Laura María Agustín

Laura María Agustín is an anthropologist who studies illegal migration, informal labor markets, trafficking, and the sex industry. Blogging and speaking publicly as the Naked Anthropologist, she is critical of the conflation of the terms "human trafficking" and "prostitution". She argues that what she calls the "rescue industry" often ascribes victim status to people (most often women) who have made conscious and rational decisions to migrate knowing they will be selling sex, and who do not consider themselves to be victims. She states that such views on prostitution originate in what she calls "fundamentalist feminism". She advocates for a cultural study of commercial sex, a theoretical framework she created in the journal Sexualities in 2005.

Agustín carried out research on migration and sex work on the Mexico-United States border, in the Caribbean, in South America, and in several European countries.

Agustín publishes in Spanish, English, and Swedish. In 2010, she was visiting professor in Gender and Migration in the Swiss university system, based at the University of Neuchatel, and participated in the Battle of Ideas in London.