Written By: Cecelia Callaghan

Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, McGill University

GSFS 405: Social Justice and Activism – Human Trafficking

Dr. Maria Hwang

December 17th, 2025

photo courtesy of Shubhkarman Singh, image licensed by unsplash

I. INTRODUCTION

In 2003, New Zealand passed the Prostitution Reform Act, henceforth referred to as the PRA in this essay. Under the PRA, actions such as soliciting and brothel keeping receive no criminal sanctions; sex workers can operate on the street, in managed brothels, or independently—from home or a secondary apartment they rent for work. While people who manage at least one sex worker are required to obtain an operator’s certificate, self-managing sex workers are allowed to work in groups of up to four sex workers without any such certification. Despite the freedoms the PRA granted for citizens of New Zealand, under section nineteen it remains illegal for migrants on a temporary visa (such as a student visa, work visa, working holiday visa, skilled migrant visa, or visitor visa) to work in the sex industry, whether that be as a provider, operator, or investor.

Anti-migrant practices are to be expected within anti-trafficking and sex work abolitionist groups as they continuously utilize racist neoliberal conceptions of gender, race, and migration to control the bodies and voices of migrant sex workers (Berstein, 2010; Kempadoo & Shih, 2023). However, the PRA displays how anti-migrant policy can also arise from within pro-sex work organizations and academic advocacy research. These exclusionary practices, I argue, result from a focus on small-scale reform efforts within academia, which, in neglecting to consider the rights of migrant sex workers, further entrench their systemic oppression in both research and legislation. While major academic figureheads of pro-sex work advocacy have made extensive efforts for sex work to be decriminalized for citizens, little research has been done on extending these considerations to migrant workers. Operating with the understanding that academics have power and privilege within legislation creation and that their work is highly influential in dictating whose issues are brought into the political arena, this paper endeavours to critically analyze the research of prominent pro-sex work scholars (Gaventa, 1980). Through this analysis, I argue that these scholars utilize neoliberal language and ideologies to achieve incremental gains for citizens of New Zealand without consideration of migrant workers.

II. OVERVIEW OF FRAMEWORK

The primary framework used in this essay is derived from Nada DeCat and her 2021 essay with Zahra Stardust: Against Inclusion: Sex Work Research, Racial Capitalism, and the Knowledge Industrial Complex. DeCat is an Asian sex worker, student, artist, undocumented migrant, and burgeoning philosopher in New Zealand. DeCat argues that the racial contract—the tacit agreement within white society to both formally and informally uphold white supremacy—is inherent in sex worker research and regulation. The racial contract manifests through the use of migrant sex workers, in academia and policy creation, to support racial capitalism. This results in their exploitation for institutional profit, diversity and inclusion signaling, and in the funding of white researchers to produce knowledge about racialized people, predominantly for white audiences and institutions (DeCat, 2021, p. 1). DeCat proposes approaching these academic institutions with refusal and disengagement to navigate this exploitation, suggesting that we should instead be researching academic institutions and researchers themselves. In researching and critiquing these institutions is a refusal to validate their qualifications to be making the arguments and holding the influence that they do. Thus, I critically analyze the work of Gillian Abel, Lynzi Armstrong, and Jan Jordan, prominent pro-sex work scholar in New Zealand, to see how their supposedly supportive pro-sex work research has further validated the utilization of racial colonial frameworks for liberation, and thus sidelined the rights of migrant sex workers.

III. LITERATURE REVIEW

Lynzi Armstrong is a professor at New Zealand’s Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka, whose work in critical criminology analyzes how policy and legislation impact marginalized communities, specifically sex workers within New Zealand. She advocates for the decriminalization of sex work, with much of her post-2003 research focusing on the positive effects of the PRA. In a 2021 article, Armstrong provides a comprehensive summary of her attitude towards the impacts of the PRA on sex workers nearly two decades after its implementation. Armstrong details how sex work has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on the lives of the forty-six sex workers interviewed within her study, and their testimonies point to decriminalization as crucial to improving their experiences within the industry. The PRA received very little pushback after its inauguration, which invites the question: what is the use of continued research to prove its validity when it has already been implemented, while migrant sex workers still face criminal barriers? One might argue that defending decriminalization decades after its implementation may be deemed necessary to ensure it is not rolled back, but the PRA has received extremely little pushback in the two decades since it was legislated. The mandated review conducted five years after the implementation of the PRA showed predominantly positive feedback on the act and concluded with support for its continuation (Prostitution Law Review Committee, 2008). Armstrong also points to the importance of similar decriminalization legislation being enacted in other nations, thus one could possibly interpret the defensive stance taken within her research as being a means of encouragement to other countries more hesitant to enact similar legislation (2021, p. 942). However, if this is indeed the goal in Armstrong’s work, a reasonable expectation would be that her concern extends not only to the well-being of foreign sex workers within their native countries but also to those living and working as migrant sex workers in New Zealand whose rights are still not protected decades after the adoption of the PRA. However, in reading Armstrong’s work, the overwhelming abandonment of migrant sex workers in advocacy research is palpable.

Armstrong acknowledges the plight of migrant workers in a single sentence of the article, referring to section 19 of the PRA, which excludes migrant workers, as a “significant flaw” of the PRA (2021, p. 942). Including this sentence allows her to signal that she acknowledges and cares about migrant struggles, while immediately justifying the lack of any serious consideration of them in the next sentence, as she says, “however, the existing evidence clearly indicates that those who are covered by the legislation are safer and have more rights” (Armstrong, 2021, p. 942). Armstrong’s framework, in its congruence with the systemic exclusion of migrant sex-workers from policy, validates the exclusionary practices of the PRA by portraying migrants as worthy of extremely limited consideration and aid. Her acknowledgement of the plight of migrant sex workers with no examination of the unfair and unnecessary struggles they face, further normalizes these struggles and solidifies them as natural and undefeatable, and thus unworthy of serious research.

The unique struggles facing migrant workers since the passing of the PRA are not discussed in Armstrong’s research. Therefore, they must unfortunately be inferred through examining the positive experiences of citizens engaged in sex work. In other words, by examining the increased rights and protections domestic sex workers enjoyed, we can interrogate the structural position of migrant sex workers, who experienced no such benefits. The two major gains of the PRA that Armstrong outlines are that 1) workers feel more empowered to refuse clients and 2) have improved experiences with police officers (2021, p. 942). While these gains reflect the positive impact decriminalization policies have on the lives of citizen sex workers, migrant sex workers, whose experiences are ignored, experience no such improvements to their working conditions. If clients are being refused more regularly by citizens providing sexual services, they may seek services from migrant workers who they know do not have the same ability to refuse them—knowledge which may easily be held as a threat against them. Indeed, for their master’s thesis, David Allan Jun-Rong Ting conducted interviews with Asian migrant sex workers operating illegally in New Zealand and discovered that migrants experience the most difficulty refusing clients and that brothel operators are more likely to coerce them to work with clients against their wills, as they know migrant sex workers cannot defend their rights (2018, p. 86).

Secondly, it is harmful to celebrate positive interactions with the police without acknowledging that the nature of policing and incarceration systems precludes many from ever experiencing positive, safe, and non-stress inducing interactions with law enforcement. While some sex workers feel more comfortable calling on the police now that their work is decriminalized, many people of colour, Indigenous, and/or migrant workers understand that their identities systematically predispose them to precarious situations with police officers, even if what they are doing is legal (Paewai, 2024). It is dangerous to use academic scholarship to reinforce false notions that policing systems protect—rather than harm—marginalized communities (now that sex work has been decriminalized for some individuals) without continuing to critique the inherently violent and racist system of policing. For example, an increase in policing has occurred since the passing of the PRA around areas where sex workers operate, as well as an increase in “compliance visits,” in which police and immigration officials raid brothels in search of underage and migrant workers, increasing migrant workers’ risks for deportation and state brutality (Ting, 2018, p. 15-17). Only acknowledging and celebrating positive encounters with police, predominantly the experiences of white domestic sex workers, within pro-sex work research normalizes the violence enacted upon other sex workers, implicitly portraying it as a non-issue.

Gillian Abel is another scholar who strongly advocated for the decriminalization of sex work prior to the implementation of the PRA, and whose current research predominantly focuses on the positive outcomes of the legislation. Her research on the experience of sex workers since the implementation of the PRA legislation offers a reflection on the process toward decriminalization (ten years prior) and the positive impacts it has since had for sex workers operating legally (Abel, 2014). Abel’s work does not discuss the impacts of the legislation, either positive or negative, on migrant workers, nor how they are excluded from the rights conferred upon citizen sex workers. This is unsurprising given Abel’s continuous appeals to citizenship and nationalism to strengthen her argument for the validity of decriminalization (Abel, 2014, p. 581, 589, 590). Abel argues that one of the greatest effects of the PRA has been the safeguarding and validation of sex workers’ citizenship. Without elaborating on why citizenship is valued so highly—such as in the dignity, security, services, and other rights it may confer—Abel’s work portrays citizenship as an inherently valuable good in itself. This is a dangerous line of thought. If citizenship is seen as inherently valuable, then the status of temporary migration, its opposite, becomes inherently invaluable. Upholding the process a state uses to accept and validate an individual as being ‘one of their own’ further validates that state as an institution with the power to exclude and include certain people and groups. Further, while it may appear that inclusion is always better than exclusion, it is important to remember that when states were created through colonization, many people will not want to engage in these citizenship-conferring processes that further validate the existence of a state built on colonial violence (DeCat & Stardust, 2021, p. 4). Instead of claiming that citizenship is inherently valuable, the benefits associated with citizenship (such as dignity, access to state services, and labour rights) that Abel deems valuable should be explicitly laid out in her work. If she clearly laid out these privileges in relation to citizenship, readers must acknowledge that migrants do not have these same rights even as they reside in a state clearly capable of conferring dignity and rights upon others, revealing the illogical and unjust nature of state’s exclusionary policies.

In Abel’s appeal for other nations to implement legislation akin to the PRA, she acknowledges that New Zealand may have encountered fewer issues in decriminalizing sex work because New Zealand “does not have the issues of border crossing which is evident in Europe” (2014, p. 581). In this sentence, Abel explicitly claims that migration is an issue and an obstacle to providing citizens with labour rights and protections, thereby further demarcating a divide between citizens and migrants, not only in what they deserve, but also in claiming that migrants may pose issues for the more deserving citizen subject in gaining rights. To be clear, Abel is not concerned with issues of trafficking in raising the issue of border crossing, as she states that trafficking has been highly exaggerated and should not be a main concern within any country (2014, p. 582). Not only does Abel’s narrative further exacerbate harmful narratives surrounding migration, but it also clearly shows that she is not interested in reforming the PRA to include migrants.

Lastly, similar to Armstrong, Abel sees an increase in policing as a positive outcome of the PRA. One sex worker interviewed by Abel states that “the police weren’t around as much (before decriminalization). But when it got legalized, the police were everywhere” (2014, p. 585). While some sex workers operating legally have been grateful for increased police presence, police presence is dangerous for migrants operating illegally, forcing them to either operate in more discrete and remote places where they will not have the same protection and support from other sex workers or risk deportation. Further, the laws enforced by the police are always liable to change, which changes their relationship to sex workers. If laws pertaining to sex work were to become more restrictive, then normalizing police presence within areas where sex workers operate will once again harm all sex workers, not just those operating illegally. For example, the proposal of the Manukau City Council Bill in 2006 and again in 2015, which was ultimately turned down each time, would have enacted bylaws to prohibit sex workers from operating in certain areas of the city and police would have had the power to stop vehicles and question anyone they suspected of operating as a sex worker. Abel herself recognized that had this bill passed, the ‘positive’ relationship that was being built between legal sex workers and police would have been severed (2014, p. 588).

In 2005, two years after the passing of the PRA, Jan Jordan, a professor of criminology Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka and a pro-sex work researcher, published The Sex Industry in New Zealand: A Literature Review. The purpose of the paper was to provide an overview of the sex work industry prior to the passing of the PRA to have comparative benchmarks for future research investigating impacts of the legislation, an important and honourable academic endeavour. However, there is a notable lack of investigation into migrant sex workers within the piece. This may in part explain why more recent research has also neglected them, with little research conducted on the working conditions of migrant sex workers pre-PRA, it is harder to investigate whether their situation has worsened or improved since the PRA.

The neglect of migrant sex workers is palpable throughout Jordan’s entire piece. In the section of her executive summary on sex workers’ “characteristics and backgrounds,” Jordan states that the “diversity” within the industry is often overlooked, yet does not make any mention of migrant workers, and dedicates one sentence to acknowledging that “some stratification within the sex industry occurs along class and ethnic lines” (2005, p. 12). There is one chapter dedicated to migrant sex work. However, even the wording of the chapter title attaches harmful connotations to migrant sex workers. While the book’s other chapter titles refer to sex work as ‘sex work’, the chapter on migrants is titled “Illegal immigrants and prostitution” (Jordan, 2005, p. 7). Using the word ‘prostitute’ to describe sex workers is outdated and disrespectful, implying that sex workers lack agency and do not engage in real labour, while ‘sex worker’ acknowledges that those operating in the sex industry are autonomous labourers (Bruckert et al., 2013, p. 3). Conferring the respect of correct terminology to citizens working as sex workers, while neglecting to do so for migrants, validates their exclusion from the same respect and rights afforded to citizen sex workers. This chapter primarily focuses on the poor financial backgrounds of migrants engaging in sex work in New Zealand and the high levels of exploitation they face within the industry. In response to this, Jordan does not advocate for increased support for migrant workers to help them navigate exploitative situations and handle their finances. Rather, Jordan outlines what she deems the benefits of the 1999 project by the Auckland City Council and the Human Rights Commission conducted to locate migrant sex workers, stating that it has “helped a number of Thai women to leave the New Zealand sex industry and return to Thailand (2005, p. 49). The underlying implication is that the best way to deal with issues facing migrant workers is to remove them from not only the sex industry but also from the country altogether.

IV. CONCLUSIONS

The existing research surrounding the sex work industry in New Zealand since the implementation of the PRA makes it evident that if migrant rights are not put at the forefront of decriminalization strategies, their neglect will likely only become further entrenched and normalized in policy and research. Therefore, pro-sex work research can no longer view migrant experiences and issues as secondary considerations separate from the broader struggle towards labour rights for sex workers. Instead of leading policy reform with the most privileged figures of marginalized communities—such as white sex workers operating legally—inverting this situation and demanding rights for the most oppressed individuals within a community ensures that everyone’s protection is guaranteed. Ultimately, this will lead to overall greater gains in the push for decriminalization for all, as social movements led by respectability politics, where some aspects of one’s identity or some members of the group are abandoned, will always fail to secure rights and protections for all. When migrants are put at the forefront of sex work policy creation, the normalization of migrant bodily control is also resisted; when protections against clients include the unique forms of targeted violence racialized, queer, migrant, and/or disabled sex workers experience, then no form of violence against sex workers is normalized; when demands go beyond inclusion and towards fair pay, work place safety, and medical protection, then the whole industry of sex work is more respected. All these demands and more can only be sought once there is a full recognition of the issues facing migrants in research. Ultimately, this means that migrant sex workers must lead research and dictate its methods. In areas of academia where the outcomes of research have such direct implications on the lives of marginalized individuals as is the case in sex work, it is crucial to recognize that the most qualified researchers will always be those experiencing the unique form of marginalization themselves. This means the participation of migrant sex workers must extend beyond the occasional inclusion within an interview and towards leadership positions.There is a growing trend in lived-experience research currently, particularly in fields of physical and mental health, which may provide hope and guidance in pursuing similar research methods in the field of sex work research and advocacy (Bullon, 2025; Garcia et al., 2015; Gergel, 2026).

An abundance of research has been dedicated to outlining the positive effects of the PRA for citizen sex workers in New Zealand since its implementation. While these positive impacts are encouraging, I argue that researchers’ time and resources ought to be redirected towards continuously improving the conditions of sex workers in New Zealand, especially those of migrant sex workers, as they are excluded from the legislation writ large. As major figures in pro-sex work research in New Zealand are not engaging in this research, resources and support must be shifted towards migrant sex workers to take on leadership and consultant roles in sex work advocacy and research if improvements are ever to be implemented.

References

Abel, G. (2014). A decade of decriminalization: Sex work ‘down under’ but not underground. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 14(5), 580–592. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895814523024

Armstrong, L. (2021). ‘I can lead the life that I want to lead’: Social harm, human needs and the decriminalisation of sex work in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 18(4), 941–951. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-021-00605-7

Bernstein, E. (2010). Militarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism: The Politics of Sex, Rights, and Freedom in Contemporary Antitrafficking Campaigns. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 36(1):45–71.

Bruckert, C., Caouette, A., Clamen, J., Gillies, K., Kiselbach, S., Laliberté, E., Santini, T., Scott, K., Symons, E. (2013). Language matters: Talking about sex work. Stella.

DeCat, N. (2023). Chapter 15: The aesthetic of migrant sex work. In The aesthetic of migrant sex work (pp. 228–236). essay, Routledge.

DeCat, N., & Stardust, Z. (2021). Against inclusion. Handbook of Social Inclusion, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48277-0_28-1

Gaventa, John. 1980. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Preface & Chapter 1: pp. v-xi; 3-32.

Kempadoo, Kamala and Elena Shih, eds. 2023. White Supremacy, Racism, and the Coloniality of Anti-Trafficking. New York: Routledge. (Introduction)

Paewai. (2024, August 21). Māori men more likely to be stopped, tasered, prosecuted by police due to “bias” and “structural racism.” RNZ. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/525785/maori-men-more-likely-to-be-stopped-tasered-prosecuted-by-police-due-to-bias-and-structural-racism

Report of the Prostitution Law Review Committee on the operation of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003. Prostitutes Collective. (2008). https://prostitutescollective.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/report-of-the-nz-prostitution-law-committee-2008.pdf

Ting, David. (2018). Understanding the experiences of migrant Asian sex workers in New Zealand: An exploratory study. The University of Auckland.