Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-31-2024
Publication Source
Annual Review of Anthropology
Abstract
With the HIV/AIDS epidemic gripping the world in the 1990s and the resurgence of the antitrafficking discourse in the 2000s, the sex work/abolitionist debate took center stage. Proponents of sex work uphold the labor and livelihood paradigm based on consent; the abolitionists, on the other hand, dismiss sex work as work to posit prostitution as the paradigmatic example of patriarchal violence toward women. The latter routinely conflate sex work with trafficking, and the former sharply demarcates them. Above all, this debate poses a stubborn ideological divide among feminists with serious policy implications for both the worker and the victim, nationally and globally. Therefore, to imagine a pathway beyond this divide, this review centers on mobility and migration vis-à-vis labor and livelihood. Sex work offers insights into migration broadly speaking because it highlights the intersecting issues of labor, agency, gender, sexual mores, and displacement, all embedded within the global flows of capital.
Inclusive pages
397-414
ISBN/ISSN
1545-4290
Document Version
Published Version
Copyright
Copyright © 2024 by the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See credit lines of images or other third-party material in this article for license information.
Volume
53
Peer Reviewed
yes
Keywords
forced displacement, labor, gender, race, geopolitics, morality
eCommons Citation
Dasgupta, Simanti, "Sex Work, Antitrafficking, and Mobility" (2024). Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Faculty Publications. 96.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/soc_fac_pub/96
COinS
Comments
Link to article on publisher's website: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-041422- 024442