ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how difference is reinforced in author's discussion of the legal regulation of women who migrate for work, including sex work. It also examines the assimilationist move in the context of the legal responses to transnational migrants in countries that have adopted new emotional, cultural, and citizenship criteria to determine eligibility for citizenship and immigrant status. The chapter aims to border crossings by transnational subjects along the rigid binaries of "us" and "them", and domination and subordination. It discusses how anti-trafficking initiatives assume that persons in situations of trafficking, especially women, are "victims" incapable of choosing to cross borders, and how they fail to address the push factors that compel such "unsafe" movements. The primary response of states to the global movement of people has been to enact new citizenship and nationality laws to enable transnational migrants to be part of the universal project of rights and acquire legitimacy through the process of assimilation.
