A landmark abolitionist primer on migration, sex work, policing, and the “anti-trafficking industry”—and a powerful argument about who is really leading the way toward justice: migrant sex workers themselves.
In this impassioned corrective to decades of misguided, carceral approaches to migration and sex work, long-time organizers Chanelle Gallant and Elene Lam deftly expose the harms of criminalization in the name of “anti-trafficking” and lift up migrant sex workers’ organizing in the US, Canada, and elsewhere. In doing so, they make the compelling case that the only effective response to the needs of migrant sex workers must be led by migrants in the sex trade, as they fight for rights, safety, and autonomy.
Gallant and Lam illustrate how this movement is taking aim at the root causes of violence and abuse: the white supremacist securitization of borders, the criminalization of both migration and sex work, the patriarchial devaluation of women’s labor, and forced displacement due to climate disaster, war, and poverty—all fueled by racial capitalism.
An indispensable exploration of the relationship between migration and sex work—and the underlying societal conditions they reflect—Not Your Rescue Project is a thorough indictment of the anti-trafficking industry as an engine of criminalization and state violence, and an instructive account of the emancipatory politics already being practiced by migrant sex workers in their organizing. Throughout, Gallant and Lam place migrant sex workers at the center of struggles against border imperialism, carceral states, and capitalism—dispelling a range of poisonous myths and paving the way for deeper alliances across movements with the shared goal of dismantling and abolishing carceralism in all its forms.

Chanelle Gallant's profile page

Elene Lam's profile page

Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist and writer based in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish Territories. She has been involved in community-based grassroots migrant justice, feminist, anti-racist, Indigenous solidarity, anti-capitalist, Palestinian liberation, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One is Illegal and Women’s Memorial March Committee. She is formally trained in law, works with women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and is the author of Undoing Border Imperialism (2013).

Harsha Walia's profile page

"Not Your Rescue Project opens up long overdue space for migrant sex workers—who are routinely spoken about, spoken for, and spoken over in service of expanding and entrenching carceral approaches to violence—to speak for themselves. What their experiences and visions make clear is that borders, criminalization, policing, and punishment are the culprits, not the cure, furthering violence and coercion in every sector of the economy, including the sex trades, rather than preventing or interrupting it. The authors' call is clear: migrant sex workers are the experts in their own experiences, they demand simultaneous recognition of their agency and of the intersecting structures of violence that shape their lives, and their leadership is essential to our movements. Required reading for everyone who cares about trafficking, labor rights, and racial, gender, migrant, and economic justice."
—Andrea J. Ritchie, author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
"Not Your Rescue Project is a powerful indictment of the violence and injustice that Global South migrant sex workers face under the banners of rescue and saviourism. It offers forthright and compelling documentation of the struggles and humanity of such migrants who live and work in Canada and the US, while providing a searing critique of anti-prostitution, victim-centered approaches, including the anti-human trafficking industry. This is a much-needed book that brings significant depth to a growing trend in global sex worker rights research—a crucial call to action for students, researchers, and activists concerned with migrant, sexuality, and feminist and global worker justice and rights."
—Kamala Kempadoo, Professor Emerita, Social Science, York University
“You will never be the same after reading, studying, teaching, and sharing Not Your Rescue Project. Curating personalized interludes, historical analysis, and grassroots movement archiving, this book is a masterpiece composition of survival, self-defense, and liberationist testimonial strategies. Migrant sex workers are truth-tellers, solidarity organizers, community builders, and grounded critical practitioners who are permanently reshaping abolitionist, anti-imperialist, anti-violence, radical feminist, and various other streams of ‘left’ mobilization. Simultaneously creative, generous, and graceful in its layered invitations to engage in the complex challenges of ‘joint struggle,’ this foundational text calls on every justice-oriented community to engage with the incomparable radicalism of migrant sex worker praxis."
—Dylan Rodríguez, scholar, teacher, movement collaborator, and Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Riverside
"Not Your Rescue Project exposes the right-wing 'rescue' fraud perpetrated by the sex work prohibitionists and their carceral allies by centering the lived experience of migrant sex workers organizing for their own liberation. It is essential reading for anyone interested in pushing back against those who mobilize state violence in the guise of helping vulnerable workers."
—Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing
"Intellectually trenchant, emotionally affecting, and deeply needed, Not Your Rescue Project is absolutely essential reading for anyone involved in social justice, labor activism, human rights, migrant justice, and sex education. For far too long, misconceptions, racism, anti–sex work stigma, and blatant opportunism have shaped legislation and policy on sex work to the severe detriment of those with the most to lose. Elene Lam and Chanelle Gallant set the record straight with powerful analysis and storytelling drawn from many years of solidarity and advocacy work with migrant sex workers, exposing the exploitation and outright deception perpetrated by the so-called anti-human trafficking movement. This is one of the most important books on migrant justice, labor justice, and sex worker rights that I have read in the past decade and I am so grateful that it exists."
—Kai Cheng Thom, author of I Hope We Choose Love
"Many queer people are familiar with the saying 'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.' In this rousing book on migrant sex worker struggle, the founder of the Butterfly network Elene Lam and organizer Chanelle Gallant demonstrate how the joyful labor of solidarity lifts everyone’s gaze to a just and liberated horizon for all, in stark contrast with the prevalent saviorist and humanitarian approaches to sex trafficking. When butterflies get together to extract minerals from a shallow patch of muddy water, it is called a 'puddle club.' Not Your Rescue Project opens our eyes to the powerful human 'puddle clubs' all around us, beating their wings for justice and somehow turning the mud slung at them into nourishment. This book makes joining them irresistible."
—Sophie Lewis, author of Enemy Feminisms and Abolish the Family