Social structure, relationships and reproduction in quasi-family networks: brokering circular migration of Vietnamese sex workers to Singapore

Framing the Mother Tac: The Racialised, Sexualised and Gendered Politics of Modern Slavery in Australia

“…While we do not doubt that Rung harshly exploited Lia and Tilly by expecting and pushing them to work exceedingly long hours to pay back an unreasonable amount of debt that went far beyond the cost of bringing them to Australia, hosting their accommodation, and taking the profit margin into account, our analysis of her sentencing points at how dominant assumptions around gender, race, class, and sexual labour intersect in the construction of the Mother Tac, leading to a villainous conclusion. Instead, our argument suggests that the Mother Tac is more ambiguous, should be seen as socially contingent, and should not be reduced to the role of unambiguous "trafficker", as with other female figures involved in the organisation, recruitment, and facilitation of the sex work of others (Molland 2010;Lainez 2019;Mai 2016).…”

“…This has been documented amongst recruiters and madams in Laos, referred to as "mama-san/mae" (Molland 2010, p. 225); amongst Vietnamese brokers and debt collectors in Singapore, referred to as "mẹ" (Lainez 2019, p. 10); and, like Rung, amongst Thai migrant workers under debt contract as "mae tac" (Theeravit et al 2010). While these forms of quasi-familial relations can be seen as legitimising hierarchal relationships, they can also reveal alternative, protective forms of kinship amongst sex workers and their brokers, as Lainez observed between Vietnamese migrant sex workers and their "mẹ" in Singapore (Lainez 2019) and as Hoefinger (2013) observed among "professional girlfriends" and club sex workers in Cambodia.…”

“…unable to speak the local language, and experiencing undocumented or illegal working status. Sex workers' decisions to "co-operate" and endure these conditions are made on the understanding that it will involve making more money than they could working in similar roles in their countries of origin, and that this will result in greater freedoms for them following the discharge of their contract (Lainez 2019;O'Connell Davidson 2015;Plambech 2017;Mai 2016). On the other hand, Molland points out how the mama-sans, recruiters of Laotian women across borders into Thailand, feel they are "helping" other women out of poverty rather than exploiting their labour (Molland 2010).…”

“…Then mama tac make the visa and pay the airplane ticket for when they come here they have to work and pay money back to mama tac 50 thousand or different [it depends], if finish [paying] that all money they can leave and go, if not finish [paying] that money cannot go anywhere. (Sissi, Thai former sex worker with experience of trafficking, August 2020) This article introduces the figure of the Mother Tac (or mae tac/mother of contract) (Theeravit et al 2010, p. 141), a largely unexplored human element in human trafficking scholarship, inscribing her into the often racialised and gendered narrative of the figures involved in managing and facilitating the sex work of their co-nationals, such as the Laotian mama-san/mae (Molland 2010), the Nigerian madam (Mai 2016;Plambech 2017;Mancuso 2014), or the Vietnamese mother/broker (Lainez 2019(Lainez , 2020.…”

Treading water: Street sex workers negotiating frantic presents and speculative futures in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

“…On the one hand, street sex work rarely lent itself to savings, career prospects and long-term planning for the majority of women living from hand to mouth in small towns like Chaˆu -D oc. Nonetheless, some sex workers managed to overcome these limitations through persistence: they managed to settle in Ho Chi Minh City and to build a pragmatic future based on entrepreneurial sex work and, in some cases, circular migration to wealthy countries like Singapore (Lainez 2011(Lainez , 2017. For the ones that remained in the provinces though, the income earned was spent almost immediately.…”