Few books dismantle dominant narratives with as much precision and urgency as Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice by Elene Lam and Chanelle Gallant. This is not a book about victimhood. It is a book about power—who has it, who doesn’t, and how the state weaponizes law, borders, and morality to control racialized, migrant sex workers under the guise of protection. It exposes the violence of the so-called rescue industry, the dangerous conflation of sex work and trafficking, and the carceral feminist frameworks that ultimately harm the very people they claim to save.

Lam and Gallant refuse easy binaries, insisting that sex work is neither inherently empowering nor degrading—it is labor. And like all labor, its conditions are determined by structures of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and colonialism. The authors demonstrate how sex work, for many migrants, is not a last resort but a strategic choice, one often safer and better-paying than other exploitative industries available to them. Yet, because of the racialized criminalization of both migration and sex work, migrant sex workers are treated as disposable—targeted by police, denied housing, and placed at constant risk of deportation. The state, not the work itself, creates the greatest danger.

The book excels in its analysis of the intersection between sex work and border politics, revealing how immigration laws are used to regulate and punish laboring bodies. The authors meticulously deconstruct anti-trafficking policies, exposing how they function less as protective measures and more as tools of surveillance, exclusion, and incarceration. Through case studies and firsthand accounts, they reveal the everyday realities of migrant sex workers—resisting, surviving, and organizing in the face of relentless criminalization.

One of the book’s most powerful interventions is its critique of white feminism’s role in the anti-sex work movement. Lam and Gallant illuminate the racialized moral panic surrounding sex work, tracing it back to colonial histories of controlling and policing women of color’s sexuality. White feminists, they argue, often uphold a framework of rescue that reinforces carceral power, echoing the same paternalistic logic as imperialist interventions that have come to dominate our world. The book rejects this model entirely, aligning itself instead with abolitionist and decolonial movements that prioritize self-determination over state intervention.

Not Your Rescue Project does not just challenge misconceptions about sex work—it demands a complete reorientation of how we think about justice. It calls for decriminalization, not tighter restrictions. It advocates for solidarity, not saviorism. It insists on listening to sex workers rather than speaking over them. At its core, this book is an indictment of the state’s role in manufacturing violence against migrant sex workers—and a call to action for those willing to fight for a world where justice is not defined by policing and punishment, but by autonomy and collective care.

📖 Recommended For: Readers invested in abolitionist and decolonial perspectives; those interested in the intersections of sex work, migration, and criminalization; activists, organizers, and anyone challenging carceral feminism; fans of Harsha Walia.

🔑 Key Themes: Sex Work as Labor, Criminalization of Migration, Anti-Trafficking Myths, Carceral Feminism vs. Abolition, State Violence and Surveillance, Worker-Led Resistance.