Nicolas Lainez (Ph.D. in Anthropology)
I am a social and economic anthropologist. My research areas include debt, credit, financialization, migration, trafficking, gender, sexuality and the family, Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
Supervisors: Alain Testart and Michel Bozon
Supervisors: Alain Testart and Michel Bozon
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Thesis
La réflexion proposée s’appuie sur un concept capable de rendre compte de la fluidité des parcours et de l’articulation entre économie et intimité : les carrières intimes. Cette perspective invite à examiner les parcours de dette à la lumière de l’évolution récente des marchés financiers et de la migration prostitutionnelle, mais aussi les trajectoires de care au regard du régime « familialiste » de bien-être promu par l’État, les carrières sexuelles au prisme des inégalités de genre et notamment de la division sexuelle du travail, ainsi que les carrières morales en référence à la politique de lutte contre les « fléaux sociaux ».
Nourrie d’un solide socle empirique privilégiant l’ethnographie économique de l’intime et le suivi longitudinal ainsi que d’une longue expérience avec les ONG luttant contre la traite en Asie du Sud-Est, cette recherche dépasse rapidement son objet initial, la traite, pour mettre en relief des aspects inédits de la vie des femmes vietnamiennes et interroger la place de l’intimité dans l’économie de marché. Sur le plan théorique, ce travail construit son objet sur l’anthropologie de l’esclavage, sur la sociologie « déconstructiviste » de la traite, sur la sociologie économique de l’intimité et sur la sociologie des carrières.
This thesis, based on fieldwork on sex trafficking conducted in Vietnam, Cambodia and Singapore, formulates an economic anthropology of intimate relations that conceptualises Vietnamese sex workers as embedded in relations with informal creditors, sex migration brokers, employers in the sex industry, their families and their clients. While the market economy embraced by Vietnam since the launch of the Đổi mới reforms in 1986 encourages women to invest, become indebted, consume and migrate, several obstacles stand in their way : exclusion from formal credit markets, high cost of regulated labor migration, familial obligations, gender inequalities and the risk of stigmatisation. To make their way in this world of opportunities and constraints, they use intimacy as a multipurpose and strategic resource to strengthen their leverage in dealing with these constraints.
The framework I propose is based on a concept, careers of intimacy, that takes into account the fluidity of their trajectories and the articulation between economy and intimacy. This perspective examines the trajectories of debt in light of the recent evolution of financial markets and transnational migration for sex work ; the trajectories of care with regard to the familialist welfare regime promoted by the state ; sexual careers through the prism of gender inequalities, and notably the sexual division of labour ; and moral careers with reference to state-initiated campaigns against « social evils ».
Based on solid ethnographic work that focused on the economic ethnography of intimacy, a longitudinal approach and my considerable experience with NGOs working on anti-trafficking in Southeast Asia, this research quickly went beyond its initial objective – human trafficking – to unveil the private lives of Vietnamese women which were inextricably tied to the market economy. Thus, the research became an investigation of the place of intimacy in the market economy. The theoretical moorings of this research are the anthropology of slavery, the « deconstructivist » approach towards trafficking discourses and practices, the economic sociology of intimacy and the sociology of careers.
Journal Articles
workings of unsanctioned informal networks that facilitate the
circular migration and labour of Vietnamese sex workers to
Singapore. These operations are coordinated by brokers who sell
migration services to their clients. I conceptualise them as ‘quasifamily
networks’ because kinship bonds, the fact that brokers
(‘mothers’) and sex workers (‘daughters’) operate under the
framework of a family ethos which allows them to establish
intimate and unequal relationships, and socialising and
reproductive processes inscribed in the family form, are defining
structural features. The study of these organisational and
operational traits allows us to consider a new network model in
the field of transnational unsanctioned migration for sex work,
and to discuss issues of network structure, adaptability and
reproduction in repressive market environments in relation to the
family form.
Book Chapters
The victim’s representation stresses both the innocence and the injustice inherent to her tragedy. It also stages the physical suffering and cultural differences. This representation fits with the “policy of pity” that Luc Boltanski has defined as the observation at distance of an unfortunate victim by a spectator. A third agent beneficial or executioner can be added to this tandem whose function is to reinforce indignation and therefore the viewer’s call for commitment.
Research Reports
First, the paper examines the situation on the ground in the late 1990s: cross-border mobility and routes in the Mekong Delta, and Vietnamese prostitution in Phnom Penh, especially in the Vietnamese enclave of Svay Pak. Brothel owners from this red light district recruited thousands of Vietnamese migrant sex workers by offering them a payday advance that they had to reimburse by providing sexual services. Moreover, among the causes that motivated cross-mobility for the purpose of sexual commerce, indebtedness occupied a prime place. Second, the paper explores the reasons underlying the obvious change of perception by potential unskilled migrants who no longer perceive Cambodia as some sort El Dorado and therefore an appealing destination. Various reasons explain this change, like increased awareness of the risks of deception, debt bondage and exploitation thanks to campaigns against human trafficking. Another factor is the increased availability of more attractive professional options, such as internal migration for prostitution to provinces along the Mekong Delta, to Ho Chi Minh City and its suburban provinces undergoing rapid industrialization and economic growth. This paper demonstrates that nowadays mobility from An Giang province to Cambodia is no longer relevant.
The first study addresses cross-border mobility for prostitution between the Vietnamese southern province of An Giang and Cambodia. Field investigation shows that this flow of mobility, which attracted a significant number of women in the 1990s, has now dried up in Vietnam, essentially because Cambodia is no longer viewed as a destination for easy money but rather a dangerous and unwelcoming country.
The initial objective of the second study was to confirm the hypothesis that Southern Vietnamese women no longer migrate to Cambodia for prostitution. Preliminary investigations in the capital rapidly confirmed that nowadays the majority of the Vietnamese women involved in commercial sex are Vietnamese who are resident in Cambodia and not new economic migrants from Southern Vietnam. The research objective was therefore redirected toward the study of legal aspects and living conditions of Vietnamese in Cambodia, and the study of two forms of transfer and selling of sexual services of minors: the sale of virginity and the sale of young children.
The third study addresses the mobility of Vietnamese women for prostitution in Singapore. The objective is to broaden the field investigation undertaken in the Mekong Delta and in Cambodia by following Vietnamese migrant prostitutes in their transnational movement to wealthy Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and Singapore.
The goal of this study is to explore how the Vietnamese populations live and perceive forms of sale of sexual services and persons in Cambodia.
Firstly, it is necessary to contextualize the legal and socioeconomic framework deriving from historical events within which the Vietnamese of Cambodia evolve, and that make them particularly vulnerable. Being excluded from Cambodian citizenship and most of them not holding Vietnamese nationality, they are stateless people who live in a legal void. Consequently, they are confronted with several obstacles that prevent them from being fully integrated into Cambodia. Among the causes that motivate the prostitution of young women, family indebtedness figures high. The fieldwork reveals the existence of an endogenous financial sector run by moneylenders who provide loans at high interest rates. Once in debt, borrowers may push their daughters to sell their virginity or to engage in prostitution to alleviate the economic burden.
Secondly, two forms of the transfer and selling of sexual services of minors are addressed: the virginity sale and the sale of young children.
The sale of virginity is relatively frequent among the elements of our sample. In the case study presented, the mother pushes the family’s economic burden onto her daughters as soon as they are old enough to generate income with their bodies. While according to Confucian precepts parents ought to preserve the virginity of their daughters until marriage, in fact they organize its commodification and monopolize the profits.
The sale of a child for adoption has emerged in these communities. Oral tales and news clips give evidence of a market of children for sale for adoption. Informants involved in the trade make a distinction between the “gift of a child” (cho con) and the “sale of a child” (bán con). The gift is made to families for a payment that is lower than the price of a sale. The sale is negotiated for a price beween some hundreds and some thousands of US dollars. The motivations, modus operandi and representations utilized by actors try to make morally acceptable what is otherwise a legally forbidden transaction.
As described in the report, three factors created transience in the life of the entertainers.
Firstly, all entertainers entered Singapore on 30-day Social Visit Passes. This scheme does not allow foreign visitors to engage in any form of employment, including prostitution. Officials from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) routinely refuse entry and expel Vietnamese female travelers suspected of coming to Singapore to work in the prostitution industry. Vietnamese migrant entertainers typically rely on professional migration brokers who provide services to enable their customers to slip through the net of the ICA.
Secondly, after the expiry of their 30-day Social Visit Pass, the migrant entertainers of the study faced two options: they could either return to Vietnam or extend their stay in Singapore. The majority sought to avoid raising the suspicions of the immigration authorities and returned home for a few months, before coming back to Singapore. Those wishing to extend their stay had several methods at their disposal: extending the social visit pass, exiting and returning to Singapore to obtain a new social visit pass, acquiring a Performing Artist Work Permit, or getting genuinely or fraudulently married to a Singaporean citizen or permanent resident. The decision to extend the stay depended on personal motivations and financial resources, as well as on the availability of services provided by the Vietnamese migration broker and Singaporean sponsors.
Lastly, the Anti-Vice Enforcement Unit (AVEU) relies on raids and on deportations as key mechanisms to control foreign prostitution in Singapore. Red light areas like Geylang, Joo Chiat and Orchard Towers are regularly raided, and arrested entertainers are deported to their home country at their own expense.
As a consequence of these three factors, the Vietnamese migrant entertainers of the study were constantly straddling Singapore and Vietnam. They were only allowed to stay in Singapore for 30 days at any one time and upon the expiry of the pass, they would return to Vietnam, with the intention of returning at another time. Consequently, while living in Singapore, they were either looking for ways to extend their stay, or thinking about their return to Vietnam. This was pervasive: upon arrival, they were already thinking about the return trip, and vice-versa. They lived lives of transience and evanescence. In fact, even when they were physically in one space, they were mentally in the other.
Working Papers
La réflexion proposée s’appuie sur un concept capable de rendre compte de la fluidité des parcours et de l’articulation entre économie et intimité : les carrières intimes. Cette perspective invite à examiner les parcours de dette à la lumière de l’évolution récente des marchés financiers et de la migration prostitutionnelle, mais aussi les trajectoires de care au regard du régime « familialiste » de bien-être promu par l’État, les carrières sexuelles au prisme des inégalités de genre et notamment de la division sexuelle du travail, ainsi que les carrières morales en référence à la politique de lutte contre les « fléaux sociaux ».
Nourrie d’un solide socle empirique privilégiant l’ethnographie économique de l’intime et le suivi longitudinal ainsi que d’une longue expérience avec les ONG luttant contre la traite en Asie du Sud-Est, cette recherche dépasse rapidement son objet initial, la traite, pour mettre en relief des aspects inédits de la vie des femmes vietnamiennes et interroger la place de l’intimité dans l’économie de marché. Sur le plan théorique, ce travail construit son objet sur l’anthropologie de l’esclavage, sur la sociologie « déconstructiviste » de la traite, sur la sociologie économique de l’intimité et sur la sociologie des carrières.
This thesis, based on fieldwork on sex trafficking conducted in Vietnam, Cambodia and Singapore, formulates an economic anthropology of intimate relations that conceptualises Vietnamese sex workers as embedded in relations with informal creditors, sex migration brokers, employers in the sex industry, their families and their clients. While the market economy embraced by Vietnam since the launch of the Đổi mới reforms in 1986 encourages women to invest, become indebted, consume and migrate, several obstacles stand in their way : exclusion from formal credit markets, high cost of regulated labor migration, familial obligations, gender inequalities and the risk of stigmatisation. To make their way in this world of opportunities and constraints, they use intimacy as a multipurpose and strategic resource to strengthen their leverage in dealing with these constraints.
The framework I propose is based on a concept, careers of intimacy, that takes into account the fluidity of their trajectories and the articulation between economy and intimacy. This perspective examines the trajectories of debt in light of the recent evolution of financial markets and transnational migration for sex work ; the trajectories of care with regard to the familialist welfare regime promoted by the state ; sexual careers through the prism of gender inequalities, and notably the sexual division of labour ; and moral careers with reference to state-initiated campaigns against « social evils ».
Based on solid ethnographic work that focused on the economic ethnography of intimacy, a longitudinal approach and my considerable experience with NGOs working on anti-trafficking in Southeast Asia, this research quickly went beyond its initial objective – human trafficking – to unveil the private lives of Vietnamese women which were inextricably tied to the market economy. Thus, the research became an investigation of the place of intimacy in the market economy. The theoretical moorings of this research are the anthropology of slavery, the « deconstructivist » approach towards trafficking discourses and practices, the economic sociology of intimacy and the sociology of careers.
workings of unsanctioned informal networks that facilitate the
circular migration and labour of Vietnamese sex workers to
Singapore. These operations are coordinated by brokers who sell
migration services to their clients. I conceptualise them as ‘quasifamily
networks’ because kinship bonds, the fact that brokers
(‘mothers’) and sex workers (‘daughters’) operate under the
framework of a family ethos which allows them to establish
intimate and unequal relationships, and socialising and
reproductive processes inscribed in the family form, are defining
structural features. The study of these organisational and
operational traits allows us to consider a new network model in
the field of transnational unsanctioned migration for sex work,
and to discuss issues of network structure, adaptability and
reproduction in repressive market environments in relation to the
family form.
The victim’s representation stresses both the innocence and the injustice inherent to her tragedy. It also stages the physical suffering and cultural differences. This representation fits with the “policy of pity” that Luc Boltanski has defined as the observation at distance of an unfortunate victim by a spectator. A third agent beneficial or executioner can be added to this tandem whose function is to reinforce indignation and therefore the viewer’s call for commitment.
First, the paper examines the situation on the ground in the late 1990s: cross-border mobility and routes in the Mekong Delta, and Vietnamese prostitution in Phnom Penh, especially in the Vietnamese enclave of Svay Pak. Brothel owners from this red light district recruited thousands of Vietnamese migrant sex workers by offering them a payday advance that they had to reimburse by providing sexual services. Moreover, among the causes that motivated cross-mobility for the purpose of sexual commerce, indebtedness occupied a prime place. Second, the paper explores the reasons underlying the obvious change of perception by potential unskilled migrants who no longer perceive Cambodia as some sort El Dorado and therefore an appealing destination. Various reasons explain this change, like increased awareness of the risks of deception, debt bondage and exploitation thanks to campaigns against human trafficking. Another factor is the increased availability of more attractive professional options, such as internal migration for prostitution to provinces along the Mekong Delta, to Ho Chi Minh City and its suburban provinces undergoing rapid industrialization and economic growth. This paper demonstrates that nowadays mobility from An Giang province to Cambodia is no longer relevant.
The first study addresses cross-border mobility for prostitution between the Vietnamese southern province of An Giang and Cambodia. Field investigation shows that this flow of mobility, which attracted a significant number of women in the 1990s, has now dried up in Vietnam, essentially because Cambodia is no longer viewed as a destination for easy money but rather a dangerous and unwelcoming country.
The initial objective of the second study was to confirm the hypothesis that Southern Vietnamese women no longer migrate to Cambodia for prostitution. Preliminary investigations in the capital rapidly confirmed that nowadays the majority of the Vietnamese women involved in commercial sex are Vietnamese who are resident in Cambodia and not new economic migrants from Southern Vietnam. The research objective was therefore redirected toward the study of legal aspects and living conditions of Vietnamese in Cambodia, and the study of two forms of transfer and selling of sexual services of minors: the sale of virginity and the sale of young children.
The third study addresses the mobility of Vietnamese women for prostitution in Singapore. The objective is to broaden the field investigation undertaken in the Mekong Delta and in Cambodia by following Vietnamese migrant prostitutes in their transnational movement to wealthy Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and Singapore.
The goal of this study is to explore how the Vietnamese populations live and perceive forms of sale of sexual services and persons in Cambodia.
Firstly, it is necessary to contextualize the legal and socioeconomic framework deriving from historical events within which the Vietnamese of Cambodia evolve, and that make them particularly vulnerable. Being excluded from Cambodian citizenship and most of them not holding Vietnamese nationality, they are stateless people who live in a legal void. Consequently, they are confronted with several obstacles that prevent them from being fully integrated into Cambodia. Among the causes that motivate the prostitution of young women, family indebtedness figures high. The fieldwork reveals the existence of an endogenous financial sector run by moneylenders who provide loans at high interest rates. Once in debt, borrowers may push their daughters to sell their virginity or to engage in prostitution to alleviate the economic burden.
Secondly, two forms of the transfer and selling of sexual services of minors are addressed: the virginity sale and the sale of young children.
The sale of virginity is relatively frequent among the elements of our sample. In the case study presented, the mother pushes the family’s economic burden onto her daughters as soon as they are old enough to generate income with their bodies. While according to Confucian precepts parents ought to preserve the virginity of their daughters until marriage, in fact they organize its commodification and monopolize the profits.
The sale of a child for adoption has emerged in these communities. Oral tales and news clips give evidence of a market of children for sale for adoption. Informants involved in the trade make a distinction between the “gift of a child” (cho con) and the “sale of a child” (bán con). The gift is made to families for a payment that is lower than the price of a sale. The sale is negotiated for a price beween some hundreds and some thousands of US dollars. The motivations, modus operandi and representations utilized by actors try to make morally acceptable what is otherwise a legally forbidden transaction.
As described in the report, three factors created transience in the life of the entertainers.
Firstly, all entertainers entered Singapore on 30-day Social Visit Passes. This scheme does not allow foreign visitors to engage in any form of employment, including prostitution. Officials from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) routinely refuse entry and expel Vietnamese female travelers suspected of coming to Singapore to work in the prostitution industry. Vietnamese migrant entertainers typically rely on professional migration brokers who provide services to enable their customers to slip through the net of the ICA.
Secondly, after the expiry of their 30-day Social Visit Pass, the migrant entertainers of the study faced two options: they could either return to Vietnam or extend their stay in Singapore. The majority sought to avoid raising the suspicions of the immigration authorities and returned home for a few months, before coming back to Singapore. Those wishing to extend their stay had several methods at their disposal: extending the social visit pass, exiting and returning to Singapore to obtain a new social visit pass, acquiring a Performing Artist Work Permit, or getting genuinely or fraudulently married to a Singaporean citizen or permanent resident. The decision to extend the stay depended on personal motivations and financial resources, as well as on the availability of services provided by the Vietnamese migration broker and Singaporean sponsors.
Lastly, the Anti-Vice Enforcement Unit (AVEU) relies on raids and on deportations as key mechanisms to control foreign prostitution in Singapore. Red light areas like Geylang, Joo Chiat and Orchard Towers are regularly raided, and arrested entertainers are deported to their home country at their own expense.
As a consequence of these three factors, the Vietnamese migrant entertainers of the study were constantly straddling Singapore and Vietnam. They were only allowed to stay in Singapore for 30 days at any one time and upon the expiry of the pass, they would return to Vietnam, with the intention of returning at another time. Consequently, while living in Singapore, they were either looking for ways to extend their stay, or thinking about their return to Vietnam. This was pervasive: upon arrival, they were already thinking about the return trip, and vice-versa. They lived lives of transience and evanescence. In fact, even when they were physically in one space, they were mentally in the other.
• Disgruntled, harassed and vengeful digital borrowers express their discontent about predatory lending apps on social media platforms including Facebook groups.
• These Facebook groups function as:
• forums where members coalesce for guidance on navigating the expanding and labyrinthic landscape of lending apps;
• milieus of expression and comfort for over-indebted, isolated and harassed members; and
• spaces where members express their desire to challenge and take revenge against digital lenders and debt collectors that victimise them.
• Their lack of credit histories severely limits their access to credit markets as lenders cannot assess their creditworthiness.
• Fintech startups provide digital credit scoring services to lenders in Vietnam to assess credit risk of the un(der)banked. Risk assessment is based on alternative data collected from users’ smartphones and processed through machine learning algorithms.
• Digital credit scoring provides more consistent, efficient, accurate and timely credit scores than traditional scoring based on economic data, especially credit repayment history.
• Digital credit scoring though raises concerns about unfair discrimination against the underbanked in credit access, the loss of privacy and ability to make choices and personal data protection.
• This technology is deployed in Vietnam in a legal vacuum. A legal framework is proposed that aims to balance normative trade-offs between innovation and public protection.
This has had an impact on public opinion and international policy. The latest U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report downgraded Myanmar to Tier 3 for failing to protect Rohingya refugees from being trafficked for sexual exploitation. Bangladesh was kept in the Tier 2 Watch, partly for the trafficking of Rohingya women from the refugee camps for sexual purposes.
However, on examining 34 media reports and documents, besides nine stories presented by reporters, no data for the scope of trafficking and its operations were provided.
Moreover, the narrative is simplistic in its classification of actors as “savages”, “victims” and “saviours” and its framing of the issue as one of good against evil.
Such narratives magnify the emotional content of their subject, and should not be used in place of reliable data, for designing interventions, or for making policy.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/nicolas-lainez/modern-vietnamese-slaves-in-uk-are-raid-and-rescue-operations-appropria