Helping individuals in the sex trade during COVID-19: The perspectives of Israeli aid organizations.

This research study is informed by anticarceral feminism to understand and highlight the experiences of violence and oppression that individuals in the sex trade experience as a result of police stings, raids, and incarceration. We present findings from 23 in-depth, qualitative interviews with men, women, and trans individuals who were arrested in the Los Angeles sex trade. More specifically, we explore experiences of violence that occurred interpersonally, systemically, and institutionally. Such experiences examine police violence, arrest and incarceration, coercion, and client violence. The findings from this research shed light on the impact the criminalization of sex work has had on research participants in terms of their physical health and mental health, economic security and opportunities for growth and education, and their sense of freedom and autonomy. We also attend to the role that intersecting identities might have played during their encounters with the police. This study explored these aspects while being mindful that the policies and procedures followed by the police are born out of a carceral state. We conclude with antioppressive and antiviolent implications for social work practice, policy, research, and education as we imagine the next decade of social work in relation to sex trade.

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‘Reflexivities of discomfort’: Researching the sex trade and sex trafficking in Ireland

European Journal of Women s Studies ◽

10.1177/1350506813518759 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 21 (3) ◽

pp. 251-263 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Eilís Ward ◽

Gillian Wylie

Keyword(s):

Sex Trafficking ◽

Sex Trade

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Gender, equality and the sex trade

Women s Studies International Forum ◽

10.1016/j.wsif.2021.102532 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 89 ◽

pp. 102532

Author(s):

Sara Cantillon ◽

Monica O'Connor

Keyword(s):

Gender Equality ◽

Sex Trade

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Unsettling Memories of Japanese Migrant Sex Workers: Carceral Mobilities of the Transpacific Underground at the Turn of the 20th Century

TOPIA Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies ◽

10.3138/topia-43-003 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 43 ◽

pp. 24-43

Author(s):

Ayaka Yoshimizu

Keyword(s):

Human Trafficking ◽

20Th Century ◽

Sex Workers ◽

Women's Movements ◽

Japanese Language ◽

Sex Trade ◽

The Pacific ◽

History Of

Between 1908 and 1909 and in 1912, Vancouver-based journalist Shohei Osada published a two-part series entitled “Exploration of Devil Caves” in a local Japanese language newspaper, detailing the lives of Japanese migrants involved in the sex trade in Canada. The series showcases the presence of underground networks that extended across the continent and the Pacific, or what I call the “transpacific underground.” Many characters in Osada’s series are transient migrants, who did not settle in any one specific nation but continued moving on across multiple borders seeking new opportunities, or sometimes, last resort for survival. By reading Osada’s writing closely, this article develops the notion of the transpacific underground as method to engage the history of migrant sex workers and understand it from a carceral space of migration regulated by multiple imperial and colonial forces, gendered nationalist ideologies, and human trafficking, making migrant women’s movements forced but also transgressive and open-ended.

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Survivor or Laborer

Affilia ◽

10.1177/0886109918778075 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 33 (4) ◽

pp. 453-476 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Theresa Anasti

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Human Service ◽

Qualitative Interviews ◽

Human Service Organizations ◽

Risky Behaviors ◽

The United States ◽

Service Organizations ◽

Future Research ◽

Sex Trade ◽

Sex Worker

Regardless of primary population served, human service organizations are likely to come into contact with individuals who have been currently or formerly involved in the sex trade. In the United States, social workers have had a fraught history with this population, either treating them like delinquents or like victims in need of rescue. Sex worker activists in the United States continue to decry the negative treatment provided by individuals in the helping professions, even as harm reduction, the practice of reducing the harm of risky behaviors, has entered the service provision lexicon as an antidote to abstinence-only services. This article uses qualitative interviews with managers of human service organizations in the city of Chicago to determine how they think about their work with sex workers and how they perceive the proposed solutions to “fixing” the sex trade: abolitionism and decriminalization. Findings show that despite the dominant discourse of abolitionism in the United States, most of managers in this project believe full decriminalization of sex work will best assist their sex worker clients. Future research needs to understand how this finding holds in different settings and how this affects current efforts to advocate for decriminalization.

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