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The global migration network of sex-workers

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Abstract

Differences in the social and economic environment across countries encourage humans to migrate in search of better living conditions, including job opportunities, higher salaries, security and welfare. Quantifying global migration is, however, challenging because of poor recording, privacy issues and residence status. This is particularly critical for some classes of migrants involved in stigmatised, unregulated or illegal activities. Escorting services or high-end prostitution are well-paid activities that attract workers all around the world. In this paper, we study international migration patterns of sex-workers by using network methods. Using an extensive international online advertisement directory of escorting services and information about individual escorts, we reconstruct a migrant flow network where nodes represent either origin or destination countries. The links represent the direct routes between two countries. The migration network of sex-workers shows different structural patterns than the migration of the general population. The network contains a strong core where mutual migration is often observed between a group of high-income European countries, yet Europe is split into different network communities with specific ties to non-European countries. We find non-reciprocal relations between countries, with some of them mostly offering while others attract workers. The Gross Domestic Product per capita (GDPc) is a good indicator of country attractiveness for incoming workers and service rates but is unrelated to the probability of emigration. The median financial gain of migrating, in comparison to working at the home country, is \(15.9\%\). Only sex-workers coming from \(77\%\) of the countries have financial gains with migration and average gains decrease with the GDPc of the country of origin. Our results suggest that high-end sex-worker migration is regulated by economic, geographic and cultural aspects.

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Notes

  1. Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam, the Netherlands, the UAE, the UK

  2. Australia, China, South Korea, India, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam

  3. Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Malta, Norway, Moldova, Montenegro, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the UK

  4. Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Georgia, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Monaco, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, and Ukraine

  5. Armenia, Cameroon, Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Morocco, Nigeria, Qatar, South Africa, Tanzania, Turkey, and Uganda

  6. Argentina, Caribbean, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Guatemala, Iceland, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Trinidad And Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Andreas Bogaerts for supporting data collection. C.D.G.L. thanks São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP, Grants number 2016/17078-0, 2020/10049-0). P.H. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP 21H04595.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Luis E C Rocha

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Luis E C Rocha

  3. Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

    Petter Holme

  4. Institute of Mathematics and Computer Sciences, University of São Paulo, São Carlos, Brazil

    Claudio D G Linhares

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Correspondence to Luis E C Rocha.

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Rocha, L.E.C., Holme, P. & Linhares, C.D.G. The global migration network of sex-workers. J Comput Soc Sc 5, 969–985 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-021-00156-2

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