Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research 2025, 26 (2): 152-158

Defund Police, Promote Mutual Aid

Sofia Del Vita

Book review of Gallant, C., Lam, E. 2024. Not Your Rescue Project. Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice.

Not Your Rescue Project, by Chanelle Gallant and Elene Lam, with a foreword by Harsha Walia and a postscript by Robyn Maynard, restores the mutual solidarity work and theoretical framework underpinning the Butterfly Project, an initiative formed by sex workers, social workers, and legal and health professionals to support the rights of Asian and migrant sex workers. This is therefore a work grounded in empirical foundations drawn from a vast array of lived experiences. Published by Haymarket Books in 2024, the book serves as an abolitionist guide in the broadest sense, opposing criminalization, punitive and carceral systems, and interrogating the role of anti-trafficking policies in amplifying state and police violence against migrant sex workers. As the title itself highlights, the book’s objective is to deconstruct the victimizing narrative surrounding sex workers and to critique its harmful effects. The work thus challenges the dominant discourse that frames every sex worker as a victim in need of rescue, offering instead a perspective that recenters the notions of agency and collective organizing. The book proposes a paradigm shift: the goal is not to "save" sex workers but to guarantee their rights, safety, and autonomy. It argues that the primary issue in the condition of migrant sex workers lies not in trafficking per se, but rather in migration control, the criminalization of sex work, and labor exploitation under capitalism. Sex workers are often demanded to prove they "freely chose" their profession, while no such scrutiny is applied to others forced into exploitative work under capitalism. The authors argue that under capitalism, work, particularly for precarious workers, is rarely a matter of free will. Through this analysis, the book illuminates how anti-trafficking rhetoric, while ostensibly expressing concern for racialized migrants, in fact, reproduces models of "aid" that perpetuate the very systems of oppression they claim to combat.. The authors aim to demonstrate, and they do it powerfully, that the struggle for migrant sex workers’ rights should not be treated as an exception but as an integral part of broader labour rights struggles. From this perspective, the text underscores the necessity of fostering a discourse that recognizes how sex workers’ battles are intertwined with other social justice movements, such as anti-racist, anti-carceral, and freedom-of-movement struggles. In fact, the violence undocumented migrant sex workers face stems from their juridical irregularity and the racialized regimes structuring economic stratification. Consequently, their demands must be situated within the broader struggles for undocumented migrants’ labor rights. For this reason, the authors call for the recognition of legal status for all migrant workers, alongside adequate labor protections.

Keywords: Abolitionism, Carceral Feminism, Anti Trafficking, Mutual Aid, Peer Led Approaches

Received: April 4, 2025; Revised: November 7, 2025; Accepted: November 10, 2025; Prepublished online: December 10, 2025; Published: December 12, 2025  Show citation