This essay sets out to explore the relationship between cross-border migration, trafficking and sexuality within selected countries throughout Southeast Asia. In doing so, while establishing that each of the activities is an independently definable and practicable phenomenon, this essay asserts that a clear link is evident between the said practices. Further, that their relationship, when analysed in the context of Southeast Asia, is such that the nature of these practices encourages the actions of the other, playing directly into the hands of those willing to exploit the vulnerable. In establishing this, this essay will define cross-border migration and the elements, such as the lure of economic prosperity, geographical proximity and the ‘feminisation’ of labour, which encourage it, and in turn lend it to trafficking. It will then explore the trafficking of humans, particularly who is being trafficked and by whom, and in doing so play out the relationship between trafficking and the sex industry. In doing so it will expose the cruel cycle generated by the interplay between these activities by exploring some of the general issues as well as voicing personal accounts from those directly involved.
Cross-border migration can be understood as the movement of people, drawn by a set of circumstances, both pushing them away from their own country and pulling them towards another, that results in their movement across borders into a new county. In the context of this essay, it will be explored within the Southeast Asian region, with a particular eye to Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia and Indonesia. The instances of cross-border migration within the region are high, and “almost exclusively concerned with the mobility of labour from underdeveloped to rapidly developing zones within the region.”[1] One such example of this can be seen through the study of the influx of migrants from Burma, still feeling the effects of war, and suffering from a...