Author: Lainez, Nicolas
Title: Transacted Children and Virginity: Ethnography of Ethnic Vietnamese in Phnom Penh
Summary: The goal of this study is to explore how the Vietnamese populations live and perceive forms of sale of sexual services and persons in Cambodia. Firstly, it is necessary to contextualize the legal and socioeconomic framework deriving from historical events within which the Vietnamese of Cambodia evolve, and that make them particularly vulnerable. Being excluded from Cambodian citizenship and most of them not holding Vietnamese nationality, they are stateless people who live in a legal void. Consequently, they are confronted with several obstacles that prevent them from being fully integrated into Cambodia. Among the causes that motivate the prostitution of young women, family indebtedness figures high. The fieldwork reveals the existence of an endogenous financial sector run by moneylenders who provide loans at high interest rates. Once in debt, borrowers may push their daughters to sell their virginity or to engage in prostitution to alleviate the economic burden. Secondly, two forms of the transfer and selling of sexual services of minors are addressed: the virginity sale and the sale of young children. The sale of virginity is relatively frequent among the elements of our sample. In the case study presented, the mother pushes the family’s economic burden onto her daughters as soon as they are old enough to generate income with their bodies. While according to Confucian precepts parents ought to preserve the virginity of their daughters until marriage, in fact they organize its commodification and monopolize the profits. The sale of a child for adoption has emerged in these communities. Oral tales and news clips give evidence of a market of children for sale for adoption. Informants involved in the trade make a distinction between the “gift of a child” (cho con) and the “sale of a child” (bán con). The gift is made to families for a payment that is lower than the price of a sale. The sale is negotiated for a price between some hundreds and some thousands of US dollars. The motivations, modus operandi and representations utilized by actors try to make morally acceptable what is otherwise a legally forbidden transaction.
Details: Ho Chi Minh City: Alliance Anti-Trafic, 2011. 51p.
Source: Internet Resource: Research Report No. 2: Accessed January 10, 2012 at: ftp://ftp2.allianceantitrafic.org/alliancea/Research_reports/AAT_ResearchReport_02-TransactedKinship.pdf
Year: 2011
Country: Vietnam
URL:
Shelf Number: 123543
Keywords:
Child Prostitution (Vietnam)Child Sex TraffickingChild Sexual Exploitation |
