European Anti-Trafficking Policies: Migrant Women in the Stranglehold of the Law

Submitted by: Association Cabiria, Lyon: Département Recherche et International, France

Input for: Expert Group Meeting: "Violence Against Women: A statistical overview, challenges and gaps in data collection and methodology and approaches for overcoming them," 11-14 April 2005, Geneva, Switzerland

Topic: Violence against women in the sex industry

Summary: The issue of trafficking in women for the purpose of sexual exploitation is widely debated today in Europe. However, the viewpoints and experiences of the women themselves are rarely documented, neither is this issue or contextualised into the migration field in general; thus, women's rights to mobility are seldom recognised as human rights.

There are practically no studies focussing on women and their experiences, which might propose structural analyses based on social gender relationships. The majority of field studies come from official organisations that, most often, work with the police, which is likely to cause bias.

It is this lack of coverage that the NGO Cabiria and its European partners have tried to tackle through a two-year action-research initiative in the field. This research was funded by the Daphne programme. The key issues of this action-research were as follows:

• What is "trafficking"? — Social, economic and political context, institutional and field solutions.
• What are the experiences of these women, who are generally referred to as "victims of trafficking"? — We examined the issues of trafficking, prostitution, international migrations and public European and national policies in the four countries studied.

This work is entirely based on an approach geared towards gender and human rights and on an ethic of proximity and commitment, from a feminist perspective. It is through sharing, solidarity and cooperation that the teams in the field have managed to learn about the lives and viewpoints of the women concerned.

On violence: Legal framework in France

Pimping

In France, pimping is defined in an extensive range of practices: support, help and/or taking benefits from prostitution of someone. A sex worker's boyfriend can be considered as her pimp, or someone who would rent a room or a flat etc. Pimping is strongly prosecuted: ten years jail and high fines. Even receiving a gift from a sexworker can be charged with complicity.

Migration

Legal immigration in France is difficult as well. Since the 70s, it is hardly possible to have a resident permit except for family reasons (brining a family together) or political asylum. Some highly skilled professionals can have a resident permit for work, though this is seldom. Sex work

There is no official indoor sex-work in France and all sexworkers work on the streets. They practice sexual relations in cars or in hotels.

There is no official registration of sex workers, but we have some data from the police (registration by the police is unofficial). The estimates are that there are approximately 15 000 street sex workers in France. Among them 50 to 70 per cent are foreigners from Eastern Europe, Africa or Latin America, depending on the cities. Foreign sex workers are more numerous in large cities. The media has made a "big deal" about trafficking these past years, often exaggerating the data. This has been rather counterproductive, and xenophobia against foreign sex workers is strong in France.

The situation today

Until March 2003, soliciting on the street was tolerated, and foreign women could apply for temporarily asylum. That means that women could apply for asylum at the State Office, and as the administrative proceedings were drawn out, they could have temporary resident permits for 1 or two years, without the right to work legally. The permit was renewed every three months.

Since March 2003 a new bill passed. During the debates at Parliament, it was presented as a law to tackle trafficking and organized crime and to protect victims.

• Soliciting is forbidden and if women are arrested, they will be jailed for two months and will have to pay three 750 Euros fine.
• Foreign women risk to be expelled for soliciting.
• If a woman is declared as a victim of trafficking and if she denounces her pimp or her trafficker, she can have, under certain conditions, a temporary resident permit. The authorization to work is not automatically delivered.

As far as we know even under the previous system hardly no woman has had a resident permit with working authorization (maybe ten to 30 women at a maximum these last years, but we have no data available). With the new law, as soliciting is a serious offence, women will be systematically condemned and deported.

Sex workers (95 per cent Migrants) are harassed, frightened, sued, fined and jailed, likened to delinquents, threatened, sent back to the realms of marginality and permanently exposed to violence. Since May 2003, we have been compiling a 70-page journal documenting all the kinds of repression that sex workers have been facing. There is a real increase in violence and discrimination. The French population seems to think that there is now impunity and that they have the right to trouble and disrespect sex workers because the government does so. Criminalisation of sex work increases discrimination against women, especially when they complain on violence.

In Lyon we counted 350 arrests in 2004 and more than 400 acts of violence against sex workers on the street. In Toulouse, we counted thousands of arrests (more or less ten a week), which look like police raids on the streets. Women experience police brutalities and harassment on a regular basis. We also counted 65 trials in 2004. All women are sentenced to jail, fines and or deportation.

In the same year, twelve migrant sex workers have been raped, ten of them complained, but instead of taking action to prosecute criminals, the police arrested most of them on the basis of irregular stay. Most of them have been deported.

The enforcement of laws also reveals how political violence is subtly established in democratic countries. By virtue of the law to protect victims, a woman who reports her pimp should obtain residence papers. As well as the fact that this principle of the "right against denouncement" is already in itself a form of political violence (Cabiria, 02, 03), its enforcement speaks volumes.

In France, the person receives a renewable temporary card valid for three months, with the right to work (APS), rather than a one-year residence permit. They are therefore unable to work, obtain housing or a bank account, or any common law social service, as the duration of their residence permit is too short. Most women in this situation go back to working on the street in order to make a living. There, they are arrested for soliciting and their residence permit is withdrawn, and they can then be deported from the country.

Submitted by:

• Association Cabiria, Lyon
  Département Recherche et International
  Lyon BP 1145
  69203 Lyon cedex 01
  France
  Email: Cabiria.recherche@wanadoo.fr
  Web: www.cabiria.asso.fr