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Source material recorded by Elizabeth Blaney 28 March 2003 during site visits by organizers of Doña Carmen to Frankfurt, Germany's red light district. Doña Carmen provides education, advocacy and legal council for immigrants in Frankfurt's sex industry. Sensational as always, media attention focuses on the trafficking of women. Yet the majority of immigrant prostitutes elect to migrate in search of work in Frankfurt's profitable sex industry. Police and immigration officials use the spectre of sex trafficking to launch periodic raids and deportation exercises. These raids are featured prominently in the media with officials boasting of having rescued women from sex slavery. The work of Doña Carmen has garnered controversy even among academic feminists who refuse to recognize the agency of those who migrate to Frankfurt seeking work in the trade. Even pro-immigrant groups who conduct direct action to block deportations have failed to recognize the struggle of sex workers seeking the right to work in their chosen profession. In 2002, the pro-immigrant group Kanak Attak teamed up with Doña Carmen in an effort to identify the struggle for immigrant rights as the struggle for worker rights. Prostitution is a notable example in this fight in that recent legislation changes in German law scrapped efforts to recognize prostitution as a profession. Such a reform would grant immigrant sex workers the right to claim asylum based on work. Consequently, the push for reform explicitly excluded migrants and thus truncated general reform for all sex workers. The maneuver to deny general rights based on the particular exclusion of migrants has become an increasing tactic in governments worldwide seeking to curb worker rights and expand the powers of control and police surveillance.
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