Prostitution & Trafficking

This paper explores changes in the emotional and affective repertoires mobilized by the Northern League, a radical right-wing populist party in Italy, to justify its recent prostitution policy proposal. Having dispensed to alarge extent with the punitive and fearful rhetoric against migrant prostitution that characterized its previous campaigns, under its new leader the Northern League has been calling for the regulation of prostitution and for its profitable taxation. The measures proposed, far from being non-moralistic and ideologically neutral, as they are presented, reinforce awell-established normative dichotomy between potentially dangerous individuals and the supposedly wholesome family.

Prostitution has been a major cause of concern for many centuries. It is a global phenomenon, which has become a burden on governments, human rights organizations and societies in general. This study is an attempt to analyze the regimes by which sex work is regulated in different countries and in different States within Mexico. For the particular case of Mexico, commercial sex work or prostitution exists legally but it is a phenomenon with many stereotypes that very few really acknowledge or understand. After putting into context what is commercial sex work, different legal frameworks will be analyzed; this research will conclude with a series of recommendations to raise the awareness of local authorities, NGO’s and other stakeholders for them to consider a reform to the current regulations in Tijuana, Mexico.

INTRODUCCIÓN Carmen Orte, Lluís Ballester y Rosario Pozo
BLOQUE I: PROCESOS MIGRATORIOS Y TRATA CON FINES DE EXPLOTACIÓN SEXUAL
1.1 Circulación migratoria rumana y redes para la prostitución. José López Riopedre, UNED.
1.2 Trata con fines de explotación sexual y asilo: la devolución de las víctimas en riesgo de sufrir persecución como máxima expresión de su situación de desprotección. Valentina Milano, Universitat de les Illes Balears.
1.3 ¿Más daño que beneficio? Explotación y abuso experimentados por las trabajadoras del sexo tanto nativas como migrantes. Dra. Tara Warden,Trabajando con MuJER, Mujeres por la Justicia, Educación y el Reconocimiento, Guatemala; Y Universidad de Stirling, Escocia.
1.4 Explotación Sexual Comercial de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes.
Beatriz Benavente. Fundación RANA. Lluís Ballester. Departament de Pedagogia i Didàctiques Específiques, UIB. Noemí Pereda. Grup de Recerca en Victimització Infantil i Adolescent, UB. Jordi Pich, Departament de Psicologia, UIB.
1.5 Explotación sexual de menores en situación de vulnerabilidad social: aspectos específicos para la protección. Susana  Pulido Sancho y Antonio Rivas, Fundación Solidaria Amaranta en España.
BLOQUE II: MEDIATIZACIÓN E IMAGINARIOS SOCIOSEXUALES
2.1 La prostitución mediatizada. Continuidades y rupturas en la presentación pública del comercio sexual en Argentina. Carolina Justo von Lurzer. Consejo de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) – Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)
2.2 Publicidad y trata con fines de explotación sexual. De las paradojas discursivas a la asunción de corresponsabilidades. Alvarado López, Maria Cruz. Universidad de Valladolid; Saiz Echezarreta, Vanesa. Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha; Fernández Romero, Diana. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.
2.3 Guías periodísticas, prostitución e incidencia política: hacia una mediación responsable de las controversias. Vanesa Saiz Echezarreta y Elena Martínez-Pérez, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
2.4 Prácticas periodísticas e imaginarios socioafectivos: comunicadores ante la información sobre prostitución y trata. Diana Fernández Romero (URJC), Vanesa Saiz Echezarreta (UCLM), Maricruz Alvarado (UVA)
BLOQUE III: TICS,  JÓVENES Y CONSUMO DE PROSTITUCIÓN
3.1 ¿Por qué los hombres consumen prostitución?: representaciones sociales sobre la demanda. Andrea Gutiérrez, Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca.
3.2 El imaginario de los prostituidores: «la burbuja del coño». Análisis crítico de foros de internet en España y Reino Unido. Lorena Añón Loureiro. Escuela Universitaria de Trabajo Social, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. Natalia Rivas-Quarneti. Facultad Ciencias de la Salud, Universidade da Coruña y Honorary Lecturer, Brunel University London.
3.3 Nueva pornografía y cambios en las relaciones interpersonales de adolescentes y jóvenes. Lluis Ballester, Carmen Orte y Rosario Pozo Gordaliza (GIFES-UIB) Universitat de les Illes Balears.

The US TIP Report frames Jamaica as having a problem with 'human trafficking' and 'child sex tourism'. This paper presents preliminary findings from our mixed methods research on Jamaicans' experience of working in the sex trade and in the formal and informal tourism economy. In brief, though our sex worker research participants routinely face violence in the course of their work, they were not driven into sex work and are not prevented from exiting it by 'human traffickers', but rather by economic need and, in the case of male and trans sex workers, by anti-gay prejudice. Our participants view the criminalisation of sex work and of homosexuality as far more urgent and significant threats to their safety and well-being than 'human trafficking'. Criminalisation and marginalisation were also pressing concerns for our non-sex-worker interviewees, and the paper uses these data to critically interrogate the lines that are drawn between work, slavery, and freedom in this dominant, Global North discourse.

Ce rapport de recherche vise à évaluer les besoins locaux d’intervention pour mieux répondre aux besoins multiples des femmes ayant un vécu dans la prostitution. Les objectifs sont : 1. fournir une évaluation des besoins locaux d’intervention; 2. développer des recommandations pour de meilleures pratiques dans le but de mieux répondre aux besoins des femmes ayant un vécu dans la prostitution et 3. permettre aux acteurs-clés de cerner les lacunes et priorités en lien avec la prostitution des femmes sur le territoire de Ville de Saguenay et de la MRC du Fjord du Saguenay. Trois groupes de participants ont été sollicités pour collaborer à l’étude : les intervenants provenant d’organismes sur le territoire ciblé, des femmes ayant un vécu en lien avec la prostitution et des intervenants provenant d’organismes à l’extérieur de la région.

El presente estudio busca comprender el papel de la música como herramienta de inclusión social en un colectivo de mujeres inmigrantes que ejercen la prostitución en la ciudad de Barcelona, España. Desde una mirada sociocrítica y utilizando la metodología de diagnóstico participativo con enfoque etnográfico, participamos activamente en ensayos y conciertos de un coro llamado Dona Góspel para recoger evidencias sobre los beneficios, tanto individuales como colectivos, que brinda el desarrollo de una actividad musical en conjunto.

The present study aims to understand the role of music as a tool for social inclusion in a group of immigrant women working as prostitutes. From a socio-critical perspective and using the participatory diagnostic methodology with an ethnographic approach, we actively participate in rehearsals and concerts of the Dona Gospel choir to collect evidence on their individual and collective benefits from the development of a group musical activity.

Sex work was not a prominent public issue in the USA a generation ago. Law and law enforcement were fairly settled. Over the past two decades, however, a robust campaign has sought to intensify the stigmatization and criminalization of the participants involved in all types of sex work, which are now conflated with human trafficking. These efforts have been remarkably successful in reshaping government policy and legal norms and in enhancing penalties for existing offenses. The article analyzes these developments within the framework of a modernized version of moral crusade theory that includes both instrumental and expressive arguments against sex work.

This article takes a historical approach to what we now call sex trafficking, exploring its roots in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debates on “white slavery” and “the traffic in women”. Using digitized genealogical records along with French consular records from the United States, Argentina, and Uruguay — three important receiver nations of immigrants at this time — it examines how alleged cases of trafficking might be reframed as gendered migration histories. In particular, it shows how discussions surrounding the deportation and repatriation of foreign women involved in prostitution unearthed a number of enduring questions about sex work and trafficking: How do we distinguish between forced and free migrations? Is victimhood a necessary condition for receiving social assistance? Can humanitarian interventions, in the name of rescue and rehabilitation, enable restrictive or even punitive measures? In sum, a critical reading of historical documents points to women’s lives as laborers and migrants more than as trafficking victims.

Prostitution, sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation are important contemporary crime challenges, exacerbated by globalisation, migration and economic disparity. They have been enabled and amplified by recent technological advance, and yet are rooted in the earliest histories of human civilisation. The post-Marxian theorists of the Frankfurt school heavily influenced intellectual thought throughout the 20th century. Their critical theory is lauded a cornerstone of emancipatory social reconstruction, challenging the hegemony and normative values of the patriarchal, Judeo-Christian west. Critical theory provides useful lenses through which to view and dissect criminological challenges (van Swaaningen, 1997, pp. 74-107), be that through traditional Marxian theories of religion, economics and class to contemporary feminism, post-colonialism, gender and identity politics. In examining the utility of critical theory, the illegal sex industry is discussed thematically using five categories. The first category considers the role of sex workers, with agency, autonomy and informed choice (Grant, 2014, pp. 13-25). The second considers dependence factors such as drug and alcohol addiction, pimps and economic coercion, poverty and the grotesqueness of ‘sex for aid’ (Landale and O’Dowd, 2018). The third considers trafficking and sexual enslavement (Sanghera, 2016), the import/export business of female exploitation. The fourth considers sexual tourism and the virginity trade (Haworth, 2014). The fifth considers the role of critical theory in constructing the threat, exploring its potential complicity in overturning moral, religious, family and other foundational social norms. The role of the ‘rescue industry’ is examined and the paradoxes of emancipation explored from different viewpoints.

“Your interjections do inspire,” he said. “It’s the paradox of prostitution that man lets some women have a free reign on sex so as to rein in the promiscuity in the rest of them. So, won’t the least sought-after of the whores outscore all the Casanovas of the world put together; well, that’s in the lighter vein, but it was that experience which made me realize that it was stupid to generalize the sex-workers; the harlots in the hell-holes of cities’ red-light districts are a pitiable lot of gullible girls and hapless women forced to cater to the ever growing demand for paid sex there. But thanks to the limited clientele in towns, the whores there can stave off the debilitating sexual burden their ilk in the cities have to bear, yet it’s  the so-called call-girls that call the shots, more so, in metros; so all of them, being in the same calling are not on the same footing. If the vicissitudes of life push women into the vice-like grip of madam-pimp-police nexus of the flesh trade, then it’s the outcries of the moralists against legalizing prostitution that ensure their sexual slavery in abominable conditions; maybe, if only paid sex were to have a legal tag, then surely it would entail as fair deal as possible for these hapless women.”
“I hear it’s much worse in the U.S, where the pimps treat the prostitutes as vassals and abuse them in unimaginable ways.”

La presente ponencia describe algunos aspectos del proyecto migratorio que involucra a las travestis y trans sudamericanas residentes en el AMBA (Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires) en la actualidad. De manera específica, se caracteriza el modo de migrar de este colectivo atendiendo particularmente los vínculos que estas migrantes mantienen con las “madrinas”. De este modo, las “madrinas” representan un actor social fundamental en el proyecto migratorio de las travestis y trans porque incorporan las pautas culturales de los nativos y posibilitan llevar a cabo un proceso de socialización que les permiten, a estas personas, insertarse en la sociedad receptora. De este modo, la prostitución ocupa un lugar primordial en las trayectorias de vida de las personas travestis y trans sudamericanas y en base a esto, se estructuran las relaciones con los clientes, las fuerzas de seguridad y las travestis nativas. Las relaciones sociales entre las madrinas y las travestis y trans sudamericanas exceden al proxenetismo y la explotación sexual. Si bien, estos factores se encuentran presentes, se entablan relaciones de poder, protección y asistencia que contribuyen a la incorporación de normas y valores culturales necesarios para transitar y consolidar el proyecto migratorio.

This article employs police investigations of the "traffic in women" between France and Argentina in the first three decades of the twentieth century to highlight the multiple narratives in play when contemporaries talked about trafficking and relayed their experiences of it. While the dominant narrative of "white slavery" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries emphasized coercion, sexual exploitation, and victimization, many young working-class women described the journey to Argentina in terms of perceived opportunity, whether for money, travel, or freedom. This is not to downplay the social and economic vulnerability of these women and the precarious lives they led in French and Argentine cities. Instead, the article emphasizes the inadequacy of many existing frameworks for discussing sex trafficking, and prostitution more generally, as they rely too heavily on a stark division between coercion and choice.

A critical analysis of the framing of human trafficking in Danish media.

The media cover human trafficking more than they used to, not least focusing on migration-politics and borders, rather than prostitution. Yet, problematic practices persist though, not least in the differing approaches to gender.
In recent decades, news media all over the world have increasingly covered the issue of human trafficking. Human trafficking is a notoriously complex subject involving migration, border politics, gender, consent, agency and morality. Yet, simplistic ideas and framings of human trafficking often end up shaping broader understandings of human trafficking in policy and the public sphere.

This report is written by DIIS Senior Researcher Sine Plambech and journalist Maria Brus Pedersen. The aim is not only to provide insights into the framing of human trafficking in the Danish media, but furthermore to serve as a learning tool for journalists covering human trafficking. An analysis of this type has not been undertaken in Denmark before and thus provides the reader with new insights into the evolution of how the Danish media framed human trafficking from 2010 to 2019.



The report has three main findings:
First, the framing of human trafficking in the Danish media has changed significantly over the past decade, from mainly covering human trafficking solely as a matter of prostitution and a human rights issue for women in 2010 to becoming an issue of migration with security and legal implications in 2019. As such there has been a development away from a focus on women’s ‘bodies’ to a focus on ‘borders’ and migration politics.


Secondly, in comparison to 2010, today the media more commonly describe the trafficking of men to forced labor and human trafficking generally to other sectors than prostitution. Yet, the framing continues to be significantly gendered. Though identified victims of trafficking in Denmark are most usually migrants, the men are framed primarily as migrant workers in exploitative situations, whereas the women are described as victims of trafficking. This gendered framing derives primarily from the perspective that prostitution is victimizing by default and is not seen as a kind of work.


Thirdly, despite the more nuanced framing, a simplistic sensationalist language still risks dehumanizing and overshadowing the complexity of human trafficking. In particular, this is because it is the media, rather than those who have been identified as victims of trafficking, who use these terms to describe their situation, as some of the journalists also confirmed.


The report has a number of suggestions for journalists covering issues of human trafficking, some of them being;
Be cautious with language. There is often a difference between the language used by politicians and NGOs and the language used by migrant workers to describe their situations. Sensationalist language like ‘prostitutes’, ‘sex slaves’ and ‘meat markets’ are loaded terms that contribute to marginalization and stigmatization.

Migrant workers are not only victims of trafficking, they have agency in respect of their own migration trajectories: the one does not exclude the other.

Human trafficking can be used as a yardstick for many different political agendas: consider which agendas you might be contributing to.

Consider using counter narratives, activist reporting and investigative journalism as these approaches contribute to expanding our understanding of human trafficking.


This report is published by DIIS · Danish Institute for International Studies with funding from the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS), in partnership with the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This study sought to understand differences in risks of indoor versus outdoor sex work and how perceptions of risk influenced sex work- ers’ motivation to exit. Among the 19 indoor and outdoor sex work- ers included in this qualitative study, themes of risks included: violence versus death, discovery, romantic relationships, arrest, health risks, loss, and “the unknown”. Results of this study show that sex workers have a nuanced perception of risks and exiting motivations dependent upon the sex trade market. These results offer sugges- tions for policy and intervention practices uniquely tailored for indoor and outdoor sex workers.

Exiting prostitution is a process for which we have little empirical understanding. This study provides evidence of a process-oriented theory of intentions to exit prostitution that operationalizes key aspects of exiting. Interviews from 16 persons formerly and actively selling sex helped define intentions to exit as a combination of glamorization and risk-recognition attitudes, stigma from significant others, one’s own resilient self-efficacy beliefs, and agency. Findings contribute to our understanding of the cognitive changes that occur when a person decides to leave prostitution, which can be used to inform a readiness to exit assessment and interventions that increase intentions to exit.

Pimps quit their illicit work in sex markets for many reasons, such as
job dissatisfaction, having a child, going to prison, and feeling guilty.
In this study, we used a mixed methods approach to explore pimps’
interdiscursive reasons for quitting. Our analytic sample focuses on
43 self-identified former pimps, who were interviewed in situ in
housing projects in Harlem, New York. Based on existing desistance
research, we hypothesize that pimps would express external or internal
themes of quitting. External reasons involve changes due to the
environment, (e.g., job dangerousness), events (e.g., going to prison)
or opportunities (e.g., getting a legitimate job). Internal reasons
center on change from within, such as in their morality. First, we
qualitatively identify these themes and how they are connected
within the accounts. Many accounts are interdiscursive, i.e., with
multiple themes or some themes occurring across categories, such
as having children and moral reasons. Second, we use non-metric,
Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) to triangulate and systematically
assess our qualitative findings. We find adequate support for this
External to Internal typology, with 67.5% of the cases being classified
as dominantly within one theme. Using non-metric MDS is a novel
method to triangulate this type of qualitative data.