5 - Rejecting Honest Work

Summary

This chapter shifts to undesirable men and disreputable expressions of masculinity, depicting the world of pimps and traffickers from the perspective of the migration paradigm. With examples that span the United States, Uruguay, Argentina, Cuba, and Mexico, I show how anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution discourse, in addition to articulating gendered ideas about sexual respectability and normative migration patterns, employed equally moralistic concepts to distinguish honest labor from illegitimate work. Some traffickers sought upward social mobility by engaging with both the licit and illicit economies of their destination countries, while for others, pimping and trafficking was the logical extension of a longer criminal history, shirking work discipline, and refusing the responsibilities of family and nation. French men were central to a broader story of migrant criminality in the Americas, namely through their participation in the sex trade.