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16 - Sex Trafficking in the Modern World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2024

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Mathew Kuefler
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
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Summary

Human trafficking is a juridical concept invented in the nineteenth century that reappeared in the late twentieth century. The concept was created amid discussions about policing of national borders and reflected panics concerning the ideal of feminine purity, when women were seen in the discourse of the time as needing protection. In this chapter we will show how discourse in support of combating human trafficking for sexual exploitation has used ideas about gender and raciality to justify policies to contain migration. The twentieth century was marked by conquests of women”s rights, and white women are no longer seen as being in need of protection as were those of the nineteenth century. However, attributes that are both accusatory and victimizing still weigh on non-white women, especially when they are involved in sex work across national borders. In these terms, there is no space for women understood as victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation to be able to affirm their labour demands based on their own understandings about what constitutes sex work, violence, and exploitation.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Agustín, Laura. Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry. London: Zed Books, 2007.Google Scholar
Anderson, Bridget. Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Bernstein, Elizabeth. ‘Militarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism: The Politics of Sex, Rights, and Freedom in Contemporary Anti-Trafficking Campaigns’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 36, no. 1 (2010): 45–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bumiller, Kristin. In an Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated the Feminist Movement against Sexual Violence. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
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