'WHITE SLAVE TRADE'
Between Port Cities: Women Travelling Alone around the Mediterranean

Women’s Migration for Prostitution in the interwar Middle East and North Africa
Liat Kozma

This article examines the migration of women for prostitution around the Mediterranean Sea, particularly to and within the Middle East and North Africa, in the interwar period. Reading League of Nations’ reports on traffic in women and children along with other published and archival sources, it situates women’s mobility within three significant waves of
migration at the time: of south European men and women to Europe’s colonies in North Africa; of east European Jews westwards and south- wards; and of Syrians outside of Mt. Lebanon. It shows how women's migration can be explained and traced by following such temporary travelers as tourists, sailors, and soldiers and such more permanent migrants as settlers, refugees, and labor migrants. By using the category of migration, this article argues that “traffic in women” is insufficient as an analytical category in accounting for the geography of prostitution and prostitutes’ international mobility in the interwar Mediterranean.
In his 1930s play Awlad al-Fuqara (and 1942 film), Egyptian playwright Yusuf Wahbi presents Serena, an Italian prostitute. Her life story, narrated in broken Arabic, echoes traffic narratives of the time:Treacherous Carlo, after seven years he is laughing at me; he took me away from my mother. I was a young Mademoiselle . . . he married me, and I went with him to Alexandria. Then there was no work, and he told me I should be the one to bring money. I had no money, he told me to look for male strangers on the street.Then I came to Cairo, four years ago, and every day Carlo took 50 piaster from me, and I gave him because I love him, but today. . . another foreigner paid 50 pounds and told me that in seven days I must go with the other man to Marseille.
Serena is a fictional character, who tells a story of what came to be known in the interwar years as “traffic in women and children.” This phrase denoted the forced migration of unsuspecting women and girls for prostitution across national borders and elicited a moral panic about the exploitation of innocent young girls by unscrupulous traffickers. Serena’s narrative resembles others that appeared repeatedly in the press, rescue organizations’ writings, and League of Nations’ reports from the 1920s and1930s.