This chapter reveals how ideological notions of French decadence, US sexual restraint, and Cuban moral regeneration shaped immigration law and anti-trafficking protocols. Undercover investigations and social scientific studies discovered a flood of European women, especially from France, migrating for work in prostitution. The same studies described the erotic cachet afforded to Frenchness, the global marketing of vice, and what exactly French women offered for sale. According to US and Cuban reformers, a debased European morality promoted these “undesirable” migrations. This premise bolstered exclusionary legislation passed in both countries, barring suspected prostitutes from crossing the border, along with traffickers and pimps. Thus the desire for undesirable women – and not the protection of trafficking victims – motivated immigration reform.

This chapter turns to the legendary “Road to Buenos Aires,” which was widely considered the most significant trafficking route of the era. This case study illustrates how both coercion and choice functioned in the discourse and practice of migratory prostitution. When French women made official statements to the police, they strategically employed themes common to the trafficking narrative, including coercion, victimhood, and abuse. Their personal correspondence with family, in contrast, expresses how moments of both exploitation and agency punctuated their lives. Letters describe tender ties with mothers, sisters, and goddaughters; how poverty and unhappiness marked their existence in France; the everyday trials of poor migrants abroad; and expressions of wonder at the first ocean crossing. The lives of French women oscillated between moments of profound vulnerability and perceived opportunity, as reflected in their experiences of migrating and selling sex.