Not Your Rescue Project

Elene Lam is an activist, artist, community organizer, educator, and human rights defender. She has fought for sex worker, migrant, gender, labor, and racial justice for over twenty years, She is the founder of Butterfly (Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network) and the cofounder of Migrant Sex Workers Project. She has used diverse and innovative approaches to advocate social justice for migrant sex workers, such as leadership building and community mobilization. She holds a master’s of law and master’s of social work. She is a PhD candidate at McMaster University (School of Social Work) and is studying the harm of the anti-trafficking movement. She was awarded the Constance E. Hamilton Award for Women’s Equality by the City of Toronto. Chanelle Gallant is an author, activist, and movement strategist who has worked in the areas of sexuality and criminalization for over two decades. Her writing has appeared in dozens of publications, most recently the New York Times’ best-seller Pleasure Activism, Beyond Survival, and Defund, Disarm, Dismantle, and her work has been discussed in the Washington Post, the Advocate, Esquire, Vice, and every national media outlet in Canada. Chanelle is on the national board for Showing Up For Racial Justice and has helped to found or support numerous sex worker organizations. She has an MA in sociology and was a Lambda Literary Fellow. Harsha Walia is the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism (2013) and Border and Rule (2021). Trained in the law, she is a community organizer and campaigner in migrant justice, anticapitalist, feminist, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One Is Illegal and Women's Memorial March Committee. Robyn Maynard is an award-winning Black feminist scholar-activist based in Toronto and the author of Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present and co-author of Rehearsals for Living. She is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto and her writings on policing, feminism, abolition, and Black liberation are taught widely across North America and Europe.

Foreword by Harsha Walia







Part I: Migrant Sex Worker Realities


Introduction: A Radical Reframe of Sex Work, Migration and Justice

Chapter 1 Who Are Migrant Sex Workers?


Interludes I


Chapter 2 Why Migrants Sell Sex


Interludes II


Chapter 3 Migrant Sex Workers and State Violence







Part II: Migrant Sex Workers and State Violence–Introducing the Anti-trafficking Industry


Chapter 4 “Red Flags”: How Migrant Sex Workers Are Constructed as “Modern Slaves”


Interludes III


Chapter 5 “Consent is Not Relevant” Criminalizing Migrant Sex Workers


Interlude IV


Chapter 6 The Police Are the Predators




Part III: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Power


Chapter 7 The Left and Migrant Sex Workers


Chapter 8 What is Migrant Sex Worker Justice?


Chapter 9 The Butterfly Effect: Solidarity and the World We Dream Of







Afterword by Robyn Maynard


Further Reading


Acknowledgements


Notes