An Interview With... SWAN Vancouver - Anti-trafficking Campaigns and the Demonisation of the Sex Industry

[Guest lydiahardwood]

Hi everyone! A bit of a different interview this time as it's not with a Lyla member, it's with Andi - Development Manager for SWAN Vancouver. There has been a lot of noise recently about trafficking within the industry, so I thought it'd be good to get some info from the experts.

Q: Hey Andi! Thanks for your time. I recently watched your webinar on anti-trafficking campaigns and it was so insightful so I  thought it’d be great to share this interview with our community. Can you tell me a bit about SWAN, what is it you do and how did it all start? 
A. Thanks so much including SWAN in your community and collection of interviews, and for watching our Harms of Anti-Trafficking  project launch webinar on 26 October. For anyone who wasn’t able to dial in, the project can be viewed at  www.swanvancouver.ca/harms-of-anti-trafficking. 
SWAN promotes the rights, health & safety of im/migrant women engaged in indoor sex work through front-line service & systemic advocacy. 
SWAN grew out of an HIV/AIDS-focussed pilot project in the late 90’s that involved outreach to indoor sex workers in local massage parlours. Over the course of the project, it became clear that workers were concerned not only with sexual health but various other  important issues related to the law, immigration and safety, among others. By the end of the project our founders recognized how  important outreach services are for migrant and immigrant (hereinafter im/migrant) women. In 2002, the outreach workers formed  the Sex Workers Action Network (SWAN). 

In 2008, SWAN incorporated as a non-profit society and formally changed its name to Supporting Women’s Alternatives Network in response to the many im/migrant women who do sex work but do not self-identify as sex workers. 

SWAN has evolved a great deal over the years. In addition to our outreach services and advocacy to indoor workers in massage  parlours and independent spaces, SWAN participates in policy and law reform at all three levels of government (i.e., municipal,  provincial and federal); partakes in participatory action research to bring forward the realities of im/migrant sex workers; and is  very active challenging mainstream anti-trafficking campaigns and discourse.  

Q: Thank you for the intro! You’re based in Vancouver; do you do any work in any other provinces? 
A. At this time, SWAN’s provides services regionally in the Greater Vancouver area. We have plans to expand our services throughout  the province of British Columbia in 2021 should we receive funding. SWAN is currently the only organization in Western Canada  providing services to sex working im/migrant women. As such, we field calls from other provinces from time to time and provide  services through our networks as needed.  

 

Q: So let’s talk about anti-trafficking campaigns. Can you first of all tell me about trafficking and the different forms it takes. 
A. In Canada, trafficking in persons involves recruiting, transporting, transferring, receiving, holding, concealing, harbouring, or  exercising control, direction or influence over the movements of a person for the purpose of exploitation. There are other  trafficking laws, including receiving financial gain or material benefit for purposes of exploitation, and withholding or destroying  someone’s travel or personal identification documents in order to exploit them.  

Exploitation is a common component of trafficking, but someone who is exploited is not necessarily trafficked and vice-versa. Sexual  exploitation, labour exploitation, domestic servitude, forced marriage, and organ harvesting are all forms of exploitation. Labour  exploitation often includes elements of trafficking, and is often systemically sanctioned – Canada’s temporary foreign worker  programs are a prime example. 

Anti-trafficking campaigns focus often solely on ‘sex trafficking’ in Canada and conflate not only sex work and trafficking but also  other issues. ‘Human trafficking’ has become a catch-all phrase for virtually any ill that can possibly befall women and children, such as child abuse, intimate partner violence, sexual assault, pedophilia and other issues.  

Q: The sex industry gets a lot of attention for trafficking. When people hear the word I think their minds go to movies such as Taken or the recent accusations that Wayfair were selling missing children disguised as wardrobes. How accurate are  these examples? 
A. As the sex industry and human trafficking are consistently depicted as being one and the same in blockbuster films and popular  television crime dramas, many people come to believe that trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, often referred to as  ‘sex trafficking’, is a global epidemic. Sex work and human trafficking are separate, complex issues that should not be confused  with one another.  

Large-scale public crises like Covid-19 heighten folks’ vulnerability to conspiracy beliefs. Conspiracy theories provide immediate  explanations for events and complex issues that aren’t able to be fully understood by some. They play on people’s distrust of  government and other faceless authorities and they’re incredibly difficult to fact-check especially with the misinforming power of social media. So it’s not surprising that viral scarelore has escalated to accusations that face masks are a tool government-supported  traffickers use to conceal the identities of masses of trafficked children - or that missing children are disguised as wardrobes sold  by Wayfair - or that the foster care system is merely a catalyst for the government’s trafficking of children – or that large sports  events are central hubs for global trafficking. Unsubstantiated claims become undisputable through sheer repetition, and persist  despite being repeatedly debunked year after year. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic and QAnon, the scope of these urban myths  is unprecedented. QAnon’s hyper-conflation of pandemic and pizzagate conspiracies has fueled public hysteria that has surpassed  pre-Covid trafficking hysteria. It’s been interesting to watch well-established anti-trafficking groups plead for reasoned perspective  as they contend with what are arguably the impacts of many of the theories they themselves propagated over much of the past  twenty years! 

Q: I think we all agree that trafficking is a problem but how much of the blame given to the sex industry is warranted? 
A. No one condones human trafficking, suggests it doesn’t happen, or says it isn’t a serious crime. But sex work is not trafficking. Many  people earn a living by working in the sex industry. Everyone makes income-related decisions based on available options; the  number of options are dependent upon one’s circumstances. Sex workers are no different. 

The truth is trafficking for the purposes of labour exploitation is often government sanctioned and far more prevalent than any  other form of trafficking. ‘Sex trafficking’ is the red herring in a conversation about labour rights no government or corporation  wants to have. Cheap labour provided by workers with few to no rights is literally ideal in the context of capitalism. 

When sex work and trafficking are presented as a single issue, it results in over-simplification. Complex realities are lost as a one dimensional trafficking story becomes the basis for the urban myths, viral scarelore, and unsubstantiated statistics, which are  repeated by anti-trafficking campaigns and then in turned into policy and law by decisionmakers. Sex workers bear the harms, and  particularly workers from marginalized and equity-seeking groups, including migrant workers, Indigenous and racialized workers,  trans workers, drug-using workers and workers living with mental health issues. 

Q: If someone was being trafficked, what are some warning signs?  
It is extremely difficult to tell if someone is trafficked from ‘warning signs.’ There are so many nuances between sex work among  im/migrant women and trafficking that are not discernible to outsiders such as health care providers, those in the hospitality industry,  airline staff and others who regularly receive human trafficking training.  

The way SWAN distinguishes sex workers from women who are trafficked is by building the trust necessary so in the course of providing  social services, women feel comfortable coming forward to seek assistance if needed. Without these relationships in place, it is  extremely difficult to identify trafficking.  

SWAN is highly critical of ‘red flags’ and indicator lists promoted by mainstream anti-trafficking campaigns. According to these lists, all  the women who access SWAN’s services are trafficked! These indicators or red flags are rarely based on empirical evidence of human  trafficking. They have become so broad that they encompass a wide swath of the population and don’t really indicate anything anymore  other useless attempts at training and a colossal waste of resources.  

There are potential harmful effects for im/migrant sex workers that are directly related to the unquestioning acceptance and promotion  of these indicators, particularly when neglecting to consider the many alternative possibilities these ‘red flags’ may represent. At SWAN,  we are aware of many other possible meanings for these indicators based on nearly two decades of experience working with im/migrant  sex workers who are often perceived to be trafficked.  

Further, there is an unacknowledged role and complex interplay of gender, race, ethnicity, language and culture in establishing red flags;  that is, it is not always the red flag itself that indicates risk but who the indicator is applied to. For example, when a number of non White, and especially Asian, sex workers who speak accented English work together, this work situation can be perceived as a case of  trafficking whereas the same conclusion may not be drawn from a group of White, Canadian-born sex workers.  

Q: If someone had concerns about sex trafficking, what would the best course of action be? 
A. We would suggest contacting your local sex worker organization to discuss your concerns. Sex workers are well-positioned to  identify and prevent trafficking in the sex industry. As we pointed out earlier, one of the biggest problems with the “know the  signs” training that dominates mainstream anti-trafficking initiatives is that the signs are so generalized they can be applied to  virtually anyone anywhere.  

As we covered in our Harms of Anti-Trafficking project, the three main things one can do to address trafficking concerns are 1)include the folks you’re helping. Consult them whenever possible. 2) think deeply about context– if you think you’re seeing  “signs,” consider whether there are any other reasonable explanations, and 3) if in any doubt, ask your local sex work or migrant  worker organization.

 

Q: I have heard of “welfare checks” where authorities make a fake booking and visit establishments to supposedly check  the workers are safe and consenting. Does this happen much in Canada? 
A. Raid and rescue are a widespread law-enforcement strategy in Canada carried out under the guise of “protection.” Canada’s  national rescue initiative is called Operation Northern Spotlight and law enforcement agencies across the country participate  annually. Often in formal partnerships with anti-trafficking organizations who participate to provide so-called victim support, police  routinely catfish sex workers and carry out raids to “rescue” them. SWAN has long voiced our concerns about the harms created  from these initiatives; they disproportionately target racialized sex workers while directly contributing to the overall under reporting of violence perpetrated against sex workers. More information about Operation Northern Spotlight and SWAN’s  opposition to this approach is available on our website: https://www.swanvancouver.ca/northern-spotlight

 

Q: How can anti-trafficking campaigns damage sex workers?  
Anti-trafficking campaigns have played a major role the world over in contributing to and successfully advocating for ‘end demand’ prostitution laws, which increase stigma, violence and harm for sex workers whom the rescue industry purports to ‘help’. Often  colonial and carceral in nature, anti-trafficking campaigns rarely address socio-economic root causes of trafficking such as poverty,  inequity and systemic racism. Rather, they opt for a law and order approach to trafficking, which encourages heavy-handed police  enforcement in the lives of sex workers, in particular racialized sex workers. This approach increases adversarial relationships between  sex workers and police and in turn, contribute to the under-reporting of violence perpetrated against sex workers. 

 

Q: The narrative that sex workers need saving really needs to go. Have you got any suggestions on how we can combat this? 
A. Absolutely! Constantly assuming sex workers need rescuing doesn’t help, it just harms (and incidentally, it doesn’t help anyone who  actually needs help.) Podcaster Jen Monroe (aka: “Jen the Libertarian”) said it best: “There are sex workers who love their job.  There are sex workers who view the job as ‘meh, it’s a living.’ And there are sex workers who hate their job and are doing it until  something better comes up. Just. Like. Every. Other. Job. On. The. Planet.”  

SWAN’s Harms of Anti-Trafficking Project is all about course-correcting this deeply-entrenched, harmful narrative so please watch  the video, read the guidebook, join the action group & share the link! www.swanvancouver.ca/harms-of-anti-trafficking

Q: What about decriminalisation - does that help reduce trafficking? Is there any data to show this? 
Decriminalizing sex work increases safety not just for sex workers, but for everyone. Generally speaking, criminalizing social issues only  ever increases harms, vulnerability to harms, and policing. The war on drugs is a good example. After decades of criminalizing drugs and the people who use them, the drug war is widely acknowledged to be a dismal failure particularly since the introduction of fentanyl  into the global, unregulated supply. Legalizing drugs and decriminalizing drug use won’t magically erase addiction, but it will increase  the state’s ability to regulate supply chains and increase the public’s general safety, while also vastly reducing the opportunity for black  markets and conditions under which exploitation can occur.  
Decriminalization of sex work can be thought of in exactly the same way. It is not a magic bullet but sex workers are best protected  when they have the same rights and labour protections as all other workers. If sex workers have access to occupational health and  safety, it goes a long way in preventing trafficking. Research from New Zealand where sex work is decriminalized – except for  migrant sex workers- demonstrates that decriminalization reduces trafficking.  

Incidentally, if Canada decriminalized sex work, migrant sex workers would still be criminalized because of current immigration  prohibitions on sex work, which state that temporary residents in Canada are “not to enter into an employment agreement, or  extend the term of an employment agreement, with an employer who, on a regular basis, offers striptease, erotic dance, escort  services or erotic massages.” More information about this is available on SWAN’s website: https://www.swanvancouver.ca/our position-statements 

Q: A lot of stories about sex trafficking are sensationalised and prey on emotions. How can we spot fact from fiction? 
A. Watch SWAN’s recently-launched Anti-Trafficking: Harming While Trying to Help video: https://bit.ly/34A5gms and then check out  the full multi-media project at www.swanvancouver.ca/harms-of-anti-trafficking. ☺

 

Q: Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it. Finally, is there anything we, as a community, can do to further  support sex workers? 
A. Thanks so much for including SWAN in your community and collection of interviews! For readers in Canada, SWAN has a list of calls  to action on our website: https://www.swanvancouver.ca/calls-to-action.  
We are currently seeking members, especially sex workers, for our newly formed Harms of Anti-Trafficking Action Group. You can  find more information at https://www.swanvancouver.ca/harms-of-anti-trafficking-group

Since the onset of the pandemic, anti-Asian racism and hate-crime incidents have risen 878% in Vancouver, and we know this is  happening in other cities across Canada and the United States. SWAN invites everyone to take a stand against racism and send a  message of kindness: https://swanvancouver.ca/messages-of-hope-board. It’s free to send a message, it only takes a minute, and  it means the world to the women we serve.  

For readers in the USA and elsewhere, connect with your local rights-based sex work organization to find out how you can promote  the rights and safety of sex workers in your community.  

Everyone is invited to stay connected with SWAN through our website and social media platforms. Thank you!! 
SWAN website: www.swanvancouver.ca 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SwanVancouver 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SWAN_Vancouver
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/swan-vancouver
WeChat: https://www.swanvancouver.ca/wechat
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swan_vancouver

 

[Phaedrus 209523]

7 hours ago, lydiahardwood said:

Sex work and human trafficking are separate, complex issues that should not be confused  with one another. 

This. I *really* wish everyone could magically be made to understand this.

The problem is that trafficking stories that involve things like the agriculture or domestic services industry don't get anything like the attention, because... sex sells, I guess.

Anyways, another awesome interview! Thanks!

[waterat 20911]

I agree with @Phaedrus' comments. This excellent interview - thank you SWAN and also to @lydiahardwood for putting these important issues in front of us. I will be thoroughly reviewing SWAN's website and sending a 'message of kindness' to their 'message of hope board'.

Many of the points here took me back to the discussions around  the passage of Bill C-36 and our resulting law regarding sex work: now we have a 'Nordic' model which makes sex work more dangerous for the providers and has likely exacerbated labour trafficking by putting it out of sight while sex frafficking (for which there were already existing laws) may not have been impacted at all. Many of the arguments made in support of Bill C-36 conflated trafficking and sex work - so sad that Joy Smith and Peter MacKay were given such voice.

Apparently there are other areas than Covid management that we should be paying attention to New Zealand on.

[East Coast Kimmy 1120]

Amazing interview yet again @lydiahardwood

Love the subject and information submitted. Hopefully this shines a bit of light for some and opens the eyes of others!  Loving the interviews! Keep them coming 

xx Kimmy 

[Cheeky.char 473]

Great interview!! I feel like I really take a lot from this! 

[Mikeyboy 27135]

Very enlightening. Thank you @lydiahardwood for doing this interview, and thank you to SWAN for all of the important work that you do. While sex trafficking is a real problem, it is imperative that we not allow it to become an excuse to legislate morality. Thank you for shining a spotlight on the harm that it can do. Education is key. Well done. Keep it up.

[Kitten 1288]

I enjoyed this eloquent interview incredibly! I will most definitely be looking into more on SWAN.

If you ever make it as far as Ontario I would adore using my hands and head in any way possible to help.

Thank you Andi and Lydia for this amazing interview. Including this was a brilliant idea 💋