Philosophy Faculty Publications

Title

Review: 'Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Migration, Sex Work, and Human Rights'

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

8-2007

Publication Source

Hypatia

Abstract

Contributors to the volume more often presume or assert these central contentions than they provide evidence or arguments in their defense. Although most of the authors clearly share the editor’s view that prostitution per se is not harmful to women, no contributor mentions (let alone refutes) the substantial evidence of the devastating effects prostitution has on women’s physical and emotional well being.3 Similarly, they assert that migration is the “core issue” of trafficking without considering and rejecting other core issues such as men’s demand for commercial access to the bodies of women and children (or even, more broadly, the demand of wealthy consumers for cheap labor and consumer goods). Finally, most contributors treat their highly restrictive definition of trafficking as if it were a settled and indisputable fact, when in fact it is based in a particular and highly contested ideology about prostitution.4

Inclusive pages

209-215

ISBN/ISSN

0887-5367

Comments

Book citation information:

Kamala Kempadoo, ed. Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Migration, Sex Work, and Human Rights. New York, NY: Paradigm Publishers, 2005.

Permission documentation is on file.

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons

Volume

22

Issue

3

Peer Reviewed

yes

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