Impure Migration: Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina by Mir Yarfitz (review)

In Impure Migration, Mir Yarfitz takes us through the offices, alleyways, courtrooms, and brothels that were the arenas for international debates over sex trafficking and its implications for the Jewish community worldwide. Yarfitz focuses on the time period between the 1890s and 1930s when Argentina received a high number of immigrants and facilitated legally regulated prostitution. The author stresses the role of eastern European Jews and their transnational sex networks in crafting the image and identity of the new Jewish Argentine immigrant community. He uses immigration records, newspapers, and institutional documents to map and analyze the accounts of Jews involved in the sex trade and those who were in opposition to it.

Yarfitz challenges conventional and romanticized narratives of "white slavery" and situates the ideas about "victimized female and darkened Jewish master" in a wider global discourse related to mobility, race, and sexuality (17). The use of the expression "sex work" in the book's title suggests that Yarfitz gives agency and decision-making potential to Jewish women and men involved in what was broadly defined as prostitution in golden age Argentina. Sex work is seen here as a form of labor and "the most lucrative occupational field for ambitious individuals with still-limited options on both sides of the migration journey" (15). The book insightfully explores very complex historical issues and offers a nuanced way to address the moral ambiguity and tensions generated by trafficking and transnational sex work.

The first two chapters discuss different racial categorizations that not only heavily influenced the association between prostitution and mobility but also shaped discussions and policies around migration in general. Yarfitz demonstrates how "sex literally constructed the boundaries of race as race policed the boundaries of sex, and sexual purity crusades supported racial purity" (26). Scholars seeking a comparative approach will appreciate Yarfitz's analysis of anti-trafficking regulations and concerns regarding sexual anxieties in different parts of the Americas. This helps situate Argentina in a larger context related to the unstable racial character of Jewish identity. Yarfitz shows how the "hierarchy of racial science" in Argentina differed from other countries and how Jews could be treated as both "white and as Other" (43–4). While Jewish men became racialized as "the archetypical masters of white slaves," Jewish women could be whitened by their victimization (45). Both, however, functioned in a complex context of racial gradation. Buenos Aires is portrayed here as a transnational sex work center and a major trafficking hub. Even though Jews did not engage in prostitution more often than other groups of migrants in Argentina, they were often presented as key actors in an organized sex trade that benefited from legalized forms of prostitution. Yarfitz argues that "Jewish organizations engaged in self-protective publicity" possibly reinforced the connection between Jews and prostitution in Argentina and drew additional attention to Jewish trafficking (55).

The remaining three chapters dive into marriage strategies, politics of respectability, institutional matters, and the relationship between "respectable Jews" and the tmeim (impure). Yarfitz uses the framework of the "modified choice, the idea that sex workers make difficult choices out of a limited, less-than-ideal range" to explore the complexity of marriage arrangements (136). This helps to elucidate how women involved in sex work could proclaim their agency and self-determine certain aspects of their lives. Yarfitz's take on the Varsovia Society (a legal mutual aid and burial society that later changed its name to Zwi Migdal) is thought-provoking and makes the reader reconsider some conventional dichotomies related to that subject. Yarfitz sees this mutual aid society that gathered sex workers as a business and communal endeavor. He compares the Varsovia Society to other associations created by immigrants that similarly tried to protect their interests, provide social services, organize religious ceremonies, and claim their own version of respectability. Yarfitz emphasizes the power of historical narrative and "rereads" two stories of women who both gathered enough financial...