ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how migrant sex workers’ circumvention of gendered border regimes at both ends of the migration spectrum results in their experiences of constrained transnational mobility, including being trapped, transient, and circular migrants. Migrant sex workers’ experiences of constrained transnational mobility underscore the need to examine how gender politics shape not just the immigration policies of destination countries but also the expanding emigration policies of labour-sending countries. Being trapped is one of three forms of constrained transnational mobility experienced by migrant sex workers as a result of the anti-trafficking campaign of protecting ‘innocent victims’. The chapter analyses migration policies in Hong Kong and the Philippines and interviewed officials of the Philippine government in order to situate our understanding of the experiences of migrant sex workers within the larger context of border regimes in their country of origin and destinations.
