As the feminisation of migrant labour accelerates in Asia and the world, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children was adopted in 2000 as a supplement to the Convention against Transnational Organised Crime. The UN now defines trafficking in persons as a contemporary form of slavery, especially in the sex industry (UNCHR 1999a, 1999b, 1999c, 2000). Japan signed this protocol in 2002 but was criticised by the US Department of State’s annual Trafficking in Persons’ Report of 2004 for not having made enough effort to prevent trafficking. The Japanese government then very quickly launched an action plan (but had not yet ratified the protocol at the time of writing). The Penal Code, the Entertainment Business Law, the Migration Control and Refugee Recognition Law, and other laws and regulations were amended to accommodate anti-trafficking measures as part of the action plan (Kamino 2007: 87-93).
Our abovementioned outreach work found that checks on foreign nationals’ visa status became more stringent in the name of rescuing victims of trafficking. Employers who do not conduct proper scrutiny of their workers’ visa status are now penalised. Police raids have become more frequent in order to monitor employers and foreign nationals involved in the sex industry. There has been more stringent policing of the sex industry as a whole (Aoyama forthcoming). The reasoning behind this policing is to prevent non-Japanese women from being victimised in trafficking and pushed into unfree labour in the sex industry (Aoyama 2009: 31-33, 97-100, 144-47, 150-57; JNATIP 2005: 28-44). At the same time, it is also important to recognise the agency of some women who migrated intentionally and cannot quite be described as victims. The danger is that framing women from ‘poorer’ countries as mere victims, however disadvantaged they are in globalisation, makes them invisible as workers and deprives them of the chance to claim their rights, as Ito- Ruri already pointed out 20 years ago in research on migrant Filipino women (Ito — 1992: 293-332). Also, focusing only on trafficking makes the other power relations involved in migration invisible and possibly puts the women in more dangerous situations.
Even before the recent more stringent policing, foreign nationals were prohibited by the Migration Control and Refugee Recognition Law (Article 2-2 and 19) from working in the sex industry even in premises and activities operating legally under the Entertainment Business Law (exceptions were made for special permanent residents, those with permanent resident status, and entertainment visa holders). In addition, migrant sex workers have become more invisible since the anti-trafficking law amendments. Those whom the SWASH outreach workers can meet now tend to have legal status to work in the sex industry, mainly by spouse visas, so they are now part-time housewives and sex workers just like many of their Japanese counterparts. Their marriages, however, could alternatively be interpreted as ‘fake marriages’ or as a new sophisticated way of trafficking. For example, Fujimoto Nobuki, a leading NGO researcher in this area, points out that arranged international marriage sharply increased just after the anti-trafficking law amendment and that the same brokers who sent women into the sex industry might be involved in arranging the marriages (Fujimoto 2013: 177, 180). Those who are working without legal status to work in these businesses, usually with tourist visas, student visas or overstaying after the expiry of their visas, are now more careful not to be seen or come to the attention of the authorities and are thus more vulnerable to exploitation. A Filipino woman in Fujimoto’s case study, working in a bar on a spouse visa, who stated that she was always in fear of police, disappeared from his reach after a while (Fujimoto 2013: 178). The outreach work by myself and SWASH also suggests that even migrants who initially worked for legal premises as their ‘understanding’ and ‘good’ employers turned a blind eye to their visa status may have ended up working in illegal businesses based on high risk and high profits (Aoyama forthcoming).
Notably, while it enacted and brought into effect the anti-trafficking policy, the Japanese government also launched the ‘Halving Illegal Overstayers in Five Years’ campaign in the year 2005. This made clear that it wanted the public to separate ‘good’ foreigners from ‘bad’ ones. So, if a foreign sex worker was recognised as a victim of trafficking, she would be a ‘good’ foreigner and gain some assistance; if she was labelled as a criminal offender, she would be a ‘bad’ foreigner and be deported (Aoyama 2014: 278—80). The government has been criticised as not being sensitive towards the migrants who do not recognise themselves nor are recognised by others as trafficking victims. It has not prioritised the rights of these individuals before prosecuting the trafficking offenders (Saito 2006: 74—75). In the world arena of anti-trafficking policy watchers, on the other hand, marginalised groups, including sex workers and undocumented migrants, have become the foci as suffering particular harm from the dominant anti-trafficking framework which has been routinely used to control and criminalise these groups (Aim for Human Rights et al. 2010: 6—7; GAATW 2007: x; 15—17; and passim).