Conflict and Agency among Sex Workers and Pimps

2014 ◽  
Vol 653 (1) ◽  
pp. 225-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Marcus ◽  
Amber Horning ◽  
Ric Curtis ◽  
Jo Sanson ◽  
Efram Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
The United States ◽  
Child Sex Trafficking ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Effective Policy ◽  
The Relationship

The dominant understanding in the United States of the relationship between pimps and minors involved in commercial sex is that it is one of “child sex trafficking,” in which pimps lure girls into prostitution, then control, exploit, and brutalize them. Such narratives of oppression typically depend on postarrest testimonials by former prostitutes and pimps in punishment and rescue institutions. In contrast, this article presents data collected from active pimps, underage prostitutes, and young adult sex workers to demonstrate the complexity of pimp-prostitute dyads and interrogate conventional stereotypes about teenage prostitution. A holistic understanding of the factors that push minors into sex work and keep them there is needed to designand implement effective policy and services for this population.

scholarly journals The New Virtual Crackdown on Sex Workers’ Rights: Perspectives from the United States

2019 ◽  
pp. 189-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghan Peterson ◽  
Bella Robinson ◽  
Elena Shih
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Online Advertising ◽  
The United States ◽  
Safety Practices ◽  
Consensual Sex ◽  
Trafficking Victims ◽  
Share Information

On 11 April 2018, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) was signed into law in the United States. FOSTA introduced new provisions to amend the Communications Act of 1934 so that websites can be prosecuted if they engage ‘in the promotion or facilitation of prostitution’ or ‘facilitate traffickers in advertising the sale of unlawful sex acts with sex trafficking victims.’ While supporters of the law claim that its aim is to target human traffickers, its text makes no effort to differentiate between trafficking and consensual sex work and it functionally includes websites where workers advertise services or share information, including safety tips.[3] Following the law’s passage—and even before its full implementation—sex workers felt its impact as websites began to eliminate platforms previously used to advertise services. Backpage, an adult advertising website, was pre-emptively seized by the FBI. Other platforms began to censor or remove content related to sex work, including Google, Craigslist, and many online advertising networks. Sex workers in the United States have denounced the passage of FOSTA for reducing workers’ ability to screen clients and ensure safety practices. This paper provides an overview of the findings of a recent survey with sex workers in the United States, details the advent of similar initiatives in other countries, and explores how the legislation conflates trafficking with consensual sex work.

scholarly journals Economic Production and Biodiversity in the United States

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuanning Liang ◽  
Ivan Rudik ◽  
Eric Yongchen Zou
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
Distinct Species ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Output ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Economic Production ◽  
Effective Policy ◽  
Local Ecosystem ◽  
The Relationship

Species extinctions and ecological degradation are accelerating to a degree unprecedented in human history. Despite such trends, causal evidence for economic drivers of biodiversity loss and effective policy responses remains sparse. Here we study the relationship between economic production and biodiversity using a novel panel dataset that contains detailed and consistently reported information on the types and quantities of wildlife at thousands of locations across the United States between 1960 and 2015. Our research design exploits well- understood sources of change to local economic output – including those induced by fiscal shocks and environmental regulations – to identify how local economic production affects biodiversity outcomes. We find that economic production re- duces the total abundance of wildlife, reduces the count of distinct species, and changes the composition of species in a local ecosystem even holding the number of species constant. Our findings point toward environmental degradation as a potential culprit in the decline of biodiversity. We show that the adverse effect of economic production is mitigated by conservation, and by advances in emission abatement technologies that were spurred by stricter pollution regulations.

Shaping Laws

2020 ◽  
pp. 140-160
Author(s):  
Caty Borum Chattoo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
The United States ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Narrative Approaches ◽  
The Public ◽  
Child Sex Trafficking

Opening with The Invisible War, a majordocumentary that engaged the public and policymakers in the United States, this chapter argues that contemporary documentaries play a unique role in public policy due to their narrative approaches—human-centered narratives that expand beyond facts and statistics and ideological sides—and the collaborative, cultural nature of the policymaking process. Documentary films can also expose social problems relegated to obscurity, or new on the cultural horizon—documentary’s monitorial function. This chapter delves into the complexities of documentary films that successfully shaped US laws through filmmakers working with legislators, policy experts, and issue advocates, forming “policy subnetworks.” The film case studies here include Sin by Silence, which changed California state law focused on incarcerated survivors of domestic violence; Semper Fi, the environmental justice story that sparked a new federal law; and Playground, an investigation of child sex trafficking in the United States that helped to shape federal and state-based laws.

Anti-trafficking saviors: Celebrity, slavery, and branded activism

2021 ◽  
pp. 174165902110078
Author(s):  
Robert Heynen ◽  
Emily van der Meulen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Media Campaigns ◽  
Policy Interventions ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Modern Day Slavery

This article traces the development of popular forms of anti-trafficking activism in the United States through a social network and discourse analysis that focuses on NGO websites, celebrity advocacy, merchandising, social media campaigns, and policy interventions. This “branded activism,” as we describe it, plays an important role in legitimizing an emerging anti-trafficking consensus that increasingly shapes both US foreign policy and domestic policing, and is frequently driven by an anti-sex work politics. Popular anti-trafficking discourses, we find, build on melodramatic narratives of victims and (white) saviors, depoliticize the complex labor and migration issues at stake, reinforce capitalist logics, and enable policy interventions that produce harm for migrants, sex workers, and others ostensibly being “rescued.” Celebrity and marketing-driven branded activism relies especially strongly on parallels drawn between histories of chattel slavery and what anti-trafficking campaigns call “modern-day slavery.” We challenge these parallels, particularly as they encourage participants to see themselves as abolitionist saviors in ways that reinforce neo-liberal notions of empowerment rooted in communicative capitalist networks.

scholarly journals At the Intersection of COVID-19 and Sex Work in the United States: A Call for Social Work Action

Affilia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 088610992098513
Author(s):  
Nicole F. Bromfield ◽  
Meg Panichelli ◽  
Moshoula Capous-Desyllas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Action ◽  
Sex Trade ◽  
The Impact

The emergence of COVID-19 in the United States in early 2020 has severely disrupted the lives of most Americans, and people engaged in sex trade are no exception. People in sex work encounter multiple challenges when trying to access the services they need, particularly as they fear arrest, stigma, and pathology related to their work. These barriers have been amplified during the global COVID-19 pandemic, as sex trade workers may further lack access to crucially needed health care and may not have a mechanism for generating a basic income to meet their daily survival needs. Using an intersectional feminist lens, in this article, we discuss the impact of COVID-19 on people in sex work while highlighting sex workers’ resiliency and community action in the face of the pandemic. We highlight empowerment work led by black and brown sex worker communities. As authors and advocates, we call for critical feminist social work action that situates social workers as advocates for the human rights, well-being, and health of individuals in sex work, with a focus on centering the voices of those with lived experience and a focus on harm reduction, during and in the lingering aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Risk Factors for Domestic Child Sex Trafficking in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (13) ◽  
pp. 2653-2673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Fedina ◽  
Celia Williamson ◽  
Tasha Perdue
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Risk Factors ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
The United States ◽  
Child Sex Trafficking

Feminisms, Prostitution, and the Sex Trafficking Debates

2019 ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Mary White Stewart
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Advocacy Groups ◽  
Popular Discourse ◽  
Contentious Issue ◽  
Legal Prostitution

Chapter 3 addresses the confusing, conflicting, and comingled landscape of sex work research, literature, and popular discourse. First, the authors address the deep divide amongst feminists about prostitution. Long a contentious issue for feminists, we review arguments that all prostitution is violence against women and arguments that prostitution is a viable, potentially empowering occupation. The authors sort through dichotomous positions about whether or not prostitution should be abolished or legalized. Next, they address the controversy between prostitution and trafficking. Currently, the United States is experiencing a moral panic about sex trafficking. An unlikely coalition between scholars and advocacy groups from radical feminism and the Christian right argue that all prostitution is trafficking. The purpose in this chapter is to untangle this conflation. Finally, the authors situate legal prostitution as different from illegal prostitution and legal prostitution in international contexts.

Sex Trafficking and Forced Sex Work Amongst Girls and Women in Namibia

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-88
Author(s):  
Igor Pashkovskiy ◽  
Suzanne LaFont ◽  
Ryan Chaney
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Rural Women ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Department ◽  
Tier 2 ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
Tourist Destinations

The main objective of this chapter is to examine sex trafficking amongst girls and women in Namibia. In 2019 the United States Department of State deemed Namibia a Tier 2 country in terms of its effort to fight trafficking. Thus, while Namibia is not considered a nation where the massive expoitation of girls and women for international sex trafficking occurs, there is research indicating that there is significant intranational sex trafficking. Impoverished rural women and girls, often from ethnic minorities, are coerced or forced to move to border towns, urban areas, and tourist destinations to engage in sex work. This form of trafficking is frequently under-reported, if reported at all. The material presented in this chapter is based on research from recent reports regarding the situation. This information will be augmented with data and excerpts from transcribed interviews conducted in 2013 with 73 self-identified sex workers and ex-sex workers, many of whom were forced to relocate for the purpose of engaging in sex work.

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