The situation away from Trafficking
Trafficking arrived towards the governmental agenda immediately following tension from feminists and you will new national ladies coverage company. To start with, feminine was indeed trafficked out of The southern part of Asia (significantly Thailand and Philippines), Latin America (Columbia together with Dominican Republic and you can Africa (Ghana); after the slide of one’s Berlin Wall, trade pathways shifted to Central and you may East European countries. Governmental means was basically defining the newest offence a whole lot more broadly so you can assists prosecution and you may enhancing the penalty regarding five to six ages, so as that culprits might be kept when you look at the remand custody. The new blogs about penal password toward person trafficking was in fact revised into the 1993, with a far more real definition of the fresh new offense and higher charges to possess traffickers (Outshoorn 2004a: 195). The new stuff had been presented for the a beneficial gender-basic ways, and you can trafficking remained identified as forcing men on the prostitution.
In the parliamentary debates on trafficking around that period, foreign women were portrayed as victims of unscrupulous traffickers tricked into prostitution. This framing was tied into a discourse about the divide between the rich and poor countries: female prostitutes from the ‘Third World’ were driven by poverty. Gradually, a more insidious edge crept into this discourse when Christian Democrats in parliament linked trafficking to illegal migration, opening a space for ‘false’ victims, who used the loopholes in the law to work illegally as a prostitute in the Netherlands (HTK, 1991–1992, TK 81, pp. 4994, 4995, e time they also started to argue that all women from non-EU countries working in the sex industry were victims of forced prostitution. Therefore in their view, the best remedy to stop trafficking was to prevent non-EU women from working in the Dutch sex industry in the first place. This reasoning eradicated the figure of a woman migrant deciding to work as a sex worker in the West and who might make use of intermediaries to enter the country-with her consent. But then she was ‘illegal’ and ought to be deported.
Successive cabinets continued to refuse work permits on similar grounds, also arguing there was no national interest at stake which normally justifies extending work permits to non-EU persons. They were backed by a recurring majority in parliament; the parliamentary records show many references to the fear of foreign prostitutes entering the country which would subvert immigration policies. The fear resurfaced in the memorandum to the bill to lift the brothel ban, as one of the aims of the bill was to halt ‘the stream of foreign prostitutes’ (HTK 1996–97, 25437 (Opheffing Algemeen Bordeelverbod), no. 3 (Memorie van Toelichting), 1 July 1997, p. 13). Lausanne live escorts The refusal to grant work permits was also generally justified by the aim of stopping the trafficking of women; permits would encourage traffickers to transport women into the country.
Kinds of Sex Professionals
After that utilization of the newest act led to the development from zero below four kinds of prostitutes. To begin with, there is the ethnically vague Dutch sex staff member just who willingly chooses to be effective within the prostitution that’s the fresh bearer out of civil and societal liberties. Secondly, you can find the new prostitutes from other Eu countries who can flow freely inside and outside of your Netherlands and you may operate in the brand new sex business. These kinds divided in to a couple categories following the accession on the Eu of Baltic Says, Poland, Hungary, the new Czech Republic and you may Slovakia during the 2004, to make a 3rd category which is only able to legally behave as prostitutes whenever they were separate sex workers rather than staff. Within the 2007, sex workers from the this new European union participants have been recognized to your an enthusiastic equal footing toward older Eu associate gurus, nevertheless 3rd class are now filled with sex workers regarding Bulgaria and Romania whenever each other countries registered the European union for the reason that exact same year. Like their predecessors, these women are permitted to become independent sex professionals, however, up until now a lot less staff.