Brexit: How will London's EU sex workers survive?

When economists, politicians and journalists warned that London would suffer dearly if the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU), images of suited-and-booted bankers tearing their hair out in the City were the most likely scenarios that came to most peoples’ minds. But the Capital is a city of migrants – especially EU migrants. Research from the Migration Observatory reveals nearly one million non-UK EU citizens work in the city. Sex work, a small sector that is dominated by EU workers is often overlooked, and with its underground nature it’s not hard to see why. Moments away from the bright lights of the Gielgud Theatre in London’s West End is the White Lilly Spa, an innocuous-looking Chinese massage parlour that is fast coming to represent the possible future of the city’s sex work industry as this month’s triggering of Article 50 gets the Brexit ball rolling.

The White Lilly, along with five other Soho shops advertising medicinal remedies and “relaxing” massages, was raided by more than 100 Metropolitan Police (Met) officers in October last year. The bust, dubbed “Operation Lanhydrock”, was hailed by the Met as an anti-trafficking and anti-slavery measure. But sex workers, activists and politicians have come forward claiming the raid was far more sinister. “Women working both on the streets and indoors – particularly Romanian women but also some Hungarian women – are being targeted by the police and immigration, and being threatened with deportation or being told they don’t have the right to work here,” says Cari Mitchell from the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), a charity working to protect sex workers in London. “The police are behaving as though we’ve Brexited.”Sex workers from the EU who had witnessed the Soho raids were unwilling to talk to Blatant, perhaps, according to Greater London Assembly member Andrew Boff, because of an atmosphere of fear towards the law.

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"The police are behaving as though we've Brexited"

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“It was an immigration bust, it wasn’t a human trafficking bust, it was about cleaning up the streets,” says Andrew. The Conservative member has taken a special interest in the rights of sex workers, having published Silence on Violence, a 2012 report revealing the plight of London’s women in sex work, and Shadow City a year later, which laid bare the extent of trafficking across London. The Met said 17 people were held over immigration matters as a result of the Lanhydrock raids and referred to the UK Border Agency. However following questions by Aseembly Members, London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, revealed at Mayor’s Question Time that none of the sex workers at the brothels made any disclosures about potential trafficking, and the six being dealt with by the Met are under what a spokesperson calls a “lengthy and complex” investigation for controlling prostitution for gain. The Met deny the raid was anything more than an anti-trafficking bust, but for Andrew, the damage has been done.

“Anybody who has read that is not going to come forward to the police if they then either witness a trafficked person in a brothel, or in the brothel in which they work,” he says. “They’re not going to have an incentive to go forward to the police and inform them if they think the first thing the police are going to do is deport them back home.”

With Brexit, this matter is only further complicated. “If sex workers here have dubious immigration status, then they’re less likely to report any crimes. And that is a problem,” Andrew adds, punctuating his words with staccato jabs of his index finger. “If you put more people at risk because of their immigration status, they will become more vulnerable.” It’s hard to tell how many sex workers from EU countries make up the industry. But figures obtained by BLATANT under the Freedom of Information Act may shed some light on the matter by revealing how many people were arrested for prostitution-related offences in London since 2013. Selling sex is perfectly legal in the UK, but soliciting and loitering – commonly associated with “on-street” sex work – are not, as is keeping a brothel. Up until 2015, 992 people were arrested as part of the operation for loitering or soliciting for prostitution. Of those, 75 per cent were Romanian nationals.

Enforcement actions carried out by police are, according to Andrew, counterproductive in keeping sex workers safe. “All it ever does is shift the problem,” he says. He cites the case of Romanian sex worker Mariana Popa, who was stabbed to death in Ilford in 2013 working as a street prostitute. After her death, friends and campaigners lashed out at the police, claiming the enforcement operation the Met was running at the time – Operation Clearlight – forced women to work on their own as opposed to the safer option of working in groups. “I can’t get through to people [about] the effects of this ludicrous enforcement action that they’re doing,” says Andrew. “Because it just doesn’t work.”

A report from the Institute for the Study of European Transformations concluded that the most important factor determining a sex worker’s ability to exercise their rights is their immigration status, meaning after Brexit more people could become vulnerable.

The ECP is adamant that self-employed sex workers have the right to stay in the UK under the EU’s treaty rights, which state that European citizens must find work, commence studies, engage in self-employment or live as a dependent on someone else within three months of arriving in a member state. “If you are a self-employed sex worker – and sex work, under some European law, is recognised as work – then women in that situation do have the right to work here,” says Cari. The issue of the status of sex work under EU treaty law was raised in the final weeks of the fraught referendum campaign.

A group of anonymous Romanian women challenged the Met over another enforcement action it was carrying out at the time – Operation Nexus. The scheme sees an immigration officer posted at every police station in an attempt to arrest and deport foreign criminals. “EU law recognises sex work for the purposes of being a ‘worker’ but it’s hard to provide evidence for it and therefore to show that you have exercisable rights. It’s difficult to show employment records,” Emma Lough from the London-based Aire Centre, which specialises in European legal rights, told the Guardian in May. What needs to happen, insists Andrew, is more than a Brexit deal that grants sex workers the right to carry out their business in the UK. A sea-change in the attitude towards sex work is needed. “The law is at its worst when it tries to moralise, and it’s at its best when it tries to protect people,” he says. “There is a public appetite for more enforcement against immigration,” he adds, but “the approach of the law and the agencies should be to protect people and those people who are suffering from discrimination at the moment as we have seen as a result of Brexit – we need to protect them. Not just support the mob.”

Politicians are scrambling to protect London from any Brexit uncertainty. Sadiq Khan is adamant on creating a London-only work visa for the hundreds of thousands of EU workers that form the backbone of the capital’s service sector. But in the many shadows pock-marking London, sex workers from across the EU are struggling against the uncertainty that comes from simply doing their jobs.

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