French Vice in Texas

This presentation recasts the moral panic of “trafficking” as a key moment in migration history. By exploring three case studies of French migrants in Texas, Dr. Camiscioli shows how the victims and villains of the first international campaign against trafficking should be understood as entrepreneurial migrants instead. A saloon-owner in Beaumont, a pimp in El Paso, and a brothel madame in Galveston serve as examples of successful migrants to the United States, and also targets of migration control. We discuss migrants’ ambitions, the intersections of licit and illicit work, and the policing of prostitution and pimping in the early twentieth century.

Elisa Camiscioli is Associate Professor of History at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Her new book, Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migrations, has been published by Cambridge University Press in 2024. An article drawn from the book won the Berkshire Prize for best article in the history of women, genders, and sexualities, as well as the Koren Prize for most outstanding article in any period of French history. She is also the author of Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and National Identity in the Early Twentieth Century (Duke UP, 2009).