Intersecting risks, intensified vulnerabilities : development-induced displacement & resettlement, indigenous and ethnic minority women, and sex work in the Lao People's Democratic Republic

Abstract

This thesis explores the little-understood links between development-induced displacement and sex work in the Lao PDR. Over the last two decades hundreds of thousands of Indigenous and ethnic minority people have been displaced and resettled without adequate planning or support for rehabilitation. The result has been broad impoverishment on an economic, social and cultural scale, with damning effects and unique influences on young women. At the same time, the nature of sex work in the country has also been evolving in potentially dangerous ways. "Intersecting Risks, Intensified Vulnerabilities" offers important insights on how the individual impacts of resettlement intersect both with each other and with known influences on migration to lead resettled women into sex work, while also reflecting on the risks they subsequently face in the sector. Is based on five months of research that took place in 2006 through a feminist, inter-cultural and inter-generational lens.