From Female Migrant Sex Workers to Migrant Workers: When the Danish Labor Market Encounters the Policy Field of Anti-Trafficking

Abstract

Abstract This article explores how the policy field of anti-trafficking has been further complicated by a shift of focus from female migrant sex workers to migrant workers in Denmark. As a discursive terrain established through various discourses produced by articulations, practices, and interests, Danish anti-trafficking is an excellent example of how highly regulated and different state institutions together with trade unions establish regimes of prostitution, migration, crime, and labor market. Together, these regimes create the complex policy field of anti-trafficking. The article demonstrates how a trade union, as a part of the labor market regime, is a new player. Despite this new player in the anti-trafficking policy field, the article argues that the figure of “the migrant worker” becomes invisible as logics and categories of “labor exploitation” and “labor rights” collide with the ideas of rescuing poor migrant women selling sex.