Laura María Agustín
Dr. Laura María Agustín | |
|---|---|
 Agustín in 2013 speaking at Dublin Anarchist Bookfair | |
| Other name | The Naked Anthropologist |
| Known for | Studying undocumented migration, informal labor markets, trafficking, and the sex industry |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Open University |
| Tony Bennett | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Anthropology |
| Institutions | University of Neuchatel |
| Website | lauraagustin |
Laura María Agustín is an anthropologist who studies illegal migration, informal labor markets, trafficking, and the sex industry. Blogging and speaking publicly as the Naked Anthropologist, she is critical of the conflation of the terms "human trafficking" and "prostitution". She argues that what she calls the "rescue industry" often ascribes victim status to people (most often women) who have made conscious and rational decisions to migrate knowing they will be selling sex, and who do not consider themselves to be victims. She states that such views on prostitution originate in what she calls "fundamentalist feminism".[1] She advocates for a cultural study of commercial sex, a theoretical framework she created in the journal Sexualities in 2005.[2]
Agustín carried out research on migration and sex work on the Mexico-United States border, in the Caribbean, in South America, and in several European countries.[1] She did participatory research for several years with a range of social actors aiming to help migrants in Spain. She received a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies and Sociology from the Open University, United Kingdom, in 2004, with Tony Bennett as her supervisor.[2]
Her first book, Trabajar en la industria del sexo, y otros tópicos migratorios, was published in Spain in 2004 (Gakoa, ISBN 84-87303-79-X). In 2007, she published her second book, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (Zed Books, ISBN