Migrant prostitution is the prostitution of migrants. It is significant because of its role as a dominant demographic of commercial sex workers internationally. Migrant prostitution shares several similarities across various contexts, such as their migration from rural to urban areas or between developing to industrialized nations and the economic push and pull factors that help determine their migrant status.
Migrant prostitutes have also been at the center of complex discussions over the legality of prostitution, the differentiation or conflation of sex work from sex trafficking , and responses from national governments and non-governmental organizations over the regulation of sex work and the provision of services for victims of sex trafficking.
The illegal nature of migrant sex work makes it difficult to obtain reliable and conclusive estimates of migrant sex workers. While migrants who work in agriculture or construction are largely male, migrants who engage in commercial sex work are largely female with ages ranging from the early teens to middle age. Migrant prostitutes are diverse in terms of nationality of origin.
In certain national contexts, such as in the United Arab Emirates, sex workers come from a diverse range of nations of origin, such as Russia, Nigeria, and Thailand. Low economic status and harsh living conditions in migrant sex workers' home country often serve as push factors for migration to more economically advantaged nations. Vast migration between third and first world countries in response to diminishing economic prospects at home has been prevalent since economic globalization widened the income gap between developed and developing nations.
Migrants enter prostitution for a variety of reasons. Female migrants largely migrate for jobs in the care sector , such as domestic work , childcare , and sex work , as opposed to males who engage in more physically demanding labor, such as construction and agriculture. For women who engage in rural to urban migration in developing nations with growing free-trade zones and importation of foreign financial capital and tourism , sex work is often more lucrative than alternative forms of labor, such as working in manufacturing or in factories subcontracting to foreign corporations.
