Migrant sex work
Whether or not human trafficking and migrant sex work should be considered the same concept has been a contentious debate among feminist activists, government officials, scholars, and religious organizations for the past 15 years. This debate currently dominates much of the public discussion surrounding human trafficking and sex work. On one side of the debate are anti-prostitution activists who conflate migrant sex work and human trafficking because they do not believe in voluntary prostitution or because they view any migration for the purpose of sex work as human trafficking. This perspective has largely dominated mainstream governmental and NGO perspectives toward human trafficking across international contexts. On the other side of the debate are pro-sex work academics and activists who argue for the separation of voluntary migrant sex work from involuntary human trafficking and a greater focus on labor and migration rights instead of trafficking. This group works for the recognition of the right of prostitutes to pursue sex work as a legitimate form of work, more flexible and open borders for migrants, and a greater focus on the spectrum of coercive labor conditions.
Human trafficking in Taiwan
Taiwan is primarily a destination for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. It is also a source of women trafficked to Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Women and girls from the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) and Southeast Asian countries are trafficked to Taiwan through fraudulent marriages, deceptive employment offers, and illegal smuggling for sexual exploitation and forced labor. Many trafficking victims are workers from rural areas of Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, employed through recruitment agencies and brokers to perform low skilled work in Taiwan’s construction, fishing, and manufacturing industries, or to work as domestic servants. Such workers are often charged high job placement and service fees, up to $14,000, resulting in substantial debt that labor brokers or employers use as a tool for involuntary servitude. Many foreign workers remain vulnerable to trafficking because legal protections, oversight by authorities and enforcement efforts are inadequate. Taiwan authorities reported that traffickers continued to use fraudulent marriages to facilitate labor and sex trafficking, despite increased efforts by the authorities to prevent this practice. Some women who are smuggled onto Taiwan to seek illegal work were sometimes sold in auctions to sex traffickers, and subsequently forced to work in the commercial sex industry. NGOs reported a sharp increase during the reporting period in the number of boys rescued from prostitution, mainly discovered during police investigations of online social networking sites suspected of being front operations for prostitution rings.