UK: Safety at work

Rosie Campbell (chair of the UK Network of Sex Work Projects) argues in Society Guardian that foreign sex workers needs rights, not sensationalism.

Women who come from abroad to sell sex, who sit in flats and massage parlours bored stiff when business is slow, don't make good headlines - or good drama. Trafficked women, on the other hand, frequently provide sensationalist stories for the media.

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The harsh economic reality which some find ideologically problematic is that some women choose to work for a few hours a week servicing men's sexual needs rather than working 40 or 50 low-paid hours elsewhere.

In the migration 'debate', distinctions are too often made between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving'. Women who are forcibly trafficked into prostitution are 'deserving' of our sympathy (if not of the right to stay in our country), while women who 'chose' (within the economic realities give them little genuine choice over their lives) to become sex workers deserve nothing.