Trafficking turned up with the political schedule immediately following stress off feminists and you can brand new federal women’s policy agency. Originally, feminine was trafficked off Southeast Asia (significantly Thailand while the Philippines), Latin The usa (Columbia together with Dominican Republic and Africa (Ghana); after the slip of one’s Berlin Wall structure, trading routes managed to move on to help you Main and East European countries. Political need was basically identifying the brand new offense a great deal more broadly so you’re able to support prosecution and you may improving the penalty out of 5 to 6 ages, in order that offenders could be stored in remand custody. The brand new content in the penal password to your human trafficking was in fact changed for the 1993, which have a more appropriate definition of this new offence and better charges to have traffickers (Outshoorn 2004a: 195). This new content was indeed framed into the an effective gender-neutral method, and you will trafficking stayed identified as pushing a man on prostitution.
In the parliamentary debates on trafficking around that period, foreign women were portrayed as victims of unscrupulous traffickers tricked into prostitution. This framing was tied into a discourse about the divide between the rich and poor countries: female prostitutes from the ‘Third World’ were driven by poverty. Gradually, a more insidious edge crept into this discourse when Christian Democrats escortbabylon.de additional resources in parliament linked trafficking to illegal migration, opening a space for ‘false’ victims, who used the loopholes in the law to work illegally as a prostitute in the Netherlands (HTK, 1991–1992, TK 81, pp. 4994, 4995, e time they also started to argue that all women from non-EU countries working in the sex industry were victims of forced prostitution. Therefore in their view, the best remedy to stop trafficking was to prevent non-EU women from working in the Dutch sex industry in the first place. This reasoning eradicated the figure of a woman migrant deciding to work as a sex worker in the West and who might make use of intermediaries to enter the country-with her consent. But then she was ‘illegal’ and ought to be deported.
Successive cabinets continued to refuse work permits on similar grounds, also arguing there was no national interest at stake which normally justifies extending work permits to non-EU persons. They were backed by a recurring majority in parliament; the parliamentary records show many references to the fear of foreign prostitutes entering the country which would subvert immigration policies. The fear resurfaced in the memorandum to the bill to lift the brothel ban, as one of the aims of the bill was to halt ‘the stream of foreign prostitutes’ (HTK 1996–97, 25437 (Opheffing Algemeen Bordeelverbod), no. 3 (Memorie van Toelichting), 1 July 1997, p. 13). The refusal to grant work permits was also generally justified by the aim of stopping the trafficking of women; permits would encourage traffickers to transport women into the country.
Further implementation of this new operate resulted in the development off no less than five types of prostitutes. To start with, you’ve got the ethnically vague Dutch sex staff who willingly chooses be effective in the prostitution and that’s the holder of civil and you may personal liberties. Next, there are the newest prostitutes from other European union countries who can flow freely in-and-out of Netherlands and you can work with the sex business. This category split up into a few kinds after the accession into the European union of your Baltic States, Poland, Hungary, the new Czech Republic and you can Slovakia in the 2004, and make a third category exactly who could only lawfully behave as prostitutes whenever they was independent sex professionals and not teams. Within the 2007, sex pros throughout the this new Eu participants were acknowledged on a keen equal ground on elderly European union associate workers, nevertheless 3rd class is actually today full of sex experts out-of Bulgaria and you will Romania whenever each other nations inserted the fresh new European union for the reason that same year. Just like their predecessors, these women can be permitted to become separate sex professionals, however, so far never as staff.