Preface

Summary

Čaka iela, a main street running through the Latvian capital of Rīga, was named for the famous Latvian writer Aleksanders Čaks, but in the post-communist period it has become synonymous with something more sinister. I first crossed this street in 1999, while studying abroad at the University of Latvia through my undergraduate institution, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. I crisscrossed the infamous Čaka Street daily, naive to the working women of Čaka Street, the main street for prostitution in Rīga.

One evening, while returning home with friends, the women on Čaka Street began yelling things to me, but not knowing Latvian or Russian at the time, I could not understand what they were shouting. Arriving home to my apartment, I asked my landlady about the women and she told me, very matter-of-factly, that they were prostitutes and it was their choice to stand on the street and sell themselves. This thinking symbolises the Latvian mindset toward prostitution for me and it was not until many years later that I learned first-hand that this was not the whole story; that many of these women did not have the luxury of choice.

This experience has shaped my life and research as I went on to study Latvian and then the Russian and Ukrainian languages in order to be able to work and conduct research in this region. As a Fulbright Research Fellow in 2007– 08, I also volunteered for a year at the Resource Centre for Women, Marta, the leading women's organisation in Latvia and the only organisation at the time rehabilitating victims of human trafficking. Volunteering was the only way I could gain direct experience with this issue. At Marta Centre, I witnessed the battle ground for trafficking first-hand through training seminars with police and border guards and work lobbying the Latvian government. My volunteer work led me to want to examine the role of government and effectiveness of human trafficking laws in the region more thoroughly and was the inspiration for this book.