the ILO and the entire UN system addressed equal rights and development. These foci led to UN declarations and conventions on political, civil, and social rights and ILO instruments on equal remuneration and nondiscrimination. The migrant worker still appeared as a male breadwinner, but his family deserved equal access to social services, including maternity protection. In the midst of the Cold War and decolonization, contending forces sought to paint the other as oppres sive to their citizenry, with the Soviet Union and its allies castigating the United States for race and sex discrimination and the United States point ing to forced labor in the Soviet Union. Both sides sought to score points with the nonaligned nations of the so-called Third World. Worker, mother, and citizen would describe women on both sides of what the Western bloc called the “Iron Curtain,” but support for formal as opposed to substantive equality shifted depending on political alignments at the United Nations and the ILO—institutions where the United States gradually lost its hegemony after the entry of former colonial states.

A New Understanding of Commercial Sex

Journal of Women ’s History202 Winter

UN discussions on commercialized sex retained “slavery” and “traffic in persons” frameworks. In 1959, the UN Department of Social and Eco nomic Affairs produced a report equating trafficking with prostitution (so both were considered to be one and the same thing). ECOSOC requested that the International Criminal Police Organization work with the United Nations “to eliminate all practices resembling slavery,” including com

The ILO’s early views on prostitution were neither static nor monolithic. It appears that at midcentury the ILO continued to consider prostitution only indirectly. It participated, for example, in joint ILO-WHO committees on the hygiene of seafarers and on occupational health. At the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), it never objected to resolutions calling for the abolition of trafficking and prostitution. From its origins in 1946, the CSW asked the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) for “strong measures to put down traffic in women and children,” prevention of “clandestine prostitution” by making “it no longer necessary for women to earn money by these means,” and rehabilitation of women who sold sex so that they could “return to normal life without discrimination” through education and work.

41 ECOSOC, however, built upon a 1938 draft of the League of Nations that lacked a human rights framework. The 1949 UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others criminalized sex work, including managing or financ ing a brothel, and thus continued to conflate trafficking with prostitution. Socialist countries called for prevention through economic improvement, while claiming to have eliminated the practice.42

Feminists clashed over commercial sex at the 1975 World Conference of the International Women’s Year in Mexico City, whose official document requested governments “to take measures to prevent the forced prostitu tion of women and girls.” There the representative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) asked other UN units, including the ILO, to address “the traffic in women” as “the most painful aspect of sexism.” Like an earlier generation of legal-equality femi nists, antitrafficking activists sought legitimatization through international forums. They pushed for UN-sponsored studies that could justify ECOSOC requests that governments develop programs of action against prostitution.

In this environment, the ILO focused on living and working conditions. Sex returned to its agenda in 1976, when the World Employment Confer ence devoted special attention to rural women in developing countries.45 The ILO was part of a broad ideological turn which not only prioritized fitting women into existing development schemes but also advocated for doing more to aid them by using economic developments in the Global South to improve the status of women. Led by women within the UN system, proponents of women in development advocated for legal equality, property holding, credit, voting, and civil rights. But such proposals did not necessarily reduce poverty, because they ignored larger structural factors. Thus competing paradigms—women and development and then the postmodernist-influenced gender and development—questioned the sexual division of labor and the gendered discourse of development itself to account for the private as well as the public, including power within the household, marriage, and sexuality.

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez mercial sex. Two years later, it initiated a working group on the question. These initiatives occurred amid renewed feminist debates about prostitu tion in relation to sex discrimination, bodily autonomy, and patriarchy.

García2021 203

47 In a preface to Phongpaichit’s preliminary 1980 working paper, “Rural Women of Thailand: From Peasant Girls to Bangkok Masseuses,” Dharam Ghai, chief of the Rural Employment Policies Branch,

In the late 1970s, the Programme on Rural Women brought a feminist postcolonial perspective to the ILO, situating the position of women in terms of larger socioeconomic conditions. In commissioning ethnographies about subsistence and informal sector workers, the program shifted the meaning of productive labor to include those previously dismissed as nonwork ers. It supported research on young women as masseuses in the sex trade of Bangkok undertaken by Pasuk Phongpaichit, a Thai economist with a PhD from Cambridge University. This was perhaps the first time a branch of the ILO described commercial sex as a form of work. Significantly, the idea of prostitution as work entered the ILO via its connections to Asia, where survival strategies ruptured norms of proper womanhood and nar row definitions of work.

52 Another commentator, Assistant Director-General Ali Taqi thought the conclusion would generate reaction from “an alert US Government official and prob ably the Employers’ group,” not for its portrayal of commercial sex but for its critique of Thai development policy “under the tutelage of the United States.” That reaction, however, could not “be a decisive one,” he claimed; “otherwise the ILO would never publish anything not palatable to particular

The establishment of US military bases in Thailand in the mid-1960s had expanded “go-go” bars and the phenomenon of “hired wives”—many of them migrating from rural areas—for American servicemen.49 Phong paichit analyzed this growing sector through in-depth interviews with fifty masseuses and conducted field trips to the girls’ villages of origin. She focused on the reasons for their migration, the impact on their families, the women’s experiences in sex work, and the advantages of undertaking the trade in massage parlors. The women worked in “an environment often safer and more comfortable than other forms of organized prostitution,” without pimps.50 Unlike previous studies on prostitution produced in Ge neva, Phongpaichit’s stressed the economic motives of the women involved and the negative impact of the Thai market economy on rural households. The wide income gap between urban and rural landscapes provided the setting for migration. About the interviewed Thai masseuses Phongpaichit concluded:Theywere engaging in an entrepreneurial move designed to sus tain the family units of a rural economy which was coming under increasing pressure. . . . The returns available in this particular business, rather than in other business accessible to an unskilled and uneducated person, had a powerful effect on their choices. Our survey clearly showed that the girls felt they were making a perfectly rational decision within the context of their particular social and economic situation.51 Fears of both adverse publicity and objections by the Thai and US governments delayed publication of the preliminary paper for two years. Top ILO officials were nervous about its content. According to one disapproving official R. S. Kirman, “The sensitive nature of the subject could lead to trouble.” He cited reactions to a UNESCO study twenty years earlier “on the harlots of the Lebanon,” that critics brought up to disparage “the Organisation (waste of tax-payers’ money, etc., etc.).” Given that the sub ject was “on the fringe of the ILO’s competence,” he felt that publishing it wasn’t worth the possible pushback from the Thai government.

Journal of Women ’s History204 Winter praised the investigation on Thai masseuses as “an important contribution to understanding a highly publicised but under-researched dimension of women’s work.”48

ILO officials mostly embraced Lim’s project, but since it dealt with a “controversial subject,” numerous departments within the Office subjected

In calling the work “informative and insightful” and “original and pioneering,” Ghai defended his feminist staff, which had lobbied for the study’s release. But he agreed that parts of it required redrafting, as was typical for any manuscript.54 Director-General Francis Blanchard, a Frenchborn international civil servant, “took a personal interest in this matter,” approving publication after the manuscript was revised on the basis of his comments to remove “sensitive or offensive” passages. No official signed the preface of Phongpaichit’s study, which appeared under the name of the division and thus was to insulate the ILO from its findings.55

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García2021 205 governments.”

In subsequent decades, the blooming of sex tourism and the fear of the spread of HIV infection strengthened the ILO’s interest in commercial sex.

The Office knew enough to have the work peer reviewed by prominent scholar activist Priscilla Alexander, who confirmed that the ILO was “the appropriate agency to work on trying to ameliorate the conditions within which prostitutes work.” Alexander noted that “the contributors found that sex workers generally have better working conditions than other workers.”

In the 1990s, Lim, then ILO Senior Specialist on Women Workers’ Questions for Asia and the Pacific, further antagonized neo-abolitionists within the prostitution debate. It is not clear whether or to what extent the sex workers’ movement that started to take shape in the late 1970s influenced Lim. Yet her edited collection shows many commonalities not only with the research conducted by Phongpaichit but also with conclusions drawn by activists and scholars who called for the redefinition of commercial sex as work.58

While there would be attention from the popular press, no one could be sure of its tone. The ILO might even be praised for its “cour age to study a sensitive problem.”

The ILO released the report in part because the original working paper had generated much press, including the publication of an unauthorized condensed version by the Southeast Asia Resource Center in Berkeley, California.56 It did not want to appear to be hiding anything. Nonetheless, removed from the published version were detailed passages that blamed “the flesh trade” on Chinese merchants, Thai generals, the US military, and German travel agents. Added to the conclusion was a gesture to moral reform, a line on the presence of “organisations dedicated to refurbish ing the moral character of the massage girls, and also a number of more sensible institutions which try to help them out of trouble.” Nonetheless, Phongpaichit retained her overall economic analysis, which saw a solution only “in a massive change in the distribution of income between city and country, and in a fundamental shift in Thailand’s orientation to the inter national economy.”

The collection examined the social and economic factors that had influ enced the growth of the sex industry in four Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand). In emphasizing the eco nomic basis of commercial sex, the essays stressed material and nonmaterial advantages gained by young, uneducated (migrant) women: higher wages, flexibility, and increased mobility.

61 The various authors argued that since prostitution had developed into a full-blown industry employing millions of people worldwide, it should be recognized as an economic sector. Such official recognition implied maintenance of records and statistics, which in turn would facilitate the preparation of development plans and government budgets, as well as allow for accurate assessments of sectorial health impact and general working conditions. The study clearly distinguished between adult and child prostitution, the latter judged a human rights violation and an intolerable form of labor to be eradicated, a position embodied in the 1999 ILO convention, Worst Forms of Child Labour (No. 182).

Adult prostitution was another matter. In introducing the book, Lim acknowledged the “wide range of circumstances of those in prostitution.” She divided adults engaged in the sex trade into three categories: those mak ing “a relatively ‘free’ personal choice . . . as their right to sexual liberation”; those participating in response to “economic pressures or because there are no better-paying alternatives”; and those “overtly pressured by third parties in the form of deception, violence and/or debt bondage.” Hence, in the case of adults “it may be possible to make a distinction between

Journal of Women ’s History206 Winter it to intense scrutiny. Institutional caution delayed publication for a year. Some feared damage to the ILO’s reputation since the data resulted from unreliable statistics given by NGOs “which have a vested interest in exag geration.” Skeptics questioned which ILO “objectives are furthered by the manuscript” and what policy implications derived from its findings. Senior management and the publications division argued over inclusion of the chapter on child prostitution, but they ultimately agreed that such “sections . . . effectively complement our work on the preparation of a new convention prohibiting the most intolerable forms of child labour.” As with Phongpaichit’s book, they debated whether someone should sign a preface to confirm institutional acceptance of the findings. As the Deputy DirectorGeneral for External Relations in a thoroughly self-aware explanation put it, the publication needed “to contain a clarification of the ILO’s position (i.e., non-position) on the issue of whether prostitution should in and of itself be legalized and why the ILO is willing to publish a book on working conditions . . . in particular countries.” Not wanting to signal too much ap proval, the then Director-General, Michael Hansenne, opted for no signature even though two senior officials had offered their names for the preface to underscore the gender and geographical diversity of the organization.

Not all responses were hostile. Lim won support from feminists who viewed prostitution as a form of work and from some sex worker organi zations, including the International Committee for Prostitutes Rights, the Network of Sex Worker Projects, and the Dutch Rode Draad (Red Thread).

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García2021 207

The European Network for HIV/STD Prevention in Prostitution took ex ception to calls for all feminists to oppose the ILO; its proposals included decriminalization and safe working conditions. The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission found the study “excellent and thoughtprovoking,” in keeping with a “commitment to sexual autonomy.” This commission addressed sex work from the perspective of “protection from exploitation.”

Speaking to other opponents of trafficking, the Foundation Against Trafficking in Women explained, “A great deal of NGOs working in the field support the ILO report, its conclusions and its nuanced approach,” especially for laying the basis for including sex workers in international labor standards.66

63 This stance generated con troversy, leading the ILO to engage in damage control. Lim developed a standard reply to set the record straight, which even the Director-General vetted.64 Constant bombardment took a toll; to one member of management, she tendered an apology “for the problems I have caused the Office.” By August 1999, some six months after publication, she did not “want to talk to any more reporters.”

‘voluntary’ prostitution and prostitution through coercion.” Implicit in her analysis was a harsh criticism of the neo-abolitionist approach. “Many current studies,” she wrote, “highlight the pathetic stories of individual prostitutes, especially of women and children deceived or coerced into the sector. Such an approach tends to sensationalize the issues and to evoke moralistic, rather than practical, responses.”

By contrast, the neo-abolitionist camp rebuked Lim. The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women generated a petition campaign against the ILO’s alleged “view that the prostitution of women must now be regarded as an economic asset for national development in Third World countries.”

The Norwegian paper Klassekampen (Class Struggle) said that it would en gage with the Geneva organization when the ILO leadership “is satisfied that its own children or grand-children have secured a good job in a brothel and are satisfied with having to work only eight hours a day.”68 While this and other journalistic distortions of Lim’s work could be dismissed, hun dreds of Norwegian union women, along with feminists, antitrafficking NGOs, and religious women from Kenya, Sweden, Thailand, the United States, Venezuela, and elsewhere, could not. They petitioned the ILO’s Director-General and the UN Secretary-General to treat prostitution as a “deprivation of women’s human rights.”

69 Radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys, then a reader in Political Science at the University of Melbourne, sought to

Journal of Women ’s History208 Winter

disabuse the ILO on the efficacy of legalization. “Prostitution is not just a ‘service industry’ that creates some difficult problems of regulation,” she argued, “it is a practice of violence based upon women’s subordination.”

71 Raymond, who taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, selected passages from the book to criticize Lim’s alleged call for the recognition of prostitution as “a legal occupation.”

The most serious challenge came from the United States. In March 1999, “New Right” Republican Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, chair of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, found in the book ammunition for his crusade to eliminate UN funding and take the United States out of the ILO. On advice from a Republican insider, the ILO Washington office mobilized employer and worker supporters to lobby both political parties in favor of the Geneva organization. Helms ended up withdrawing his threatening amendment, but later that year he negotiated reduced UN fund ing as the condition for confirmation of a new US ambassador to the UN.

The subsequent question-and-answer sheet prepared by Lim in response to such detractors represented a retreat. It claimed, “The ILO does not regard prostitution—even if voluntarily entered into by adults—as decent work. ”

In an essay issued by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women shortly after the publication of Lim’s collection, US radical feminist Janice Raymond castigated the ILO. It had “become the latest and most question able group urging acceptance of the sex industry,” because legalization of the sex sector necessarily implied a “recognition of prostitution and related forms of sexual entertainment as sex work.”

Repression Versus Protection

Meanwhile, HIV/AIDS prevention offered a new entry point into the debate on commercial sex in the 1980s.77 While the ILO still proffered na tional responsibility as its official position, focusing on questions of health proved more pragmatic. Late in that decade, the ILO held a joint consulta tion with the WHO on AIDS and the workplace. Due to the typically slow bureaucratic pace the organization took towards controversial subjects, ILO did not establish the Programme on HIV/AIDS (ILO/AIDS) until late 2000.78 This program has focused on the factors that enhance the risks of

72 Lim provided a more nuanced stance, writing: “In the case of adults, prostitution could be viewed as a matter of personal choice and a form of work, in which case the policy issues are mainly concerned with whether prostitution should be recognized as a legal occupation with protection under labour law and social security and health regulations.”

73 However, she reminded her audience, the ILO refrained from making rec ommendations because it respected the authority of national governments to forge their own policies.

86 By century’s end, the issue of trafficking and underage or forced prostitution had returned to the agendas of national governments and international organizations. Pressures from post-Cold War globalization as well as a growing tourist trade threatened increased child labor, motivating the ILO to approve the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention in June 1999. The ILO asked the international community to combat the offering of children for prostitution and the production of pornography on a global scale.87 It had already taken up the issue of forced sexual labor through

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García2021 209 HIV infection, including barriers to treatment. The 99th International Labour Conference in 2010 adopted Recommendation No. 200—Recommendation concerning HIV and AIDS and the World of Work, 2010—with the aim of strengthening national policies and programs to combat the pandemic.79

Richard Howard, a former senior specialist on HIV and AIDS in the Asia-Pacific region, described the ILO’s approach after the promulgation of the recommendation as “an intermediary strategy for addressing the working conditions and improved HIV prevention, treatment and services for sex workers.”84 Emphasizing the vulnerabilities of sex workers, the ILO/AIDS program thus aimed at “reducing stigma and discrimination, promoting economic empowerment of women and men and addressing gender dimensions.”85 Rather than launching an international convention on sex work, the program has promoted “decent work” in the sex industry by reducing stigmatization and discrimination.

The ILC’s Committee on HIV/AIDS debated whether this recommendation would apply to sex workers. A Dutch government member proposed directly naming the list of covered workers and services.80 It would be dif ficult to develop effective programs if this important target group remained unrecognized. The worker representative from Switzerland supported the addition, but governments were divided. The French government tellingly “could not support the amendment, since sex workers were not a legal category of workers.” In the end, the committee saw an explicit reference to sex workers as unnecessary since they fell under references to both “all sectors of economic activity, including the private and public sectors and the formal and informal economies” and “all workers working under all forms or arrangements, and at all workplaces.”81

Sex worker organizations hailed the passage of Recommendation No. 200 as a step forward. As activists from the Global Network of Sex Work Projects noted, discussions around HIV showed that the ILO was approach ing prostitution as a question of labor. 82 The ILO’s Occupational Health and Safety Branch stressed that the recommendation “reaches out to all workers,” while highlighting its community-based initiatives to train sex workers.83 The use of the term sex worker instead of prostitute in policy papers and communications on its HIV programs underscored a workerist frame.

Journal of Women ’s History210 Winter the question of reparations for Japanese use of “comfort women” for their troops prior to and during World War II. When the Osaka Fu Special English Teachers’ Union asked for appropriate compensations, the ILO’s Commit tee of Experts ruled that Japan’s system of military sexual slavery violated the Forced Labour Convention (No. 29) of 1930. But the committee did not have the power to order relief.88 For the twenty-first century, the ILO created the Special Action Pro gramme to Combat Forced Labour. Like earlier instruments (such as the 1904 Paris Agreement and the UN 1949 convention), this very act increased the conceptual confusion in international law that conflates human traf ficking with commercial sex.89 According to a 2014 study for the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, such international law provisions establish a thin line between prostitution and trafficking.90 Article 2(1) of the ILO’s 1930 convention defines forced or com pulsory labor as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.”

91 On its website, the ILO expanded this definition to include “new forms of forced labour that have emerged in recent decades, such as ‘human trafficking’, also called ‘modern slavery’, to shed light on working and living conditions contrary to human dignity.”92 However, modern slavery has no juridical definition, and human trafficking, in legal terms, constitutes not a form of (labor) exploitation but a process.93 This broad interpretation of forced labor reifies the binary victim/ perpetrator without accounting for the fluidity and complexity of labor relationships in the global sex industry. 94 It negates the agency of sex workers motivated by their own circumstances rather than by “trafficker enticement.”

95 It also simplifies labor arrangements, which often result in both progress and subjugation, improving workers’ economic opportuni ties, while submitting them to exploitative working conditions.96 Akin to analyses and international tools to combat trafficking during the early twentieth century, the ILO pronouncements on forced labor currently stress dangers presented to women and girls, establishing a dichotomy between forced sexual exploitation and forced labor exploitation.97 Indeed, the ILO has relied on the research of antitrafficking activist Siddharth Kara, who promotes the criminalization of clients, the destruction of the economic basis of the industry that produces “sex slaves,” and the establishment of “community vigilance committees” to rescue trafficked women and girls.98 Such neo-abolitionist activists deploy the popular language of “anti slavery” to cast commercial sex as gender-based violence. So do public authorities that present themselves as defenders of human rights to justify stringent migration policies and to arbitrarily remove people or businesses

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García2021 211 deemed undesirable. It is therefore doubtful that the ILO campaigns against forced labor, modern slavery, and human trafficking will boost the efforts of ILO/AIDS to improve the working and living conditions of local and migrant sex workers. The larger political context—in which international organizations confront prostitution scandals and public discussions on sexual violence and harassment ignore sex workers—has strengthened neoabolitionist views of male predators and female victims.99 Amid this din, the ILO’s health branch quietly has pursued its activities without insisting on the formal recognition of commercial sex as a form of work.

The ILO’s health branch has been more inclined than other units to take a pragmatic approach. Since the 1950s, and particularly following the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, its programs have focused on treatment and prevention rather than on the morality of sex work. Learning from the controversy over Lim’s The Sex Sector, the ILO/AIDS staff has adopted a gradual strategy to address sexual labor. Instead of proposing measures that could be interpreted as a call for the legalization of prostitution, they have concentrated—particularly in the Global South—on the development of national HIV/AIDS workplace legislation and policies, the expansion of social protection for people affected by HIV and AIDS, and the reduction of workers’ vulnerability to HIV through economic empowerment. Whether this strategy will lead to the integration of sex workers into national trade unions in more countries than is now the case, and whether such recogni tion will translate into the decriminalization or legalization of sex work, will depend on two factors: the strength of the neo-abolitionist movement and, more importantly, the resilience of sex worker organizations.

“The subject of prostitution has always been controversial,” wrote Lim.100 In 2003 the ILO legal department, JUR (Judicial), asserted, “Prosti tution has never been considered as employment or occupation.”101 It rec ommended statistical definitions, however, that included “hostesses” and “escorts,” often euphemisms for women selling sex, under the classification of service workers.102 One hundred years after its founding, the ILO still shies away from discussing prostitution.103 Instead of taking a clear and unified stance on the issue, it has opted for decentralization and the development of programs aimed at tackling problems linked to commercial sex: STDs and trafficking. When it comes to health and forced labor, the ILO has be come a battleground for competing views on commercial sex. It maintains the separation of legal and health remedies that have stood in tension for most of the last century.

Conclusion: The ILO as a Battleground

This article reworks material from Magaly Rodríguez García, “The ILO and the Oldest Non-Profession,” in The Life Work of a Labor Historian: Essays in Honor of Marcel van der Linden, eds. Ulbe Bosma and Karin Hofmeester (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 90–114; and Eileen Boris, Making the Woman Worker: Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919–2019 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 17–52, 122–154.

Journal of Women ’s History212 Winter

Sex workers speak in many voices despite the growth of the sex worker movement in the twenty-first century. While the best-organized groups lobby for legalization, others advocate for decriminalization.104 Some social organizations active in the Global North stress the risks of legalization for migrant sex workers who lack residency permits.105 That some foreign sex workers seeking legal protection appropriate human trafficking discourse also discredits the claims of activists and scholars who stress the difference between forced and voluntary prostitution.106 Furthermore, persistent stigmatization results in sex workers’ continued hesitance to become involved in public campaigns or to provide firsthand testimonies that would sup port comprehensive analyses of prostitution. The COVID-19 pandemic has generated new vulnerabilities for sex workers who face exposure to disease or loss of income. Those who have migrated to virtual platforms enter an unregulated realm and often reduced wages.107 These thorny issues make the development of a unified sex worker movement difficult. We write in hopes of creating a fuller understanding of intimate labor as work worthy of inclusion in global standards. As with domestic work, success will depend on a strong workers’ movement supported by ILO staff, trade unions, and NGOs who have access and power within the convention-making process. But the formal transformation of prostitution from “indecent” to “decent” work will remain utopian as long as limited understandings of cisgender and trans* peoples’ movements into and within the sex industry persist and policymakers embrace conceptions of labor that treat the sale of sexual services as a moral aberration. More broadly speaking, an inclusive global labor regime will require a reversal of stub born top-down legalist approaches and readiness to include the voices of the people concerned, whose ideas of respectability and well-being depend on their living conditions and previous working experiences in the global capitalist economy. Notes Eileen Boris would like to acknowledge the aid of ILO archivists and Manu ela Tomei, Director of the ILO Conditions of Work and Equality Department, for access to materials.

3“Report on the Traffic in Women and Children,” memo on the International Emigration Commission, L/12/2/5 1921, ILO Archives, Geneva (hereafter ILOA).

Isabelle Lespinet-Morel and Vincent Viet, eds., L’Organisation international du travail: Origine, développement, avenir (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011); Sandrine Kott and Joëlle Droux, eds., Globalizing Social Rights: The International Labour Organization and Beyond (New York: Palgrave, 2013); Eileen Boris, Dorothea Hoehtker, and Susan Zimmermann, eds., Women’s ILO: Transnational Networks, Global Labour Standards and Gender Equity, 1919 to the Present (Leiden: Brill, 2018); Marcel van der Linden, “The International Labor Organization, 1919–2019: An Appraisal,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History 16, no. 2 (May 2019): 11–41.

10Thaddeus Blanchette and Cristiana Schettini, “Sex Work in Rio de Janeiro: Police Management without Regulation,” in Rodríguez García, Heerma van Voss, and van Nederveen Meerkerk, Selling Sex in the City, 490–516; Alain Corbin, Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni versity Press, 1990); Philippe Howell, “Race, Space and the Regulation of Prostitution

5Magaly Rodríguez García, Lex Heerma van Voss, and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, eds., Selling Sex in the City: A Global History of Prostitution, 1600s–2000s (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Stephen Legg, “‘The Life of Individuals as well as of Nations’: International Law and the League of Nations’ Anti-Trafficking Governmentalities,” Leiden Journal of International Law 25, no. 3 (2012): 647–64. 6Ulla Wikander, Alice Kessler-Harris, and Jane Lewis, eds., Protecting Women: Labor Legislation in Europe, the United States, and Australia, 1880–1920 (Urbana: Uni versity of Illinois Press, 1995).

9Magaly Rodríguez García, “The League of Nations and the Moral Recruit ment of Women,” in “Mediating Labour: Worldwide Labour Intermediation in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” eds. Ulbe Bosma, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, and Aditya Sarkar, special issue, International Review of Social History 57, no. 20 (2012): 97–128; Jessica R. Pliley, “Claims to Protection: The Rise and Fall of Feminist Abolitionists in the League of Nations’ Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, 1919–1936,” Journal of Women’s History 22, no. 4 (2010): 90–113.

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García2021 213 2Lin Lean Lim, email message to Eileen Boris, Mar. 14, 2018; Janice G. Ray mond, “Legitimating Prostitution as Sex Work: UN Labour Organization (ILO) Calls for Recognition of Sex Industry,” Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, July news/WCMS_007999/lang--en/index.htm;Fair,”Reportwork-un-labour-organization-ilo-calls-for-recognition-of-the-sex-industry;www.catwinternational.org/Home/Article/61-legitimating-prostitution-as-sex-1999,“ILOontheSexSectorReceivesPrestigiousPublishingPrizeatFrankfurtBookILO,Oct.10,1998,http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/LinLeanLim,ed., The Sex Sector: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia (Geneva: ILO, 1998).

7Magaly Rodríguez García, Davide Rodogno, and Liat Kozma, “Introduction,” in The League of Nations’ Work on Social Issues: Visions, Endeavours and Experiments, ed. Rodríguez García, Rodogno, and Kozma (Geneva: United Nations Publications, 2016), 13–28.8Boris, Making the Woman Worker, 17–52.

13Paul Weindling, “The Politics of International Co-ordination to Combat Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 1900–1980s,” in AIDS and Contemporary History, ed. Virginia Berridge and Philip Strong (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 93–107.

18See various letters in D 613/800/3 1929, such as those from Medical Women’s Federation, and letters in D613/800/13 1929, such as those from the International Alliance of Women, ILOA; International Labour Conference (ILC), Promotion of Sea men’s Welfare in Ports, Second Discussion, Report III (Geneva: ILO, 1931).

The Agreement of Brussels, 1924, Respecting Facilities to be Given to Merchant Sea men for the Treatment of Venereal Diseases (Geneva: World Health Organization, http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/37448/WHO_TRS_150.pdf.1958),

19Legislative Measures adopted in different countries, Report of the Interna tional Labour Office, Dec. 1923, 2–3; Emigration Commission of the International Labour Organisation, Resolutions, 1922, both in L 12/5 1925, ILOA; Dr. Luisi, and discussion, ILC, Proceedings, Fourth Session, 1922 (Geneva, 1922), 236–41, 599.

21ILC, Proceedings, Eighth Session, 215, 385. See also Judith Walkowitz, “Jack the Ripper and the Myth of Male Violence,” Feminist Studies 8, no. 3 (1982): 542–74.

La protection de la santé des marins contre les maladies vénériennes, Etudes et documents, Series P. (Marins), no. 2 (Geneva: Bureau international du travail, 1926), 1–2. Magaly Rodríguez García thanks Liat Kozma for this source.

Josep L. Barona, Health Policies in Interwar Europe: A Transnational Perspec tive (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2019); Liat Kozma, Global Women, Colonial Ports: Prostitution in the Interwar Middle East (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017).

Journal of Women ’s History214 Winter in Colonial Hong Kong,” Urban History 31, no. 2 (2004): 229–48; Yvonne Svanström, Policing Public Women: The Regulation of Prostitution in Stockholm, 1812–1880 (Stock holm: Atlas Akademi, 2000).

16Weindling, “Politics of International Co-ordination,” 9; Angelique Richard son, Love and Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century: Rational Reproduction and the New Woman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

20For Bondfield’s speaking for women’s organizations, see ILC, Proceedings, Eighth Session, vol. 1, 1926 (Geneva: ILO, 1926): 215. See also League of Nations, “Resolutions Adopted by the Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Chil dren,” L/12/2/6 1923, ILOA.

15Albert Thomas to The Secretary, The Association for Moral & Social Hygiene, Apr. 9, 1921, and draft of same reply, both in D 280/7, 1921, ILOA.

17Recommandation (no. 48) sur les conditions de séjour des marins dans les ports, 1936, lockSub-commissionMENT_ID,P12100_LANG_CODE:312386,en:NO;www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/fr/f?p=1000:12100:0::NO::P12100_INSTRU“Annex:Reportpresentedbythesurlesconditionsdeséjourdesmarinsdanslesport,”byJ.HaveWilsonandT.Salveson, Venereal Diseases: Correspondence respecting Treatment of sailors in port, League of Nations Archives, Geneva (hereafter LNA), 8A/8227/1525.

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García2021 215 22League of Nations Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children (hereafter “Committee”), “Immigration,” Minutes of the Sixth Session, Geneva, 1927, 28, LNA, C.338.M.113.1927.IV.

32Committee, Minutes of the Fourteenth Session, Third Meeting, Geneva, May 3, 1935, 7, LNA, CTFE/14th Session/PV.3.

25Minimum Age (Non-Industrial Employment) Convention (C33), :P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:312178:NOhttps://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO:121001932, .

23Julia Laite, “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Women’s Labour Migration and Sex Trafficking in the Early Twentieth Century,” International Review of Social History 62, no. 1 (2017): 37–65; Cristiana Schettini, “South American Tours: Work Relations in the Entertainment Market in South America,” in special issue, International Review of Social History 57, S.20 (2012): 129–60.

31Committee, Minutes of the Thirteen Session, Second Meeting, Geneva, 4 April 1934, 16–27, 26–27, LNA CTFE/13th Session/PV (Revised).

33“‘The moral protection of young women,’ drawn up by the International Labour Office,” in Prevention of Prostitution: A Study of Preventive Measures, Especially Those which Affect Minors (Geneva: League of Nations Advisory Committee on Social Questions, May 15, 1939), 60–61, LNA, CQS/A/19(a).

29Miss Whitton, Canadian representative, Committee, Minutes of the Fifteenth Session, Fifth Meeting, Geneva, Apr. 22, 1936, 10, LNA, CTFE/15th Session/PV.5.

34Committee, Minutes of the Fifteenth Session, Fifth Meeting, April 22, 1936, 4, LNA, CTFE/15th Session/PV.5.

35Committee, Minutes of the Fifteenth Session, Fifth Meeting, April 22, 1936, 4, LNA, CTFE/15th Session/PV.5.

30Françoise Thébaud, Une traversée du siècle: Marguerite Thibert, femme engagée et fonctionnaire internationale (Paris: Belin, 2017).

36Committee, Minutes of the Third Session, Geneva, April 7–11, 1924, 83, LNA, C.217.M.71.1924.IV.

28Committee, Minutes of the Ninth Session, Eighth Meeting, Geneva, Apr. 5, 1930, 49, LNA, C.246M.121.1930.IV.

24“Report on the Liaison Officer with the International Labour Office for the Year 1929,” 116, Appendix B in League of Nations, Committee, Minutes, Geneva, 1930, LNA, C.246.M.121.1930.IV; Mr. Johnston, on question of fee-charging agencies, in League of Nations, Traffic in Women and Children Committee, Minutes, Geneva, 1931, 37, LNA, C.401.M.163.1931.IV.

26Report of the Special Body of Experts on Traffic in Women and Children (in 2 parts), Geneva, Committee, 1927; Report to the Council, Geneva: League of Nations, 1932. 27Magaly Rodríguez García, “La Société des Nations face à la traite des femmes et au travail sexuel à l’échelle mondiale,” Le Mouvement Social 241 (2012): 105–125.

On the “Swedish model,” see Daniela Danna, “Client-Only Criminal ization in the City of Stockholm: A Local Research of the Application of the ‘Swedish Model’ of Prostitution Policy,” Sexuality Research and Social Policy 9, no. 1 (2012): 80–93.

Journal of Women ’s History216 Winter 37“‘Moral protection of young women,’” 60–61, 70–73.

38J. A. Cavaillon, “Reduction of Demand,” in Prevention of prostitution, LNA, CQS/A/19(c).

“Coordination of the Commission on the Status of Women with other Com missions of the United Nations in respect of economic and social problems,” 1–2, 1947, attached to memo from R. W. Cox to Chief, Women’s and Children’s Bureau, ESC 1004-11 Jacket 2, ILOA. See first reports of the UN Commission on the Status of Women and ILO commentary in the ESC-1004-11 series; “Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others,” https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/trafficinpersons.

aspx; Sonja Dolinsek and Philippa Hetherington, “Socialist Internationalism and Decolonizing Moralities in the UN Anti-Trafficking Regime, 1947–1954,” Journal of the History of International Law 21, no. 2 (2019): 212–38.

Jocelyn Olcott, International Women’s Year: The Greatest Consciousness-Raising Event in History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Division of Human Rights and Peace, UNESCO, Final Report, International Meeting of Experts on the social and cultural causes of prostitution and strategies for the struggle against pro curing and sexual exploitation of women, Madrid, Spain, Mar. 18-21, 1986, SHS–85/ CONF.608/14, Paris, Dec. 30, 1986, 2–3.

46Eva M. Rathgeber, “WID, WAD, GAD: Trends in Research and Practice,” Journal of Developing Areas 24, no. 4 (July 1990): 489–502; Devaki Jain, Women, Devel opment, and the UN: A Sixty-Year Quest for Equality and Justice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); Avronne S. Fraser and Irene Tinker, eds., Developing Power: How Women Transformed International Development (New York: Feminist Press, 2004); Naila Kabeer, Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought (London: Verso, 1994).

43Eileen Boris and Jill Jensen, “The International Labour Organization and the Gender of Economic Rights,” in The Routledge History of Human Rights, ed. Jean H. Quataert and Lora Wildenthal (New York: Routledge, 2020), 259–280.

45“Activities of the ILO, 1976. Report of the Director-General (Part 2),” ILO, Geneva, 1977, 68–69, pdf/09383_1977_63_part2.pdf.http://www.ilo.org/public/portugue/region/eurpro/lisbon/

41Report of the Sub-Commission on the Status of Women to the Commission on Human Rights, Papers of the US Women’s Bureau, International Division General Records, 1919–1952, Folder “UNESCO-Commission on the Status of Women, 1946,” Box 22, RG86, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.

39Weindling, “Politics of International Co-ordination,” 102.

40For example, letters in MA 56-0, Jacket 1, 1/1942 to 2/1942, with one letter from 1955; file NGO 311, Jacket 1, 10/1955 to 8/1962, ILOA.

48Pasuk Phongpaichit, “Rural Women of Thailand: From Peasant Girls to Bangkok Masseuses,” ILO, World Employment Programme Research Working Paper, Nov. 1980, iii, www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/1980/80B09_876_engl. pdf?gathStatIcon=true.

52Minute sheets, D. Ghai to Mr. Payró, Mar. 26, 1981, in WEP-4-04-24-1-158-9, Jacket 1, ILOA.

53Minute sheets, R. S. Kirkman to Mr. Payró, Mar. 6, 1981, and To CABINET (Mr. Ahmad) from A. Taqi, Aug. 21, 1981, referring to Minutes, Aug. 20, 1981, both in WEP-4-04-24-1-158-9, Jacket 1, ILOA.

2021 217

49Leslie Ann Jeffrey, Sex and Borders: Gender, National Identity and Prostitution Policy in Thailand (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007).

54Ghai to Payró, Mar. 26, 1981; Minute Sheet, Zubeida Ahmad to Ghai, Oct. 3, 1980; and Martha F. Loutfi to Mrs. Ahmad and Mr. Ghai, Oct. 3, 1980, all in WEP4-04-24-1-158-9, Jacket 1, ILOA.

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García

56Minute Sheets, Kyril Tidmarsh, PRESSE, to Mr. Trémeaud, Oct. 20, 1981; Mar tha Winnacker to M. Loufti, Oct. 25, 1981; Loufti to Rachel Grossman, Oct. 20, 1981; and Grossman to Loutfi, Nov. 16, 1981, all in WEP-4-04-24-1-158-9, Jacket 1, ILOA.

57Cf. Phongpaichit, “Rural Women of Thailand,” 4–30, 134–145, with Pasuk Phongpaichit, From Peasant Girls to Bangkok Masseuses (Geneva: ILO, 1982), 1–6, 71–76, quotation on 76. 58Lim, quoted in Maya Kaneko, “ILO author offers a realistic approach to Asian prostitution,” Japan Times International, 6–31, Jan. 2000, clipping in PS 630-1007, Jacket 1, ILOA; Frédérique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander, Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry (London: Women’s Press, 1987); Gail Pheterson, A Vindica tion of the Rights of Whores (Seattle: Seal Press, 1989).

47For fruitful integration of postcolonial perspectives, see Natasha Klocker, “Struggling with Child Domestic Work: What Can a Postcolonial Perspective Of fer?,” Children’s Geographies 12, no. 4 (2014): 464–78.

59Loutfi, email message to Hagen, April 22, 1997, PS 630-1007, Jacket 1, ILOA.

60“Minute Sheet” discussions: A. Taqi to PUBLNS, April 1, 1997; M. Arteta to Sengenberger and Lim, June 9, 1997; K. Hagen to Taqi and D. Freedman, Sept. 18, 1997; Taqi to Freedman, Oct. 16, 1997; Freedman to CABINET, Hagen, Taqi, Dec. 16, 1997; A. Quédraogo to Freedman, Jan. 5, 199[8]; F. Röselaers to Hagen, Jan. 20, 1998; and Hagen to Röselaers, Feb. 13, 1998, all in PS 630-1007, Jacket 1, ILOA.

55Minute Sheets, J. P. Martin to Director-General, Jan. 15, 1981; Martin to Mr. Payró, Jan. 15, 1981; and Martin to Director-General, Dec. 21, 1981, all in WEP-404-24-1-158-9, Jacket 1, ILOA.

50Phongpaichit, “Rural Women of Thailand,” 1. 51Phongpaichit, “Rural Women of Thailand,” 141–142.

68Kari Tapiola, email message to HQ.PRESSE.barton, Aug. 22, 1998, WN 172-3, Jacket 1, ILOA.

For example, Lim reply to Björling and Strandberg, September 20, 1998, WN 17-2-3, Jacket 1, ILOA. Sullivan to Hansenne, September 22, 1998; Lim, email message to Washington.AO, August 28, 1998, on “Venezuela NGO attack”; Jane Zhang to Lim, Minute, December 21, 1998; Marrhild Folkvord for NTL to Michael Hansenne, November 23, 1989; Sisterhood is Global Institute, email message to HQ.GWIA and others, Feb. 18, 1999; and Action Alert: Trafficking South East Asian Women, letter from Antoninah Njau to Michael Hansenne, Feb. 22, 1999, all in EMP 69, Jacket 1, ILOA. Clare Nolan to Juan Somavia, Mar. 22, 1999, EMP 69, Jacket 3, ILOA.

71Raymond, “Legitimating Prostitution as Sex Work.” See also Janice G. Ray mond, Not A Choice, Not A Job: Exposing the Myths about Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2013).

Lim, “Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia,” 2.

Journal of Women ’s History218 Winter 61Lim, Sex Sector. 62Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C182.https://www.ilo. 63Lin Lean Lim, “The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia,” in Lim, Sex Sector, 2–3. 64Gerry Rodgers, email message to Lim, July 28, 1999, EMP 69, Jacket 4, ILOA. 65Lim, email message to Rodgers, July 23, 1999, and sticky note attached to email thread from Lim, July 19, 1999, both in EMP 69, Jacket 4, ILOA. 66Laura María Augustín and Jo Weldon, “The Sex Sector: A Victory for Diver sity,” Global Reproductive Rights Newsletter 66/67 (2003): 31–34, 24,1999,ofScottthe69,AOILOA.for%20Diversity.pdf.org/sites/nswp.org/files/The%20Sex%20Sector%20-%20%20A%20Victory%20http://www.nswp.RoelofHavemantoLim,Aug.20,1998,WN17-2-3,Jacket1,LimtoMs.Overs,attachedtoChristineElstob,emailmessagetoWashington.Freeman,Dec.18,1998;andBarbaraStolterfohttoLim,Dec.8,1998,bothinEMPJacket2,ILOA.JudithKivington,coordinator,toWomen’sFrontofNorwayandNorwegianTradeUnion,April21,1999,copytoMichaelHansenneandothers;LongtoLim,Mar.6,1999;andSTV@stv,nl,emailmessagetomultiplerecipientslist,Feb.25,1999,allinEMP69,Jacket3,ILOA.RedThreadtoHansenne,Feb.withattachmentsignedbyCarolJenkins,EMP69,Jacket4,ILOA.

Mary Lucille Sullivan to Michael Hansenne, September 22, 1998, EMP 69, Jacket 1, ILOA.

70Sheila Jeffreys, email message to HQ.GWIA and others, Mar. 2, 1999, EMP 69, Jacket 3, ILOA.

72Raymond, “Legitimating Prostitution as Sex Work,” point 7 of section “Arguments and Answers.”

76Lim revision of text of Tony Freeman, “Questions and Answers relating to the ILO Report,” July 23, 1999, 4, EMP 69, Jacket 4, ILOA.

79“ILOAIDS’ History,” ILO, DOC_AIDS_ABO_BCK_EN/lang--en/index.htm.http://www.ilo.org/aids/Aboutus/WCMS_80

genericdocument/wcms_185717.pdfilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@ed_protect/@protrav/@ilo_aids/documents/org/news/labour-rights-approach-hiv-and-sex-work.on%20HIV%20AIDS.pdf.nswp.org/sites/nswp.org/files/ILO%20Report%20of%20the%20Committee%20Committeetect/—protrav/—ilo_aids/documents/normativeinstrument/wcms_142706.pdf.http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_pro81Fifthitemontheagenda:HIV/AIDSandtheworldofwork,ReportoftheonHIV/AIDS,ILC,99thSession,Geneva,20–27June2010,http://www.82“ALabourRightsApproachtoHIVandSexWork,”http://www.nswp.83“HIVandwork:GettingtoZerothroughtheworldofwork,”http://www.84“IACWashington/Kolkatajointsession:TheOldestProfession:isSexWork,Work?,”XIXInternationalAidsConference,22–27July2012,lastaccessed2018,http://www.nswp.org/news/iac-washingtonkolkata-joint-session-the-oldest-profession-sex-work-work85“HIVandwork:GettingtoZerothroughtheworldofwork.”86“VietNam’sSexIndustry—ALabourRightsPerspective,”ILOCountryOfficeforVietNam,September16,2016,http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—asia/—ro-bangkok/—ilo-hanoi/documents/publication/wcms_524918.pdf

77Dorothea Hoehtker (ILO), email conversation with Magaly Rodríguez García, Jan. 2017.

75Frans Roselaers, email message to A. O. Freeman, Hagen, December 17, 1998, Jacket 2; Christine Elstob to A. O. Freeman, December 18, 1998, EMP 69, Jacket 2, ILOA. Mary Covington, email message to Tony Freeman, Mar. 26, 1999; Tony Free man to Somavia, CABINET, Mar. 26, 1999; and Covington to Lim, April 14, 1999, all in EMP 69, Jacket 3, ILOA. Helms may have become aware of the book from an article in a conservative political magazine. See Tony Freeman to Rans Roselaers, December 15, 1998, enclosing copy of Oliver Starr Jr., “Prostitution at the UN,” Weekly Standard, December 21, 1998, EMP 69, Jacket 2, ILOA; Philip Shenon, “Departing Foreign Aid Chief Says Cuts Are Dangerous,” New York Times, July 6, 1999.

Recommendation concerning HIV and AIDS and the World of Work, 2010 (No. 200) (Geneva: ILO, 2010), 3,

78Michel Pigenet, “Le VIH-Sida, nouveau terrain d’intervention syndicale dans les transports internationaux,” Le Mouvement Social 241, no. 4 (2012): 185–203.

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García2021 219 74“ILO Report on the Sex Sector Receives Prestigious Prize.”

Kimberly Kay Hoang and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, introduction to Human Trafficking Reconsidered: Rethinking the Problem, Envisioning New Solutions, ed. Kimber ly Kay Hoang and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (New York: IDEBATE Press, 2014), 1–18. 95Ronald Weitzer, “New Directions in Research on Human Trafficking,” An nals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 653, no. 6 (2014): 6–24, 16. 96Nicola Mai, “‘Too Much Suffering’: Understanding the Interplay between Migration, Bounded Exploitation and Trafficking through Nigerian Sex Workers’ Experiences,” Sociological Research Online 21, no. 4 (2016), https://doi.org/0.5153/ sro.4158; Kay Hoang and Salazar Parreñas, “Introduction,” 7–9.

“What is forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking,” http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/definition/lang--en/index.htmILO, 93Human trafficking only came to be defined in the 2000 UN Protocol to Pre vent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Persons.aspxhttp://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/ProtocolTraffickingInChildren,”SeeRodríguezGarcía,“OntheLegalBoundariesofCoercedLabor.”

Journal of Women ’s History220 Winter 87“Eliminating the worst forms of child labour: A report of the ILO Carib bean meeting on the worst forms of child labour, Kingston, Jamaica, 6–7, December, 1999,” MENT_ID:2152098http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000:13100:0::NO:13100:P13100_COMForcedport_of_spain/documents/projectdocumentation/wcms_308204.pdfhttps://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—americas/—ro-lima/—sro-88“Observation(CEACR)–adopted1996,published85thILCsession(1997):LabourConvention,1930(No.29)–Japan(Ratification:1932),”NORMLEX,89MagalyRodríguezGarcía,“OntheLegalBoundariesofCoercedLabor,” in On Coerced Labor: Work and Compulsion after Chattel Slavery, ed. Marcel van der Linden and Magaly Rodríguez García (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 11–29. 90Erika Schulze, Sexual Exploitation and Prostitution and its Impact on Gender Equality (Brussels: European Parliament, Jan. 2014), 16, EN.pdfpa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/2014/493040/IPOL-FEMM_ET(2014)http://www.europarl.euro493040_ 91Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), ILO, normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C029http://www.ilo.org/dyn/ . 92

97Eileen Boris and Heather Berg, “Protecting Virtue, Erasing Labor: Historical Responses to Trafficking,” in Hoang and Salazar Parreñas, Human Trafficking Reconsid ered, 19–29. In 2014 the ILC approved the Protocol to the Forced Labour Convention, 1930, and the Forced Labour (Supplementary Measures) Recommendation (No. 203). 98Siddharth Kara, Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Profits and Poverty: The Economics of Forced Labour (Geneva: ILO, 2014), norm/—declaration/documents/publication/wcms_243391.pdfhttp://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_

102Kari Tapiola, Introductory Statement, UNI Europa Commerce, May 16, 2003, EMP 69, Jacket 4, ILOA.

Juno Mac and Molly Smith, Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights (London: Verso, 2018).

103Richard Howard, skype conversation with Magaly Rodríguez García, Jan. 12, 2017.104

Eileen Boris and Magaly Rodríguez García

106Mai, “‘Too Much Suffering.’”

2021 221 99“Haiti shuts down Oxfam GB over prostitution scandal,” Guardian, June 14, 2018, Movement,”Includeoxfam-gb-over-prostitution-scandal;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/14/haiti-shuts-down-SamanthaCooney,“‘TheyDon’tWanttoWomenLikeMe.’SexWorkersSayThey’reBeingLeftOutofthe#MeToo Time, Feb. 13, 2018, http://time.com/5104951/sex-workers-me-toomovement/. See also: Eilís Ward and Gillian Wylie, “Conclusion: Carceral feminism, the state and the sex worker in a globalised era. Whose power?,” in Feminism, Pros titution and the State: The Politics of Neo-Abolitionism, ed. Ward and Wylie (London: Routledge, 2017), 155–60. 100Lim, The Sex Sector, v. 101Guido Raimondi to GENDER, Minute Sheet, May 30, 2003, EMP 69, Jacket 4, ILOA.

105This view is supported, for example, by Boysproject, a NGO active in Antwerp that offers socio-medical support to male and transgender sex workers (many of them of non-European origin).

107International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe, “Covid-19 shines a red light on sex workers’ lack of protection in Europe,” Open Democracy, April 22, 2020 at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/ covid-19-shines-a-red-light-on-sex-workers-lack-of-protection-in-europe/, last accessed July 1, 2021.

Contraception and Reproduction in Global Conversation

Trent MacNamara. Birth Control and American Modernity: A History of Popu lar Ideas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 318 pp. ISBN 9781316519585 (cl); 9781108460538 (pb), 9781108564977 (ebook).

Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci. Contraceptive Diplomacy: Reproductive Politics and Imperial Ambitions in the United States and Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018. 336 pp. ISBN 9781503602250 (cl), 9781503604407 (pb), 9781503604414 (ebook).

Cassia Roth. A Miscarriage of Justice: Women’s Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020. 376 pp. ISBN 9781503610477 (cl), 9781503611320 (pb), 9781503611337 (ebook).

Brianna Theobald. Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century. 288 pp. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. ISBN 9781469653150 (cl), 9781469653167 (pb), 9781469653174 (ebook).

Nicole Bourbonnais To study the history of reproduction is to be asked regularly about Mar garet Sanger. Sanger’s activism in the United States and abroad has cast a long and complicated shadow over the history of contraception in the first half of the twentieth century, prompting debates in both academic circles and the public sphere about the intersections of feminism, eugenics, population control, and imperialism. Thus, the need to engage her legacy continues to be important. However, as illustrated by a wave of local, na tional, and global studies published in the last decade, there is more to the early birth control movement (both globally and within the United States) than Margaret Sanger, and there is more to reproduction than birth control. The recently published books reviewed here incorporate but also move past the most well-known advocates and points of political friction, allowing us to see the broader landscape of activism, interests, and individual actions that shaped the reproductive continuum in the twentieth century. They take us from the level of world conferences down to the bedroom, providing us with a richer understanding of the dynamics of transnational exchange, the nuances of state power and inequality, the confrontation between “moder

Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci’s Contraceptive Diplomacy opens with Sanger’s visit to Japan in 1922. While this approach would seem to maintain Sanger’s dominance within the historiography of the movement, looking at her from the perspective of the Japanese movement—from the outside in—has a decentering effect. As Takeuchi-Demirci shows, although many Japanese intellectuals were interested in Sanger’s advocacy, they did not embrace it naively or uncritically; rather, they engaged selectively with her ideas, inte grating the elements they agreed with into preexisting national discussions of socialism, feminism, eugenics, and birth control. Local doctors translated her text Family Limitation into Japanese, but added their own critiques and commentary and taught it alongside local medical texts. These interac tions went both ways: Japanese advocates traveled to the United States and contributed to American publications, and Sanger drew on Japanese advocates for emotional and political support. Indeed, Takeuchi-Demirci argues that in spite of the “imperialist logic” (67, my emphasis) with which birth controllers like Sanger approached activism abroad, the actual relationship between advocates in Japan and the United States is better described as one of “mutual interactions and influences” (6).

Contraceptive Diplomacy begins but does not end with Sanger’s involvement in the country. Instead, Takeuchi-Demirci uses her activism as a launching point for a broader discussion of Japanese-American intellec tual and political exchange in the twentieth century. She explores how the subject of birth control animated transpacific relations during the Ameri can occupation of Japan, in debates over Japanese immigration within the United States, and during the fifth conference of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) held in Tokyo, where early findings from research on the birth control pill were presented. In the last case, it is not clearly evident that transpacific relations are the most relevant frame of analysis; the vision of the IPPF and research on the pill presented in Tokyo arguably had more to do with the global dynamics of the family planning movement than anything particular to the Japanese-American relationship.

Still, Takeuchi-Demirci’s book provides a rich example of how we can move beyond Euro-American networks in our study of the transnational, while maintaining a deep contextualization of the local. It also raises the ques tion of how many other sites of dense exchange we might find if we look past the United States altogether: between Japan and India, or Japan and Singapore, for example.

Book Reviews: Nicole Bourbonnais2021 223 nity” and “tradition,” and the complexities that shape women’s and men’s agency in the intimate sphere.

Trent MacNamara’s Birth Control and American Modernity also seeks to move beyond the focus on Sanger and other prominent birth control ad vocates, this time within the context of the domestic American movement.

How can we explain the difference between MacNamara’s and Roth’s understanding of state power? Undoubtedly, this stems in part from the different national contexts: the active involvement of the Rio de Janeiro police force in administrative duties like issuing letters of admittance into public hospitals and providing access to burial service, for example, pro

Journal of Women ’s History224 Winter

Based on analysis of newspaper and radio debates as well as letters to early birth control clinics, MacNamara argues that the demographic shift to low fertility in the United States was driven neither by birth control advocates nor by advances in contraceptive technology, but rather by “subtle changes in the acting ideas of people with no special interest in birth control as a social cause” (3). While Sanger and others helped open up public debate and dominated the headlines, the advance of birth control was, in practice, the product of “a sprawling mass movement” driven by conversations held in “kitchens, foundries, bars, churches, and picnic grounds, [where] Americans observed and enacted new reproductive codes” (5). MacNamara further argues that the Comstock laws and other state-imposed restrictions on the spread of birth control had much less impact on couples’ decisions than advocates claimed, and did little to discourage an active contraceptive market. When it came to birth control, power was “maddeningly disperse. . . . Birth control’s ultimate success required virtually no access to police power or public space. Key decisions could be made behind closed doors, by otherwise powerless people, for closely-held reasons that were awkward for outsiders to inquire about, discuss, or surveil” (20). MacNamara’s de-emphasis on the role of the state and the law stands in contrast to Cassia Roth’s treatment in A Miscarriage of Justice. Drawing on medical publications, public health data, judicial documents, newspapers, and police investigations in Rio de Janeiro, Roth illustrates how the early twentieth-century Brazilian state “curbed full citizenship through its regulation of reproduction” (9). Roth takes a more expansive view of reproduction, including pregnancy, maternal health, childbirth, and miscar riage, alongside fertility control. In doing so, she illustrates how laws and discourses surrounding these practices operated on a continuum rather than as binary poles. The expansion of maternal and infant health services went hand in hand with increased prosecution of abortion and infanticide, often initiated by the same actors. All contributed to a broader state project aimed at reinforcing patriarchal rule and harnessing women’s reproductive potential towards national growth. While the expansion of public health services provided some practical benefits for women, it also increased institutional control over pregnancy and childbirth. Police investigations further criminalized poor women’s fertility decisions, and legal processes reinforced civil codes that infantilized women and contributed to the denial of their broader rights.

Book Reviews: Nicole Bourbonnais2021 225 vided them with unique access to women’s reproductive lives. But the key factors here might really be questions of class and race. Roth makes clear that the women most affected by state policies were those at the bottom of the social hierarchy; middle- and upper-class women who could afford private services were not as reliant on—or targeted by—state actors. MacNamara’s “otherwise powerless” people were, in fact, largely white and middle class; as such, they held the power of racial privilege and economic agency that protected them from state intervention or dependence on free clinics that were more impeded by legal restraints (20). Indeed, when Mac Namara shifts in chapter four to the more rural, poorer populations who drew on early clinics, we see less of the freedom evident in middle-class newspaper and radio debates. Incorporating discussions within African American newspapers in these years—or at least some of the literature on these debates—might also have altered the picture significantly. MacNamara claims that “though birthrates were falling among African-Americans, the poor, and immigrants’ descendants, no equivalent moral panic ensued in those communities” (41). This argument is challenged, however, by the findings of Michele Mitchell’s Righteous Propagation and Dorothy Roberts’ Killing the Black Body, to name a few.1 This literature shows that African American communities were deeply concerned with fertility in the early twentieth century; their sexual lives were more vulnerable to state surveillance and control, and their ability to exercise reproductive freedom was continually undermined by race and class inequality. This is not to say that individual couples within marginalized communities exercised no agency in the bedroom, but rather that their choices were more constrained and impacted by outside actors who displayed little compunction in discussing and surveilling their intimate lives. These points are further reinforced by reading MacNamara along side Brianna Theobald’s Reproduction on the Reservation, which focuses on the experiences of Native American women on the Crow reservation in southern Montana.2 Like Roth, Theobald explores the full reproductive continuum and sees a powerful role for the state. As in Brazil, maternal health campaigns on American reservations facilitated heightened scrutiny and surveillance of women’s bodies. Theobald further points out that even policies that were not directly aimed at reproduction affected women’s ex periences of fertility control, pregnancy, and childbirth. The state’s reserva tion, assimilation, and termination policies, for example, created dire social and economic conditions that continually undermined Native American women’s reproductive health, despite attempts to blame poor outcomes on “maternal ignorance.” The high sterilization rates on reservations that would eventually spark national protest in the 1970s must also be seen within the context of the state’s lack of provision of temporary contraceptives, failure

“The state,” of course, is not an abstract entity, and the books reviewed here provide a nuanced understanding of the subtler dynamics and indi vidual actions that shape the translation of policy into practice. TakeuchiDemirci notes how the American occupying government in post-World War II Japan attempted to work quietly to promote birth control, inviting officials to “stimulate” or “encourage” the local population by facilitating research projects aimed at tracking demographic trends and family size preferences (131). Theobald breaks down the long chain of actors involved in reinforc ing the reproductive policies of the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA), “from agency farmers to lowly clerks to boarding school teachers and ultimately to field relocation officers in urban centers” (6). Roth focuses on police officers, public prosecutors, and physicians as key agents of state patriarchal rule, but recognizes that “all had their own ideas about women’s reproduc tion, and they brought those with them when performing their daily jobs” (20). Public health nurses and hospital matrons were also key actors from Japan to the United States to Brazil, tasked with leading maternal health campaigns in practice. As Roth and Theobald stress, these female frontline workers injected a maternalist narrative into patriarchal state structures, preaching domesticity and middle- and upper-class family norms alongside “modern” health practice.

Midwives held a more ambivalent position in this structure, often viewed as traditional cogs in the modernization wheel. In the United States, direct efforts were taken to eliminate traditional midwives; Black and Na tive American midwives were subject to particular scorn, portrayed as unhygienic and ignorant. The occupation of Japan carried this sentiment eastward, where American officials challenged the longstanding social position of local midwives. Although Japanese doctors recognized the importance of midwives’ labor, the latter were eventually largely replaced by public health nurses. In Brazil, doctors both acknowledged and resented the appeal of midwives, working to incorporate some through registration and training while delegitimizing others who were associated with malpractice and clandestine abortion. Ironically, these attacks on midwives reached their height in all three contexts in the early twentieth century, a time when few institutions actually had the medical manpower and infrastructure to provide the superior care they touted. Theobald quotes a state inspector, for

Journal of Women ’s History226 Winter to outline clear policies around sterilization, and general underresourcing of services and denigration of Native American populations. All of these factors created a situation that allowed individual physicians to exercise “tremendous discretionary power” and made them “well positioned to blur the lines between ‘therapeutic’ and ‘eugenic’ sterilizations” (10, 95). In other words, the state can play a powerful role both through its direct intervention, and through its negligence; the state’s power, too, is maddeningly disperse.

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If the division between the “traditional” and the “modern” was somewhat obscure in terms of actual practices, it bore more weight as an ideology or an identity marker. Indeed, MacNamara convincingly argues that “‘modernization’ was never just an analyst’s retrospective category; it was also a central idea to Americans making reproductive decisions during the fertility transition” (29). Men and women self-consciously linked their decision to have fewer children with a desire to “be modern,” to keep up with the times. The spread of smaller families became “an expression of every change that separated the present world from the half-remembered ancestral one” and “a sign of the modern spirit of individualism,” portrayed either as positive progress or as “selfishness” depending on the commentator (53, 41). On the Crow reservation, “modernization” carried the additional trauma of colonization. To limit family size and to deliver in the hospital was a sign not only of modernization but of assimilation, in the eyes of many government officials as well as some Crow residents. Younger women who had attended boarding schools, for example, were overrepresented among hospital maternity parents in the early twentieth century, and some explicitly expressed a desire to have their babies “in the new way” (Theobald, 66). But others moved more flexibly in and out of the so-called modern and traditional spaces, utilizing hospital services selectively, combining them with traditional healers, or bringing Native cultural practices into the hos pital (much to the chagrin of many doctors and nurses). This pluralism is illustrated particularly well through Theobald’s riveting narration of the personal history of Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail in chapter three. Yellowtail underwent training to become the first Crow registered nurse in 1927 but later shifted to midwifery practice; she alternated between giving birth to her own children at the hospital and at home; and she lobbied for access to “modern” healthcare while increasingly engaging in Crow “traditional” dress and self-presentation. One of her contemporaries noted that Yellow tail’s refusal to situate herself neatly on the modernity-tradition binary might point to the need for a third category: “The Susie Category” (136). In fact, it seems likely that most people fell into this third category, illustrating

example, who admitted that the Crow reservation’s hospital was “unfit for the purpose used and most certainly should not bear the title of Hospital” (87). Roth and Theobald further point out that many of the deaths blamed on midwives’ “ignorant” practices would also have occurred if births had taken place in the hospital at the time. Although a hospital delivery had some advantages in hygiene and management of complications, major advances in childbirth care would not come until the 1940s, with the in vention of penicillin and blood transfusion. Hospitals’ marketing of their “modernity” in the early twentieth century “far surpassed demonstrated outcomes” (Theobald, 57).

Journal of Women ’s History228 Winter the wider ambivalence shaping the modernity-tradition continuum, even as anAlthoughideology.

The texts examined here also pay fresh attention to men’s roles in the reproductive sphere. While both Theobald and Roth reaffirm that childbirth was the traditional domain of women, men were not absent. As Roth clarifies: “while women dominated the delivery itself, men’s and women’s un derstanding of patriarchal power within the family often dictated women’s health outcomes” (85). For example, a husband would most likely decide where a woman would deliver or when a doctor would be called to a home birth facing complications. MacNamara also argues that men played a more active role in the American fertility decline than has traditionally been recognized. This is an important and often overlooked point. Indeed, the widespread reliance on withdrawal, condoms, and periodic abstinence in

Theobald is careful to stress that we should not romanticize women’s choices and actions within this continuum, in practice she does not present many cases of women acting in non-benevolent ways. She mentions, but somewhat minimizes, gendered tensions within the community. This likely reflects the extreme difficulty of discussing harmful practices and community conflict in a context where Native American women and communities frequently were—and continue to be—described as neglectful and disordered, a discourse that justifies a whole host of intrusive interventions and colonialism in general. Roth’s Miscarriage of Justice, however, provides a rich example of how historians can confront such fraught internal dynamics with depth and sensitivity. Drawing on the Latin American historiography on gossip and rumor and Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, Roth illustrates how ordinary people contributed to the disciplining of women’s sexual and reproductive lives through denunciations and engagement with police investigations. These interactions provided poor men and women with temporary access to the social power they were otherwise denied, but at the expense of those they accused. Roth also faces head-on the intimate details of infanticide cases in her sources. Drawing on Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s influential study of maternal neglect in Death Without Weeping, she stresses the importance of understanding women’s actions within the context and logic of their time.3 She draws our attention to the way low wages, job instability, sexual violence, the cultural emphasis on sexual honor, and structural inequality, may have made infanticide a “logical” choice for some women at the bottom of the social hierarchy. In others cases, women appear to be experiencing the psychological disassociation brought on by trauma. So situating these actions, Roth clarifies, “does not mean saying they are ‘right’”; rather, it is a matter of giving women “the historical attention and analysis they deserve,” whether they are acting heroically, benevolently, in desperation, or in ways that harm (25).

Book Reviews: Nicole Bourbonnais2021 229

the early twentieth century is clear evidence that men used contraceptives actively and made reproductive decisions. Still, MacNamara’s claim that “historians have partly mistaken the importance of birth control to women and feminists for the importance of women and feminists to birth control” goes a bit too far (25). It is not really necessary to diminish women’s importance in order to recognize men’s importance in this process. MacNamara’s understanding of “mutual consent” could also use some further nuance (12). He gives the example that “a wife might insist that her husband practice withdrawal, or a husband that his wife induce abortion” (12–13). True, but these were hardly equivalent practices in the early twentieth century: one involved the slight limiting of sexual gratification, the other the illegal insertion of objects or swallowing of poisons that may very well cause morbidity or mortality. Men and women rarely were empowered equally in relationships to make these kinds of demands, something MacNamara acknowledges but passes over fairly quickly. MacNamara also claims that men’s engagement with sex workers was a way of “separating sexual gratification from reproduction,” but in fact this practice simply shifted the burden of contraception and pregnancy to a different woman (13). A deeper engagement with women’s history and gender theory might have helped contextualize these dynamics more deeply, and enrich the otherwise valuable intervention made by this book.

Turning to this literature might also help us answer the quandary posed in MacNamara’s conclusion: whether, in light of renewed concerns over declining fertility rates in many countries around the world, it is possible to combine a liberal concept of individual rights with “some sort of communitarian vision” to promote intergenerational continuity (180). MacNamara suggests that this form of “liberal pronatalism” might involve a level of “familism,” including family-friendly policies like tax breaks, subsidized childcare, parental leave, child allowances, and measures to improve work-life balance (185). Arguably, much of this vision is already captured in the concept of “reproductive justice,” developed by women of color at the end of the twentieth century.4 As Theobald and Roth note, the reproductive justice framework demands that women and families have the right and ability to decide “how they will give birth, whether they will give birth, and who will be present during the birthing process” (Theobald, 181), while also calling for the resources needed to ensure that families can raise the number of children they want in a safe physical and social environment. This framework arose out of the struggles of women of color and responds to their desire to merge reproductive rights with a critique of invasive reproductive control from the state and medical community, while also addressing the broader social and economic conditions that undermine reproductive health. Indeed, if panic over “race suicide” is a somewhat ironic

1Michele Mitchell, Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997).

Journal of Women ’s History230 Winter

2Since Theobald uses the word “Crow” throughout her work, so have I, but the “Crow” are also known as and call themselves the Apsáalooke.

4As documented, for example, in Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, Lo retta Ross, and Elena R. Gutiérrez, Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2004) and Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger, Reproductive Justice: An Introduction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017).

3Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

Notes

concern coming from President Roosevelt in the early twentieth century (as documented by MacNamara) and from the largely elite commentators who dominate discussions of low fertility rates today (whose position at the top of the global social and political hierarchy has never really been in danger), it has been something more of a felt reality for marginalized communities around the world. Their experiences—and theorizing—are crucial to any discussion of reproduction in the past, present, and future.

Susie Woo. Framed by War: Korean Children and Women at the Crossroads of US Empire. New York: New York University Press, 2019. 336 pages. ISBN 9781479889914 (cl); 9781479880539 (pb); 9781479827169 (ebook).

Allison Varzally. Children of Reunion: Vietnamese Adoptions and the Poli tics of Family Migrations. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. 222 pages. ISBN 9781469630908 (cl); 9781469630915 (pb); 9781469630922 (ebook).

Kori A. Graves. A War Born Family: African American Adoption in the Wake of the Korean War. New York: New York University Press, 2020. 328 pages. ISBN 9781479872329 (cl); 9781479815869 (ebook).

Kimberly D. McKee

Photographs shape how American middlebrow culture remembers the earliest transnational adoptions from South Korea and Vietnam. Heartwarming human-interest stories and profiles of adopted children and their parents filled the pages of magazines like Life and Ebony, in addition to local newspapers. Yet these celebratory tales of rescue and assimilation into American society glossed over the losses involved in transnational adoptions.Recent Critical Adoption Studies scholarship goes beyond the reduc tive understandings promoted in contemporary media to offer a more complex picture of adoptees’ biological families’ losses, the incongruities and contradictions of the adoption process, and the children and women whose lives were inextricably linked to the adoptees. Kori A. Graves, Al lison Varzally, and Susie Woo join scholars who interrogate the limits of adoption and how these particular family formations came into being. In their investigations of the treatment of mixed-race Asian adoptees and their mothers, Graves, Varzally, and Woo reveal the hypocrisy and contradictions of the US military and government. These orphans were simultaneously embraced as mascots or seen as children in need of rescue, even as their military fathers were not required to establish paternity and Asian women encountered difficulty in accessing US citizenship for their children. These monographs reveal what happens when children are simultaneously cast aside and embraced, their affective labor used to further a particular nar rative of US humanitarianism.

Moving chronologically, Susie Woo’s Framed by War situates the Korean adoption project and adoptees in relation to Korean War brides—women who married American GIs in the wake of the Korean War—and the women whose sexual labor supported the rebuilding of the nation in the postKorean War period. Some of those women who engaged in sex work were the mothers of mixed-race Korean children sent abroad for adoption. Other children resulted from consensual relationships between Korean women and military men. Susie Woo’s monograph disentangles these overlapping

American missionaries were integral in working with US government efforts to rebuild South Korea, and they were also instrumental in shap ing narratives of Korean children abroad. Their efforts ranged from World Vision’s sponsorship of the Korean Orphan’s Choir to the work of Harry Holt and the Holt Adoption Program, a leader in promoting and expand ing transnational adoptions from Korea and the rest of the world. These various mission institutions opened up opportunities for everyday citizens to become global citizens and to imagine themselves through the lens of global adoption. Sponsoring and adopting Korean children valorized white motherhood, while simultaneously denigrating Korean women as mothers.

Journal of Women ’s History232 Winter

threads—adoptees, war brides, sex workers—to offer a nuanced depiction of adoption’s lingering effects and its intersections with other facets of US foreign policy. Focused on the intimate encounters between Koreans and Americans, Woo traces the contours and limits of these relationships while exploring the juxtaposition between Korean children’s innocence and Korean women’s purported deviance. Woo calls attention to the ways Korean children and women were cornerstones to American empire building in the early Cold War. Their affective and, in the case of Korean women, sexual and reproductive labor proved instrumental in US foreign policy efforts to contain communism. Yet they are often overlooked or seen as a footnote in Cold War history.

The American public was first introduced to Korean children via res cue scripts with curated narratives emphasizing the children’s salvation. These depictions in Department of Defense stock footage and national magazines featured American GIs forging relationships with Korean chil dren, particularly boy orphans who became military mascots or houseboys. Coupled with media appearances and concerts of the Korean Children’s and Korean Orphans’ Choirs, the images humanized Korean children in accessible ways, whereby Americans could visualize them as part of their families. American GIs were, in turn, transformed through depictions of them forging familial bonds with Korean children. The girls in the two choirs promoted a feminized, innocent image of childhood warranting American paternalism. These media portrayals of Korean children made Americans see them as worthy of rescue.

While American opinion deemed Korean women unworthy of mother hood, Korean children found themselves positioned within model minor ity discourse, becoming potential all-American children. Woo traces the mechanisms that molded the Korean orphan into a future American. Reports to social welfare professionals concerning Korean children focused on the behavior and listening abilities of boys, while girls were primarily described based on their abilities to nurture and clean. These gendered scripts illumi nate the importance of American gender norms to the construction of these transnational Cold War families.

Book Reviews: Kimberly D. McKee2021 233

This position arose from assumptions that all mothers of mixed-race children were involved in sex work, coupled with Orientalist tropes of Korean women’s sexuality. Christian Americanism produced a sharp contrast between the supposed fallen Korean woman and her white American counterpart.

The book closes on an exploration of mixed-race children, their moth ers, and women who married American servicemen. Histories of Korean War brides and military brides are elided in mainstream narratives of the Korean War and the Cold War more broadly, even as Ji Yeon Yuh and others recover their voices and experiences. This marginalization occurs despite war brides and military brides’ frequent sponsorship of their families’ entry to the United States. At the same time, mixed-race and monoracial adoptees circumvented US immigration law to form one of the largest Korean Ameri can subgroups. In comparison to the monoracial Korean children sent for adoption, mixed-race children—and by extension, their mothers—existed in the shadows as they disrupted scripts of Koreanness and revealed the racial fault lines in Korean nationalist ideologies of belonging. American racial ideologies, exported to Korea, also shaped the experiences of mixedrace children and their mothers due to pervasive anti-Blackness. Woo joins scholars Hosu Kim and Shannon Bae in offering nuanced portrayals of Korean women, locating Korean women’s experience as mothers within Korean adoption histories.1 Woo grounds her analyses of mothers of mixedrace children and war brides within the broader ways Korean women’s bodies were disciplined to be seen as acceptable in American society. One way she does this is through an examination of an entertainment trio, The Kim Sisters, and their popularity with American audiences. She reveals the limits placed on Korean women as they navigated unequal gender and racialized dynamics, which curtailed their ability to enact full personhood outside of reductive scripts of Asian women’s sexuality.

While Woo situates Korean adoption in conversation with the broader US Cold War project, Kori Graves decenters whiteness in the understanding of transnational, transracial adoptions in A War Born Family. This mono graph closes major gaps in the literature exploring the histories of Korean adoption, since existing scholarship frequently emphasizes the experiences

Graves illuminates the role of the Black press in shaping African Ameri can families’ opinions of adopting Korean children. Publications such as Ebony and the Afro-American offered human interest stories describing the privations and precarity facing Koreans in the wake of the Korean War and the particular hardships faced by Korean-Black children. Coverage by the Black press of African American soldiers’ serving in Korea included stories focused on their humanitarian efforts with Korean children. As with Woo’s analysis of media coverage of US servicemen, Graves underscores the stories of mixed-race children available for adoption that had little regard for the men who fathered these children and their responsibilities. Nevertheless, these stories that crafted narratives about the plight of Korean children were instrumental in influencing African Americans’ decisions to adopt. Graves highlights how Black military couples navigated the adoption process compared to other African American family formations, as these couples appeared to adhere to gendered scripts social workers were accustomed to follow in the 1950s.

Journal of Women ’s History234 Winter of monoracial adoptees and those adoptees who entered white families. In examining Black-Korean adoptees and their adoptions into Black families, Graves also contributes to scholarship invested in understanding how African Americans navigated the foster care and adoption systems during the 1950s and 1960s. Oftentimes, these families departed from the (white) professional norms—the male breadwinner and female housewife—that girded social welfare practices of the mid-twentieth century, as many mar ried African American women worked outside the home to ensure a stable, middle-class life.

A War Born Family examines both African American families’ partici pation in the transnational adoption project and Pearl S. Buck’s significant role in shaping understandings of mixed-race adoptees and transracial adoptions. Graves’s work complements that of historian Sarah S. Potter, offering a comprehensive account of the racial inequities affecting African American families interested in fostering and adoption.2 Documenting the National Urban League’s work with national and local agencies, Graves explores the contradictions in social welfare agencies’ response to Black adoptions. The agencies initially opposed the National Urban League’s efforts to support the adoption of children by African American families, but later changed course as the need for African American adoptive parents grew. She discusses how anti-Blackness negatively shaped the experiences of African Americans, which in turn affected Black families’ decisions to adopt mixed-raced Black-Korean children. Graves is particularly attuned to the way racial discrimination affected those children in South Korea, but is also mindful of how racial inequities created structural barriers for their

Allison Varzally’s Children of Reunion examines the ways transnational adoption was tied to other forms of immigration to the United States and connected to US empire in the Vietnam War era. She contributes to the growing scholarship on the limits of the “orphan” category and the slippage between adoptee and refugee migrations with respect to US foreign policy and capitalism. Varzally exposes the uneven levels of support granted to Vietnamese refugees and Amerasian adoptees, as opposed to their families and extended kin networks. This includes those Amerasian children left behind and not adopted and those refugees who entered the United States and sought to locate their adopted kin. Varzally interrogates the ways that US adoption and immigration laws resulted in immigrants receiving vastly different treatment contingent on their status at entry into the nation. This is especially clear when considering how Varzally identifies adoptees as im migrants—an identity that not all transnational adoptees claimed. Varzally explores the relinquishment and reunion of adoptees and their Vietnamese families as well as the experiences of Amerasians who were not adopted, carefully crafting a narrative that underscores the arbitrary nature of adop tion and the permeable borders of kinship. Varzally traces the origins of Vietnamese adoptions to the United States, placing these adoptions against the backdrop of earlier Cold War adoptions of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean children. By the 1970s, the geopolitical context shifted as earlier communist containment strategies appeared faulty, and Americans wrestled with social unrest at home. Varzally argues that Americans were motivated to support mixed-race and monoracial Viet namese children because of their broader concerns about Americans’ lack of military success. In this regard, Vietnamese children served as proxies in some Americans’ efforts to assuage their consciences concerning misguided American military actions. Yet, as Varzally demonstrates, other Americans critiqued the ethics of these adoptions, which removed children from their country of birth. Perceptions of these adoptions were riddled with contra dictions as Americans debated what obligations the United States had to the Vietnamese people, specifically Vietnamese children.

Book Reviews: Kimberly D. McKee2021 235

adoption by African American families as they navigated a segregated child welfare system. She examines Buck’s professional and personal transformation to become an advocate for transracial adoption through Welcome House, her adoption agency, revealing Buck’s efforts to demonstrate that the interracial family was, in fact, an American family. The discussion of Buck and Welcome House illuminates the way systemic racism functioned in the United States to shape the experiences of mixed-race children against a backdrop of liberal, anti-racist efforts, and the civil rights movement at the height of the Cold War.

Journal of Women ’s History236 Winter

Varzally challenges the humanitarian discourse surrounding the adop tion of Vietnamese children, using Operation Babylift as a turning point to understand how Vietnamese children were situated in the American imaginary. She contends that Operation Babylift—the movement of more than 2,500 children out of Vietnam in April 1975—caused some Americans to raise questions about American humanitarian efforts and whether the mass evacuations of children displayed American arrogance in the rush to “save” Vietnamese children, with little regard for their Vietnamese kin. The subsequent lawsuits in the United States on behalf of Vietnamese families seeking reunions with their children who were trafficked into adoption as part of Operation Babylift reveals kinship’s complexities and the cultural differences in how Vietnamese relied on orphanages to care for children in times of distress, but not necessarily for the purposes of relinquishing children for adoption. The most notable of these cases, Nguyen Da Yen et al. v. Kissinger et. al. (1976), revealed adoption’s harms to Vietnamese families as Vietnamese refugees sought to reclaim their children and repair families devastated by war. The notion that Americans were engaged in a humanitar ian rescue project becomes questionable when Vietnamese refugees sought reunion with their children and called into question the veracity of those adoptions.

Children of Reunion discusses not only Amerasian adoptees—their childhood and adulthood, navigating their identities as both Americans and Vietnamese—but also the lives of those Amerasians who remained in Vietnam. Those who remained encountered mistreatment and marginalization similar to that of mixed-race Koreans Woo and Graves discussed. The US government assumed responsibility, not for the treatment of Vietnamese women, but for the Amerasian children left behind. Authorities acknowl edged them as their fathers’ children without specifically addressing the role of US servicemen in their births. The passage of the Amerasian Immigration Act and Amerasian Homecoming Act in the 1980s, facilitated the entry of Amerasians into the United States, with little regard for their Vietnamese mothers. As with Vietnamese adoptees decades prior, Americans viewed these adult and young adult Amerasians as unattached to Vietnam, with the possibility for assimilation given their American fathers. Varzally highlights cases of dramatic reunions between Amerasian offspring and their serviceman fathers, but also underscores the disillusionment that accompanied the offspring’s arrival in the United States. In Vietnam they were seen as not quite Vietnamese due to their mixed-race identity, and in the United States they encountered discrimination because of their Vietnamese ancestry and cultural differences. Varzally entwines adult Amerasian experiences with their adopted counterparts’ identity exploration to elucidate the similarities and differences between the two groups, who, for all intents and purposes,

2Sarah Potter, Everybody Else: Adoption and the Politics of Domestic Diversity in Postwar America (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2014).

1Hosu Kim, Birth Mothers and Transnational Adoption Practice in South Korea: Virtual Mothering (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Shannon Bae, “Radical Imagination and the Solidarity Movement between Transnational Korean Adoptees and Unwed Mothers in South Korea,” Adoption & Culture no. 6, vol. 2 (2018): 300–315.

Notes

Book Reviews: Kimberly D. McKee2021 237 could have led each other’s lives given the arbitrary nature of adoption and separation of children from families. These three monographs trace the broader constellation of transnational adoption assemblages. Woo, Graves, and Varzally move beyond thinking about adoption in isolation and weave together the ways in which Korean and Vietnamese women, US servicemen, and adoptees were linked as part of US empire building. These authors explore the erasure of US servicemen fathers and marginalization of the sexual and reproductive labor of Asian women in American efforts to create a narrative of child-saving rescue. In contextualizing the earliest Korean adoptions with histories of women’s sex ual labor, racial liberalism, and the civil rights movement, Woo and Graves contribute to scholarship rethinking Korean adoption by accounting for the ways in which that project must be seen in conversation with women’s reproductive and sexual labor. Graves also foregrounds the way mixed-race Black-Korean children and Black adoptive families navigated their Korean transnational adoptions, providing a counterpoint to existing scholarship that focuses on the majority of adoptees who entered white families. Join ing these efforts to examine adoption’s intersections with other political and social histories, Varzally provides a forthright and significant analysis of the kinship ties that bind. She juxtaposes the experiences of Vietnamese adoptees and Amerasians entering the United States in the 1980s as part of “homecoming” legislation. Together, these studies capture the complexity of adoption, disentangling the threads and systems that generate the condi tions for adoption as well as elucidating adoption’s reverberations in the lives of adoptees in both the sending and receiving countries.

Scholars have argued more recently that the civilian and military spheres were not simply tightly connected but—within the Confederacy, at least— often indistinguishable.

Thavolia Glymph. The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Free dom, and Nation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. 392 pp.; ill. ISBN 9781469653631 (cl); 9781469653648 (ebook, 2019).

For more than thirty years, historians have postulated an intimate con nection between the American Civil War’s civilian and military spheres, with Drew Gilpin Faust provocatively declaring in 1990, “It may well have been because of its women that the South lost the Civil War.”1 While Faust focused on the plantation elite, subsequent historians explored the South’s poorer white women, whose resentment of the Confederacy and the planter elite often led them to aid deserters, evade taxes, or engage in civil unrest.

Still other scholars examined the South’s African American women, who engaged in daily struggles to undermine the institution of slavery upon which the Confederacy was founded. Meanwhile, in the North, middleclass women joined benevolent societies to aid soldiers or freed people. Although working-class women joined similar efforts or worked in warrelated industries, some of them opposed conscription, emancipation, or the entire war effort, exposing the tenuous nature of the Union cause too.2

Carol Sheriff

Thavolia Glymph’s The Women’s Fight rises to the occasion, and then some. While most recent scholarship on Civil War Era women focuses on

Historian Lorien Foote issued a call to arms in 2017: “When historians forsake the binary of the home front and the battlefront and choose instead to explore the various types of conflict generated from households and communities across the South, they will better illuminate people’s diverse experiences of war.”3

Shelby Harriel. Behind the Rifle: Women Soldiers in Civil War Mississippi. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019. 216 pp .; ill. ISBN 9781496822017 (cl).

Jessica Ziparo. This Grand Experiment: When Women Entered the Federal Workforce in Civil War-Era Washington, D.C. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. 352 pp.; ill. ISBN 9781469635972 (cl); 9781469635989 (ebook).

Book Reviews: Carol Sheriff2021 239 specific regions, classes, or races, Glymph bridges these divides, offering an ambitious overview of women’s wartime battles either to preserve or unsettle the status quo when it came to their households, social standing, legal status, and national identity. Glymph’s book is at once synthetic and, like her previous scholarship, deeply rooted in painstaking archival research.

Glymph excels at demonstrating the complex ways in which women’s aspirations often collided with one another as well as with the aspirations of political and military elites—themes that Jessica Ziparo and Shelby Harriel also address, albeit in more focused ways, in their recent monographs.

looking at a singular women’s fight, as her title suggests, Glymph examines a multitude of fights that were happening simultane ously. When elite southern women fled into the country’s interior, they faced resistance from enslaved women and found themselves unwelcome among the poorer white women already living there, with whom they vied for scarce economic resources. In some instances, class warfare erupted into violence, with southern white Unionists and army deserters giving no quarter to the transplanted, condescending planters, who for their part saw poor whites as being of a different “race.” Black-white racial divides proved just as potent, with white women, northern as well as southern, failing to recognize either the full humanity of African American women or their own complicity in perpetuating an inhumane institution. Glymph presents compelling evidence of northern reformers whose positions of privilege rested on investments in slavery-based enterprises, with some of these women also relishing the possibility of assuming the role of “mistress”

Glymph argues that we should conceive of the everyday actions of women—African American or white, free or enslaved, rich or poor, southern or northern—as political battles focused on the home, as women struggled “to build free homes or maintain unfree ones as they supported the armies of one side or the other” (14). She divides her book into three sections, each containing two or three chapters focused primarily on a specific group of women. The first section looks at southern women and the second at northern women. The third, “The Hard Hand of War,” returns to the South to examine how the Union’s policy shift toward attacks on Confederate civilians’ morale and property, including their human chattel, affected both white and African American women. The book’s thematic focus on battles for home works better for some chapters than others; Glymph’s most significant contribution may instead be her textured exploration of the complex, sometimes paradoxical interactions among a diverse range of women, including slave mistresses, poor white southerners, enslaved and free African Americans, abolitionists, missionaries, teachers, and aid workers, as well as between women and the men with whom they came face-to-face.Ratherthan

One of the book’s greatest strengths is its evocative rendering of histori cal actors in their full complexity, even in instances when their humanity manifested itself in horrifyingly inhumane ways. Each chapter begins with a gripping vignette that puts human faces on processes that could otherwise seem abstract, and the book is sprinkled with vivid, often chilling testimony from a wide array of primary sources, including slave narratives, Works Progress Administration (WPA) interviews, government and military documents, personal correspondence, diaries, and newspapers. The book’s breadth and riveting (if often disturbing) examples make it promising for undergraduate as well as graduate courses.

Journal of Women ’s History240 Winter as they staffed their own homes with refugees from slavery. In the book’s striking final chapter, Glymph focuses on African American women and children fleeing slavery for the perceived safety of Union lines, highlight ing their battles to survive in insalubrious, violent refugee camps. There, they experienced not just neglect, abuse, and sexual assault at the hands of Union forces but also deadly raids by Confederates intent on either re-enslaving or slaughtering them, atrocities so horrific that even some Confederate officers deplored them. Survivors battled the Union’s racist labor policies that deprived them of fair wages, or wages at all, and they fought to reconstitute their families and communities. Meanwhile, when these African American women grew cotton on plantations in the occupied South or paid taxes on their wages, they enriched the Union’s coffers and “helped to keep the war machinery running” (254). Glymph is sometimes, but not always, the first scholar to narrate the many struggles that she deftly recounts; rather, she frames her historiographical contribution as primarily conceptual, one that emphasizes the continuities of class, race, and gender conflicts, and also shows how “the world of the Civil War was at once new and deeply familiar” (11).

Despite its wide-ranging nature, Glymph’s book is not designed to be comprehensive. She explicitly omits the West, one of the richest areas of new Civil War-related scholarship, and she makes just passing references to Native peoples, despite the multi-dimensional ways in which struggles for “home” would apply to them. Even within her established geographic confines, her thematic focus on home means overlooking the full range of women’s fights. Although the book is no less compelling as a result, readers interested in certain venues where women fought during the Civil War—for example, in hospitals, factories, government offices, or military regiments—will need to look elsewhere, including Jessica Ziparro’s and Shelby Harriel’s recent books.

Drawing on sources related to three thousand women who applied for and sometimes received employment with the federal government, primar ily in clerical positions but occasionally as manual laborers, Ziparo’s This

Women sought such government jobs in droves, and government officials became increasingly willing to hire them, despite no shortage of male applicants. Rather, in the midst of war, there was a shortage of qualified male applicants who were willing to work for government wages, which paled in comparison to what men could make in the private sector. Even though women earned about half of what men did for the same govern ment work, such wages were still substantially better than what women could earn elsewhere, while the work itself sometimes provided welcome intellectual challenges. Although many women sought government work to secure their independence, their ability to obtain jobs generally relied

Grand Experiment chronicles the experiences of mostly middle-class white women who traveled from across the Union to Washington, DC, during the Civil War and its immediate aftermath. (African American and poor white women left many fewer traces in the historical record and thus figure less prominently in Ziparo’s account.)

The book builds upon historian Cindy Sondik Aron’s Ladies and Gentlemen of the Civil Service (1987) by focusing more squarely on women’s experiences and extending the analysis of their spaces beyond the workplace into homes, neighborhoods, and leisure activities.4

Although Ziparo’s chronological scope is narrower than Aron’s, her book’s focus allows for meticulous, deep research into a wide array of sources—em ployee records, diaries, government publications, newspapers, the census, court records, and more—covering the long decade (1859–1871) surround ing the Civil War. Ziparo mines these sources for both broader trends and vivid anecdotes, so we learn (for example) that Mary Todd Lincoln used her influence as First Lady to obtain jobs for her psychic medium friends; that the Secretary of the Treasury objected when women workers warmed their teapots on the Department’s stoves and heaters, because—in Ziparo’s

analysis—“dozens of teapots dotting the stoves and sills of the Treasury Department feminized [men’s] workspace”; that working women’s hous ing was short on heat and long on rodents, as one clerk discovered when a mouse burrowed itself in her hairdo; and that among the treasured items that one woman lost to the streetcars’ ever-present pickpockets were “four tickets to an upcoming lecture by Frederick Douglass” (43, 98, 103, 114). To gether, such details are suggestive of the book’s broader themes: connections, rather than qualifications, generally determined which women got hired; even though male supervisors applauded women’s hard work and skill, they still conceived of the workplace as fundamentally male; many female workers fought tenaciously to keep their government employment, despite hardships on and off the job; and female workers took advantage not just of the social but also the political opportunities in Washington, discussing the substance of the government documents that they printed or copied for a living, and attending reformers’ lectures and Congressional debates.

Book Reviews: Carol Sheriff2021 241

on the patronage of politically connected men, whose paternalistic appeals on their behalf often emphasized the absence of an applicant’s breadwin ning husband or father (due to military enlistment or death) as well as the applicant’s own virtue. While such appeals proved instrumental in landing women jobs, they did not assuage public concerns about the sort of women who worked for the government, concerns stoked by salacious press reports casting female workers as prostitutes. As Ziparo notes, “These two ideas—female employment as charity and female federal employees as morally suspect—complicated how women were perceived in the federal workforce and the jobs supervisors allowed them to do” (68).

Women’s effectiveness on the job nonetheless spoke volumes, helping give serious traction to Congressional efforts to legislate equal pay for equal work among federal employees between 1867 and 1870, when “advocating equal pay for female clerks was not a fringe position” (206). Bills introduc ing equal pay passed both houses but never became law, although some newspapers published stories announcing, confidently but erroneously, the passage of equal-pay measures. Legislators themselves professed confusion over why equal pay did not come to fruition. Although significant majorities in each house supported the bills, the provision for equal pay got lost in conference committee—a mysterious outcome for equal pay’s proponents at the time and one that Ziparo leaves largely unexplained, despite her otherwise clear, if sometimes repetitive, explanations throughout the rest of theAsbook.Ziparo notes, the story that she tells is “not a triumphant narrative” (8). Dependent on male supervisors for their continued employment, women were constrained in their efforts to better their own situations, often playing instead into the tropes of dependency or sociability that men perpetuated. Moreover, with a high turnover rate (most female clerical workers remained on the job for less than a year) and with a highly competitive job market, the opportunities for organization and the inclination toward cooperation were infrequent. On a few occasions, women did unite to strike and petition (sometimes successfully) for higher wages, but they were just as likely to undercut one another in competition for jobs. Even so, Ziparo casts these clerical workers as “labor feminists,” arguing that although they did not work either “consciously or collectively to improve the rights and status of women,” they “were nonetheless challenging prevailing expectations about women’s abilities through their individual examples” (5). Wary of reprisals from supervisors if they joined forces with the suffrage movement, female government workers may have deprived themselves of assistance from activists more familiar with navigating the halls of Congress. At the same time, leading proponents of female suffrage, while supporting equal pay, devoted their limited resources to attaining the vote, which, they believed,

Journal of Women ’s History242 Winter

Book Reviews: Carol Sheriff2021 243 would in turn remedy the unequal pay issue. While Ziparo anticipates read ers’ skepticism at labeling the federal employees labor feminists, she does, at a minimum, add her voice to those of other scholars who argue that we must look beyond the suffrage movement for a fuller picture of women’s efforts to achieve equal rights. In the end, she notes, “as women lacked the power and tools to mount a true fight against the discrimination and were dissuaded from collective action, cracks and incremental advances were all they could achieve” (225–226).

About her contribution to the historical literature, Harriel states that her book “enhances the body of knowledge of women soldiers in general by providing new details of formerly recorded female fighters, debunking some

Whereas women entering the federal workforce came under intense public scrutiny, women who posed as men and joined the armed forces gen erally avoided detection, making it hard to estimate their numbers beyond a ballpark range of “hundreds, perhaps thousands,” according to Shelby Harriel in Behind the Rifle (11). Harriel focuses in particular on women who fought as soldiers in Civil War Mississippi, either Mississippians themselves or women from elsewhere whose units saw battle within the state. Although her conclusions largely echo those of DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook in They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War (2002), Behind the Rifle was a ten-year labor of love for Harriel, a mathematician.5 Like Blanton and Cook, Harriel concludes that in many ways, female soldiers were not so different from their male counterparts. They were ethni cally and racially diverse, and they fought for similar reasons: patriotism, economic opportunity, adventure, independence, and vengeance. Some enlisted to be with their male relatives, while others joined the military to escape from overbearing or abusive families or, in some cases, from slav ery or prison. Many of these soldiers passed as beardless young men until having their masquerades exposed by misfortune (injury, illness, death), their own intoxicated revelations, their “feminine mannerisms,” or, even, a womanly sneeze (126, 96). Although women’s experiences could vary significantly from their male counterparts’—for example, women captured as prisoners of war generally received lenient treatment—overall their daily experiences outwardly mirrored those of the men alongside whom they marched, camped, fought, and died. Because few of these women left behind their own accounts of their experiences, it is impossible to assess how they experienced the war internally. At least some of these soldiers had also passed as men before the war and some continued to do so after the war, but Harriel concludes that gender identity likely did not motivate biologically female soldiers to present themselves as male (155–159). Harriel compiles rich information from newspapers, personal and of ficial correspondence, service and pension records, the census, and memoirs.

Journal of Women ’s History244 Winter cases, and introducing previously undocumented ones” (7). Readers with a particular interest in female soldiers will admire and benefit from Har riel’s dogged detective work, which she often recounts in extensive detail as she introduces “over twenty” previously unrecognized female soldiers. But despite her tenacity, her trail frequently runs dry, as we learn time and again that a particular woman’s fate is “unknown” or a “mystery,” or that a female soldier “disappeared from history.” It is especially challenging to discover in the historical record people whose goal was to evade detection in their own Together,time.these three books advance our understanding of the fragil ity of the boundary between the Civil War’s military and civilian spheres, not just in the South but also in the North. Glymph’s women often found themselves in war zones, as soldiers or other civilians made battlefields of their homes or their places of refuge, while Unionists and African Ameri can refugees aided the Union effort. Harriel’s soldiers and Ziparo’s clerks demonstrate that women saw direct military action and played crucial roles in the bureaucracy that fueled the Union war machine. Three decades after Drew Gilpin Faust mused that it may have been because of its women that the South lost the Civil War, historians have increasingly focused on a more racially, economically, and geographically diverse population of Civil War Era women while blurring the line between home front and battlefield. Yet Faust’s basic premise still holds: Women—white and African American, free and enslaved, rich and poor—influenced the war’s military trajectory, even as they fought their own battles for privilege, survival, freedom, fam ily, and home.

1Drew Gilpin Faust, “Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate Women and the Nar ratives of War,” Journal of American History 76, no. 4 (Mar. 1990): 1200–1228, 1228.

Notes

2For a concise overview of the historiography, see Joan E. Cashin, “Ameri can Women and the American Civil War,” Journal of Military History 81, no. 1 (Jan. 2017): 199–204.3LorienFoote, “Rethinking the Confederate Home Front,” Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 3 (Sept. 2017): 446–465, 460. 4Cindy Sondik Aron, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Civil Service: Middle-Class Workers in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

5DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook, They Fought Like Demons: Women Sol diers in the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002).

ANNA DOBROWOLSKA is Max Weber Fellow at the Department of History and Civilisation, European University Institute in Florence. She is the author of Zawodowe dziewczyny. Prostytucja I praca seksualna w PRL (Professional Girls. Prostitution and Sex Work in State-Socialist Poland) (Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej, 2020) which is the first full account of the history of commercial sex in postwar Poland. She is currently completing her doctoral dissertation at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford, where she is investigating the history of the Polish “sexual revolution” in the two last decades of state socialism.

Contributors

EILEEN BORIS is Hull Professor and Distinguished Professor of Feminist Studies and Distinguished Professor of History, Black Studies, and Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her most recent books are Making the Woman Worker: Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919–2019 (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Engendering Trans national Transgressions: From the Intimate to the Global, coedited with Sandra Trudgen Dawson and Barbara Molony (Routledge, 2021). She is writing on migrant domestic workers and their struggles for freedom.

SANDY F. CHANG is assistant professor of modern Asia in the History De partment at the University of Florida. She is interested in Chinese migration and diaspora, gender, and sexuality in Southeast Asia and the British Empire. She is currently working on a book project that traces the border-crossing journeys of over a million Chinese women who traveled from coastal China to the Malay Peninsula in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She received her PhD from the University of Austin at Texas in 2020.

NICOLE BOURBONNAIS is associate professor in the International His tory and Politics Department and Co-Director of the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Her work explores the history of reproductive politics, decolo nization, feminism, and maternal health. She is author of Birth Control in the Decolonizing Caribbean: Reproductive Politics and Practice on Four Islands (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and is currently working on a history of the twentieth-century global family planning movement.

EVA PAYNE is assistant professor of US history at the University of Missis sippi. Her first book project examines American involvement in international anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She serves as the codirector of the Invisible Histories Project-Mississippi, which documents and preserves Mississippi’s LGBTQ history.

JULIA T. MARTÍNEZ is associate professor of history at the University of Wollongong (UOW), Australia. She publishes on themes of colonialism, migration, and gender in Asia Pacific contexts. Her book with Adrian Vickers, The Pearl Frontier: Indonesian Labor and Indigenous Encounters in Australia’s Northern Trading Network (University of Hawaii Press, 2015), won the 2016 QLD History Book Award and the NT History Book Award, and was shortlisted for the AHA Ernest Scott Prize. Her article, “Asian Servants for the Imperial Telegraph: Imagining North Australia as an Indian Ocean Colony before 1914,” Australian Historical Studies 48, no. 2 (2017): 227–243, examining Australia’s Indian Ocean connections, won the 2018 Patricia Grimshaw Prize. Her recent books include Colonialism and Male Domestic Service Across the Asia Pacific, coedited with Claire Lowrie, Frances Steel, and Victoria Haskins (Bloomsbury, 2019) and Locating Chinese Women: Histori cal Mobility between China and Australia, coedited with Kate Bagnall (Hong Kong University Press, 2021).

KIMBERLY D. MCKEE is associate professor in Integrative, Religious, and Intercultural Studies at Grand Valley State University. She is the author of Disrupting Kinship: Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States (University of Illinois Press, 2019) and coeditor with Denise A. Delgado of Degrees of Difference: Reflections of Women of Color on Graduate School (Univer sity of Illinois Press, 2020). She serves on the executive committee for the Alliance of the Study of Adoption and Culture. McKee received her PhD in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from The Ohio State University.

PAMELA J. FUENTES is assistant professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Pace University-NYC and interim director of the Latina/o Studies Program. She holds a PhD from York University in Toronto. Her research interests include gender in Latin America, urban politics, and sexuality in a global context. She has taught Latin American politics and history as well as gender studies at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. She is currently working on a book that will explore the debates on prostitution and sex trafficking against the backdrop of revolutionary politics and the consolidation of state authority in Mexico from the 1920s to the 1940s. She has written articles about the history of gender and sexuality in Mexico City in English and Spanish.

Journal of Women ’s History246 Winter

Contributors2021 247

CAROLINE SÉQUIN is assistant professor of modern European history at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. She completed her PhD in modern European history at the University of Chicago. She has since published “The Moving Contours of Colonial Prostitution (Fort-de-France, Martinique, 1940–1947), Clio Femmes, Genre, Histoire 50, no. 2 (November 2019): 19–36. She is currently at work on her first book, which explores the role that the management of commercial sex played in policing racial rela tions in France and the French Empire in the century following the abolition of slavery. Her work has been supported by the Western Society for French History, the French Colonial Historical Society, and the Society for French Historical Studies.

MAGALAY RODRÍGUEZ GARCÍA is associate professor at the KU Leuven, Belgium. She obtained her PhD in 2008 at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her doctoral dissertation, which eventually became the book Liberal Workers of the World, Unite! The ICFTU and the Defence of Labour Liberalism in Europe and Latin America (1949–1969) (Peter Lang, 2010), won her the Labor History Dissertation Prize in 2008. From 2009 to 2015 she worked as a postdoctoral fellow for the Research Foundation Flanders. Her research focuses on the history of international organizations, global labor, subalternity, and past and present prostitution policies. She was coeditor with Marcel van der Linden of On Coerced Labor: Work and Compulsion after Chattel Slavery (Brill, 2016) and Selling Sex in the City: A Global History of Prostitution, 1600s–2000s (Brill, 2017) and published in, among others, the International Review of Social History, Sexuality Research and Social Policy, and Monde(s).

CAROL SHERIFF is professor of history at William & Mary. Her previous scholarship has focused on civilians and soldiers during the American Civil War as well as the history and historical memory of the antebellum North. She is currently working on a book tentatively titled “‘Not a brother’s war’: America’s Embattled Textbooks,” which examines controversies arising from portrayals of contested historical events in state history textbooks from the 1860s to the present.

Journal of Women ’s History248 Winter © 2021 Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 33 No. 4, 248–249. Acknowledgment to Reviewers The Journal of Women’s History editors and editorial staff thankfully acknowledge the generous contributions of the following scholars who reviewed manuscripts for the Journal, August 21, 2020–September 1, 2021. Laura Rosanne Adderley Janet SimonTeresaGülhanEbruLeahAnaisCamronAfaryAminAngeloAstburyAykutBalsoyBarnesKévinBaskouda Shelly Elisheva Baumgarten Lauren SusanTamarGabrielaGabrielaMarieLisaFrançoiseEmilieMichaelBeckBennettBergmannBlumBoehmGraceBrownCanoCarriónCarrollCarruthers Sueann Caulfield Kristin Celello Choi KristinaSarahRachelSarahAnnikaKarenAliciaLeslieLauraChatterjeeCházaroGarcíaChoquetteColsonCookBellCulverCurtisDelvinDeutschDuRocher Bonnie Effros Carolyn J. Eichner Lerna Ekmekçioğlu Camilo Erlichman María Teresa Fernández Aceves Jake JessicaEmilyRachelAmandaJuliaBurleighKatieAmyJillJulieFranciscaDavidAitanaLauraFeliciaIreneWendyLoriJudithLietteCarlaKarenFrederickGarnerGeronaGidlowGiesbergD.GinzbergGonaverGonzálezGottmannGowingGuíaGutmandeHaanHardwickHarsinHayM.HemphillHendricksonIrwinIzzoJean-BaptisteJohnsonMarieJohnson Dobrochna Kałwa Judith Keene Lisa AmandaLisaAnneAlisonChristopherKirschenbaumKnowlesLefkovitzE.LesterLevensteinH.Littauer

Acknowledgment to Reviewers2021 249 Heidi MacDonald Elif Mahir Metinsoy Nazan Maksudyan Kate LeilaCassiaDavidLauraSusieJeanStephanieJocelynInbalElizabethRoseAfsanehMaryKorithaMollyMarkKristenMasurMcClearyMcLellandC.MichelmoreMitchellNiallMitchellNajmabadiTatianaNdengueNelsonOferOlcottOppermanPedersenShannonPorterRobsonRosnerRothRupp Brett AnnaMaryAntoinetteLouieNancyLauraKacyCarrieKirstenKathleenCarolinePaulaMarthaNicholeCristinaAndreaRushforthRusnockSalinasSandersSantosSchwartzSéquinSheldonSwinthTeresaTillmanAnnTwagiraUngerDeanValencia-GarcíaVanZelmKayVaughanWinterbottom Mir Yarfitz Mercedes Yusta Rodrigo Aihua Zhang

Journal of Women's History Vol. 33 No. 4

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Warring Women

Mixed-Race Adoptees and Transnational Adoption

and the Making of Whiteness in Interwar Dakar

State-Socialist Poland

Intimate Itinerancy: Sex, Work, and Chinese Women in Colonial Malaya’s Brothel Economy, 1870s–1930s

In)Decent Work: Sex and the ILO

Contraception and Reproduction in Global Conversation

US Bureau of Immigration

Introduction to the Issue Trafficking, A Useless Category of Historical Analysis

The League of Nations, Prostitution, and the Deportation of Chinese Women from Interwar Manila