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Court-based research: collaborating with the justice system to enhance STI services for vulnerable women in the US http://t.co/3vEaFQVO
The fractal queerness of non-heteronormative migrant #sexworkers in the UK by Nick Mae http://t.co/X7oGFeDI
‘only 31% of the sample of indirect sex workers reported having been engaged in commercial sex in the last 12 months’
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sex trafficking

sexual exploitation

This is a very good article that presents a strong case that the criminalisation of clients in Sweden has not been successful in any terms. It contains fascinating statistics about the extent of trafficking in Sweden and illustrates the lack of integrity and rigour of claims that support ‘the Swedish Model’. It also provides a compelling  case for looking closely at the  true consequences of measures aimed at limiting sexual exploitation and sex trafficking.

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slavery

A book by Kara S that seeks to provide a business analysis of sex trafficking, focusing on the local drivers and global macroeconomic trends that gave rise to the industry after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Foreign Policy in Focus carried a review of the book by Ann Jordan, of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, American University Washington College of Law.

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history

This article examines the League of Nations Advisory Committee on the Trafficking of Women and Children (CTW) to assess the impact of international feminists on the interwar anti-sex trafficking movement. It argues that women who were firmly embedded in the transnational and international women’s rights movement built a coalition on the CTW to ensure the prominence of the feminist abolitionist position of sex trafficking in the 1920s.

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ideology

An article by Weitzer R. in the journal Politics & Society, Vol. 35, No. 3, 447-475. This article examines the social construction of sex trafficking (and prostitution more generally). The analysis documents the increasing endorsement and institutionalization of crusade ideology in U.S. government policy and practice. (adapted from the author’s own summary)

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Empower

Heavy-handed comments have been thrown around labeling Thailand as the “brothel of the world,” or “Disneyland for men.” Of course, there are no official figures as to the total number of sex workers in Thailand, but a moderate figure from Thai analysts puts the number at 15,000-22,000 women (with a very small portion consisting of men.) As such, Thailand has a very strong reputation for being a nation with a massive amount of prostitution and sex trafficking.

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United States

An article by Weitzer R. in the journal Politics & Society, Vol. 35, No. 3, 447-475. This article examines the social construction of sex trafficking (and prostitution more generally). The analysis documents the increasing endorsement and institutionalization of crusade ideology in U.S. government policy and practice. (adapted from the author’s own summary)

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book

In Hollow Bodies, Susan Dewey travels to Armenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and India to follow the trade in women’s bodies and efforts to stop it. What she finds is a counter-trafficking system at the mercy of funds from misguided international organizations and foreign governments. From counterproductive restrictions placed on NGOs by donors, to jaded employees and bribes given to prosecutors, Dewey highlights the structural flaws in place that allow, and sometimes even help, sex trafficking to continue.

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Is there such thing as ‘global sex trafficking’? A patchwork tale on useful (mis)understandings

This article intends to respond to a recent call  for more innovative studies and methodologies in order to move beyond the current discourse on human trafficking. We do so by describing three ethnographic fragments on the dynamics of (dealing with) sex trafficking within Europe. The concepts of ‘friction’ and ‘collaboration’ (Tsing Cultural Anthropology 15(3):327–360, 2000, 2005) are used to analyse these fragments. These concepts refer to creative processes that occur as people interact across differences. They give insight into how universal ideas on freedom and justice enable collaboration between parties involved in fighting human trafficking who do not necessarily share

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