The starting point for this book is the question of how we research sex for sale and the implications of the choices we make in terms of epistemology and ethics. Which dilemmas and ethical aspects need to be taken into account when producing qualitative data within a highly politicised and moral-infected realm? These two questions are exactly what Spanger and Skilbrei aim to unpack in this unusual interdisciplinary methodology book, Prostitution Research in Context. The book offers contributions from a number of scholars who, based on their reflections on their own research practice and the existing knowledge field, discuss ongoing methodological issues and challenges representative of international research on sex for sale. Some chapters deal explicitly with methodological dilemmas in research; others thematise the encounter between prostitution research and general texts on epistemology. Other chapters again actively engage with the ethical dilemmas that research on the topic of sex for sale can entail. The authors represent different disciplines, but share an interest in engaging in reflexive research practices informed by feminism and feminist epistemologies. An authoritative contribution to the field, this innovative volume will appeal to international scholars and students from across the social sciences and humanities in areas such as sociology, anthropology, criminology, media studies, feminist studies, human geography and history.

Public discourses around migrant sex workers are often more confident about what migrant sex workers signify morally but are less clear about who the 'migrant' is. Based on interviews with immigrant, migrant and racialized sex workers in Vancouver, Canada and Melbourne, Australia, Sex Work, Immigration and Social Difference challenges the 'migrant sex worker' category by investigating the experiences of women who are often assumed to be 'migrant sex workers' in Australia and Canada. Many 'migrant sex workers' in Melbourne and Vancouver are in fact, naturalized citizens or permanent residents, whose involvement in the sex industry intersects with diverse ideas and experiences of citizenship in Australia and Canada. This book examines how immigrant, migrant and racialized sex workers in Vancouver and Melbourne wield or negotiate ideas of illegality and legality to obtain desired outcomes in their day-to-day work. Sex work continues to be the subject of fierce debate in the public sphere, at the policy level, and within research discourses. This study interrogates these perceptions of the 'migrant sex worker' by presenting the lived realities of women who embody or experience dimensions of this category. This book is interdisciplinary and will appeal to those engaged in criminology, sociology, law, and women's studies.

Prior research has tended to mirror popular representations of the female sex worker as a morally flawed individual and a victim of circumstances beyond her control. Sex Work and Female Self-Empowerment presents a fresh perspective on "the world's oldest profession" by considering the relationship between sex work and female self-empowerment from a variety of disciplinary and practical perspectives and presenting new data derived from the author's study of six self-employed indoor female sex workers (IFSWs). Informed by the author's training in clinical psychology and human sexuality studies and her more than fifteen years of involvement in the sex work profession, this book extends beyond social stereotyping and stigmatization and presents a more balanced view of the identities and aspirations of sex workers in contemporary society.

In an attempt to abolish prostitution, Sweden criminalised the purchase of sex in 1999, while simultaneously decriminalising its sale. In so doing, it set itself apart from other European states, promoting itself as the pioneer of a radical approach to prostitution. What has come to be referred to as 'the Swedish model' has been enormously influential, and has since been adopted and proposed by other countries. This book establishes the outcomes of this law - and the law's justifying narratives - for the dynamics of Swedish sex work, and upon the lives of sex workers. Drawing on recent fieldwork undertaken in Sweden over several years, including qualitative interviewing and participant observation, Jay Levy argues that far from being a law to be emulated, the Swedish model has had many detrimental impacts, and has failed to demonstrably decrease levels of prostitution. Criminalising the Purchase of Sex: Lessons from Sweden utilises a wealth of respondent testimony and secondary research to redress the current lack of primary academic research and to contribute to academic discussion on this politically-charged and internationally relevant topic. This original and timely work will be of interest to sex worker rights organisations, policy makers and politicians, as well as researchers, academics and students across a number of related disciplines, including law, sociology, criminology, human geography and gender studies.

Attwood examines Victorian attitudes to prostitution across a number of sources: medical, literary, pornographic.

The eighteenth century saw profound changes in the way prostitution was represented in literary and visual culture. This collection of essays focuses on the variety of ways that the sex trade was represented in popular culture of the time, across different art forms and highlighting contradictory interpretations.

The Subject of Prostitution offers a distinctive analysis of the links between prostitution and social theory in order to advance a critical analysis of the relationship of law to sex work. Using the lens of social theory to disrupt fixed meanings the book provides an advanced analytical framework through which to understand the complexity and contingencies of sex work in late modernity. The book analyses contemporary citizenship discourse and the law's ability to meet the competing demands of empowerment by sex workers and protection by radical feminists who view prostitution as the epitome of patriarchal sexual and economic relations. Its central focus is the role of law in both structuring and responding to the 'problem of prostitution'. By developing a distinctive constitutive approach to law, the author offers a more advanced analytical framework from which to understand how law matters in contemporary debates and also suggests how law could matter in more imaginative justice reforms. This is particularly pertinent in a period of unprecedented legal reform, both internationally and nationally, as legal norms simultaneously attempt to protect, empower and criminalise parties involved in the purchase of sexual services. The Subject of Prostitution aims to overcome the current aporia in these debates and suggest new ways to engage with the subject and law. As such, The Subject of Prostitution provides an advanced theoretical resource for policymakers, researchers and activists involved in contemporary struggles over the meanings and place of sex work in late modernity.

In the last third of the eighteenth-century, Bristol and Nantes were two of the most active commercial ports of England and France, despite a slowdown of their economy. Their economies were based primarily on the maritime trade, but they developed alongside Atlantic industries that attracted many migrants, both male and female, from the surrounding countryside and from abroad. The busy urban environment, the high number of sailors and single men migrating to the port, and the decline of female house based proto-industries, were factors encouraging the development of prostitution. How prostitution is perceived in the context of social control and urban change is key to understanding the evolving attitudes to gender and sexuality in the eighteenth century. In this comparative study, Marion Pluskota offers an analysis of the lives of prostitutes that looks beyond a purely criminal perspective, and which encompasses their roles within their families, relationships and social networks. Using police and judicial records, she provides a valuable corrective to the narrow analysis of prostitutes in terms of immorality or deviance. The unique forms of development and problems faced by port cities in the early modern period make them particularly interesting subjects for comparative history. This book is well suited for those who study social history, gender and women's history.

Winner of the British Society of Criminology Annual Book Prize 2022. As the labour market continues to exploit workers by offering precarious, low-paid and temporary jobs, for some duality offers much-needed flexibility and staves off poverty. Based on extensive empirical work, this book illustrates contemporary accounts of individuals taking extraordinary risks to hold jobs in both sex industries and non-sex work employment. It also opens a dialogue about how sex industries are stratified in the UK in terms of race and culture against the backdrop of Brexit. Debunking stereotypes of sex workers and challenging our stigmatisation of them, this book makes an invaluable contribution to discourses about work, society and future policy.

This book examines life trajectories among three categories of women living beyond the bounds of heteronormativity in Jakarta and Delhi, two major cities with substantively different religious and social values: women who have lost their husbands, either through divorce or death; sex workers; and young, urban lesbians. Delhi has a large Hindu majority and a sizeable Muslim minority, amongst other religious and cultural pluralities. The Indian state is constitutionally committed to secularism and equal respect to all regions despite right-wing Hindu fundamentalism. Jakarta is the capital of a sprawling archipelago with a large variety of ethnic cultures, Indonesia having the largest Muslim population of the world, as well as sizeable ethnic and religious minorities comprising Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and others. The Indonesian state is constitutionally secular, but religion plays a large role in public life and is embedded in regulations that strongly impact people's private lives. Recently, there have been strong political currents to impose stricter Islamic codes. The public arena of sexual politics, in which the media play an important role, is explored in both cities. Hot sex is a major media selling point, particularly in Indonesia. Heteronormativity entails a system of symbolic violence in the sense that it punishes those that it excludes and polices those that it includes; the ways its powers are subverted are likewise symbolic. Passionate aesthetics refers to the dynamics, motivations, codes of behavior and presentation, subjectivities and identities that together make up the complex workings of erotic attraction, sexual relations and partnerships patterns. By charting the lives of women who live beyond the boundaries of the heteronormative, commonalities are revealed; boundaries and regulatory mechanisms in the context of symbolic violence are delineated; and the issue of the struggle for sexual rights for marginalised groups, and their open rebellion, brought to the fore. At the heart of the book lies elaboration of the ways Asian families are constructed -- their social, economic, sexual and religious agency, and how these engage with state-led values.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Officially confined to red-light districts, brothels in British India were tolerated until the 1920s. Yet, by this time, prostitution reform campaigns led by Indian, imperial, and international bodies were combining the social scientific insights of sexology and hygiene with the moral condemnations of sexual slavery and human trafficking. These reformers identified the brothel as exacerbating rather than containing "corrupting prostitutes" and the threat of venereal diseases, and therefore encouraged the suppression of brothels rather than their urban segregation. In this book, Stephen Legg tracks the complex spatial politics surrounding brothels in the interwar period at multiple scales, including the local, regional, national, imperial, and global. Campaigns and state policies against brothels did not just operate at different scales but "made" scales themselves, forging new urban, provincial, colonial, and international formations. In so doing, they also remade the boundary between the state and the social, through which the prostitute was, Legg concludes, "civilly abandoned."

Officially confined to red-light districts, brothels in British India were tolerated until the 1920s. Yet, by this time, prostitution reform campaigns led by Indian, imperial, and international bodies were combining the social scientific insights of sexology and hygiene with the moral condemnations of sexual slavery and human trafficking. These reformers identified the brothel as exacerbating rather than containing "corrupting prostitutes" and the threat of venereal diseases, and therefore encouraged the suppression of brothels rather than their urban segregation. In this book, Stephen Legg tracks the complex spatial politics surrounding brothels in the interwar period at multiple scales, including the local, regional, national, imperial, and global. Campaigns and state policies against brothels did not just operate at different scales but "made" scales themselves, forging new urban, provincial, colonial, and international formations. In so doing, they also remade the boundary between the state and the social, through which the prostitute was, Legg concludes, "civilly abandoned."

All over the world, men as well as women exchange sex for money and other forms of reward, sometimes with other men and sometimes with women. In contrast to female prostitution, however, relatively little is known about male sex work, leaving questions unanswered about the individuals involved: their identities and self-understandings, the practices concerned, and the contexts in which they take place.

This book updates the ground-breaking 1998 volume of the same name with an entirely new selection of chapters exploring health, social, political, economic and human rights issues in relation to men who sell sex. Looking at Europe, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Asia-Pacific, each chapter explores questions such as:

• What is known among the different ways in which men exchange sex for money or other forms of reward?
• What are the major contexts in which sexual exchange takes place?
• What meanings do such practices carry for the different partners involved?
• What are the health and other implications of contemporary forms of male sex work?

Men Who Sell Sex" seeks to push the boundaries both of current personal and social understandings and the practices to which these give rise. It is an important reference work for academics and researchers interested in sex work and men s health including those working in public health, sociology, social work, anthropology, human geography and development studies."

All over the world, men as well as women exchange sex for money and other forms of reward, sometimes with other men and sometimes with women. In contrast to female prostitution, however, relatively little is known about male sex work, leaving questions unanswered about the individuals involved: their identities and self-understandings, the practices concerned, and the contexts in which they take place.

This book updates the ground-breaking 1998 volume of the same name with an entirely new selection of chapters exploring health, social, political, economic and human rights issues in relation to men who sell sex. Looking at Europe, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Asia-Pacific, each chapter explores questions such as:

• What is known among the different ways in which men exchange sex for money or other forms of reward?
• What are the major contexts in which sexual exchange takes place?
• What meanings do such practices carry for the different partners involved?
• What are the health and other implications of contemporary forms of male sex work?

Men Who Sell Sex" seeks to push the boundaries both of current personal and social understandings and the practices to which these give rise. It is an important reference work for academics and researchers interested in sex work and men s health including those working in public health, sociology, social work, anthropology, human geography and development studies."

(Sub)Urban Sexscapes brings together a collection of theoretically-informed and empirically rich case studies from internationally renowned and emerging scholars highlighting the contemporary and historical geographies and regulation of the commercial sex industry. Contributions in this edited volume examine the spatial and regulatory contours of the sex industry from a range of disciplinary perspectives-urban planning, urban geography, urban sociology, and, cultural and media studies-and geographical contexts-Australia, the UK, US and North Africa. In overall terms, (Sub)urban Sexscapes highlights the mainstreaming of commercial sex premises-sex shops, brothels, strip clubs and queer spaces-and products-sex toys, erotic literature and pornography-now being commonplace in night time economy spaces, the high street, suburban shopping centres and the home. In addition, the aesthetics of commercial and alternative sexual practices-BDSM and pornography-permeate the (sub)urban landscape via billboards, newspapers and magazines, television, music videos and the Internet. The role of sex, sexuality and commercialized sex, in contributing to the general character of our cities cannot be ignored. In short, there is a need for policy-makers to be realistic about the historical, contemporary and future presence of the sex industry. Ultimately, the regulation of the sex industry should be informed by evidence as opposed to moral panics. *** Winner of the Planning Institute of Australia (WA) 2015 Award for Excellence in Cutting Edge Research and Teaching ***

This groundbreaking book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work; that migrants who sell sex are passive victims; and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustin makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' disempowers them. Based on extensive research amongst migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry. Although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice.

This is the only such book to be attempted in Australia. It covers over 200 years of history, and includes discussion of sexual exchange in Australia prior to European colonisation. It is relevant to the whole of Australia as well as having a strong international dimension: the content is based on extensive research from archives in all Australian capital cities as well as London and Geneva and draws on oral interviews with women over a period of more than 25 years. It makes extensive use of narratives, individual life stories and the 'voices' of prostitutes to construct an engaging, accessible text.""Selling Sex"" provides the first comprehensive history of prostitution in Australia from before European colonisation to the present, and situates this history within an international context of labour migration and policy formation. It draws on extensive archival research and interviews to chart the ways in which prostitution contributed not just to women's economic survival but also to broader processes of colonisation and nation-building.

Prostitution is strongly embedded in local cultural practices in Cambodia. Based on extensive original research, this book explores the nature of prostitution in Cambodia, providing explanations of why the phenomenon is so widely tolerated. It outlines the background of the French colonial period, with its filles malades, considers the contemporary legal framework, and analyses the motivations for sex work, examining in particular how women become locked into debt bondage. Overall the book provides significant contributions to wider debates about sex work, sex trafficking and the constrained nature of women s choices. "

Child prostitution became one of the key concerns of the international community in the 1990s. World congresses were held, international and national laws were changed and concern over "cemmercially sexually exploited children" rose dramatically. Rarely, however, were the children who worked as prostitutes consulted of questioned in this process, and the voices of these children brought into focus. This book is the first to address the children directly, to examine their daily lives, their motivations and their perceptions of what they do. Based on 15 months of fieldwork in a Thai tourist community that survived through child prostitution, this book draws on anthropological theories on childhood and kinship to contextualize the experiences of this group of Thai child prostitutes and to contrast these with the stereotypes held of them by those outside their community.

Did she choose that?' Or, more normatively, 'Why would she choose that?' This book critiques and offers an alternative to these questions, which have traditionally framed law and policy discussions circulating around controversial genderized practices. It examines the simplicity and incompleteness of choice-based rhetoric and of presumptions that women's conduct is shaped, in an absolute way, either by choice or by coercion. This book develops an analytical framework that aims to discern the meaning and value that women may ascribe to morally ambiguous practices. An analysis of law's approach to polygamy, surrogacy and sex work, particularly in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, provides a basis for evaluating the choice-coercion binary and for contemplating alternate modes for assessing, from a law and policy standpoint, the palatability of social practices that appear pernicious to women. Weaving together interdisciplinary research, an innovative analytical framework for assessing choices ostensibly harmful to women, and a critique of the legal rules governing such choices, this book bears relevance for students, scholars, practicing jurists and policymakers seeking a richer understanding of conduct that moves women to the margins of law and society.

Commercial sex is the occupation of a significant portion of the women of the world, providing economic support for millions of people and their families. Working at the Bar is the first-ever, long-term, longitudinal, in-depth study of a large sex work industry-and Thailand, the most prominent nation in the rapidly growing sex tourism industry, makes for an excellent case study. While previous works have provided brief glimpses of one group of workers studied from a particular point of view, author Thomas Steinfatt examines considerations of health, behavior, economics, morality, religion, and worker safety. The result of data gathered from thousands of workers and customers in Thailand over a period of twelve years, Working at the Bar covers all aspects of an industry that, although it does not conform to various Western ideals, is nevertheless enormously significant. Among the most provocative of Steinfatt's arguments is that sex work is not itself immoral, and that far from being the exploitation industry we might imagine, sex work in Thailand is beneficial to everyone involved-especially given that education in this nation has proven not to be a viable alternative. Providing an opportunity for economic progress unavailable through other means, and providing working conditions far safer than those of the average Thai factory, sex work is ripe for a study that explores all aspects and perceptions associated with it. Working at the Bar is that long overdue study.

Child prostitution became one of the key concerns of the international community in the 1990s. World congresses were held, international and national laws were changed and concern over "commercially sexually exploited children" rose dramatically. Rarely, however, were the children who worked as prostitutes consulted or questioned in this process, and the voices of these children brought into focus. This book is the first to address the children directly, to examine their daily lives, their motivations and their perceptions of what they do. Based on 15 months of fieldwork in a Thai tourist community that survived through child prostitution, this book draws on anthropological theories on childhood and kinship to contextualize the experiences of this group of Thai child prostitutes and to contrast these with the stereotypes held of them by those outside their community.

An adaptation of the documentary film, Operation Toussaint reveals how an Ex-Special Agent and Operation Underground Railroad are saving children from sex trafficking around the world through Operation Toussaint, a covert mission to Haiti. Tim Ballard left his post as a special agent for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to found Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.). Through this organization, Tim and his team plan undercover operations to rescue child sex trafficking victims around the world. To date, they have saved hundreds of children from horrific conditions, which Tim wasn't able to do when bound by government restrictions. Take an inside look at O.U.R., and their mission to end modern day slavery, as you join Tim and his Special Forces team on a covert mission to Haiti where they bring a ring of sex traffickers who bribed their way out of jail to justice in Operation Toussaint.

2013 Outstanding Book Award Winner from the Division of International Criminology, American Society of Criminology Every year, thousands of Chinese women travel to Asia and the United States in order to engage in commercial sex work. In Selling Sex Overseas, Ko-lin Chin and James Finckenauer challenge the current sex trafficking paradigm that considers all sex workers as victims, or sexual slaves, and as unwilling participants in the world of commercial sex. Bringing to life an on-the-ground portrait of this usually hidden world, Chin and Finckenauer provide a detailed look at all of its participants: sex workers, pimps, agents, mommies, escort agency owners, brothel owners, and drivers. Ultimately, they probe the social, economic, and political organization of prostitution and sex trafficking, contradicting many of the 'moral crusaders' of the human trafficking world.