3071-The political economy of new slavery

Victoria Firmo-Fontan 95
resulting then in a psychosis (Grosz, 1990). The possibility of vulnerable
women’s empowerment might entail the questioning of their entire life,
and thus create a further mental breakdown. In sum, whether or not
knowledgeable of their conditions before or after displacement, ‘aware’
women interviewed by the author recognize that they never would have
accepted to leave their countries had they known about their fate as
slaves, while others who do not fully appreciate the gravity of their
conditions have persistently expressed their unhappiness to the author.
The ‘awareness argument’, utilized mainly by the few brothel clients
interviewed during this research, or by countries seeking to absolve
themselves from creating the need for forced migration, is therefore
rendered void by the condition of slavery in which these women find
themselves. The concept of slavery is developed below as referring to
the fact that the women interviewed all claimed to have been sold,
forced to work without or with little payment or after contracting debtbondage.
They have then been coerced and/or abused into performing
sexual acts with individuals who have paid for the encounter. While
this chapter is focused on the topic of forced prostitution, it should
also be made clear that trafficking does not only lead to sexual slavery,
it can also involve manual labour, such as in Northern Brazil, or the
entertainment industry, such as the boys taken from Afghanistan to the
Gulf to become camel racers (see Chapter 3 in this volume).
Destination
Most victims recruited in BiH do not make it to the advertized destination
and end up being sold at auctions, mainly in Belgrade or at the infamous
Arizona Market of Brcko, for prices ranging from 500 Konvertible Marks
(KM) to 5,000 KM. When they arrive in their location of displacement,
they might be forced into submission for several days by their owner
or the keeper of the establishment, euphemistically called a nightclub,
through physical violence and sexual abuse. Their passports are taken
away from them and they are told that their documents will be returned
when they have repaid their ‘carer’s’ expenses to find employment for
them. They are then put on the market and forced to perform sexual
work every day, sometimes with only a few hours to rest. The typical
day of a sex slave would entail: receiving clients in the evening until
dawn; sleeping for a few hours; cleaning the nightclub; working as a
waitress during the day if the establishment is also a restaurant; and
then starting to receive clients again. At the time of writing, the situation
for women trafficked within Afghanistan, or from the lawless