sex work

Defining Human Trafficking and Identifying Its Victims: A Study on the Impact and Future Challenges of International, European and Finnish Legal Responses to Prostitution-Related Trafficking in Human Beings. by Venla Roth

Isabel Dela Cruz

Roth, Venla. Defining Human Trafficking and Identifying Its Victims: A Study on the Impact and Future Challenges of International,

European and Finnish Legal Responses to Prostitution-Related Trafficking in Human Beings. Brill, 2012, pp. viii-viii. 

Venla Roth, Finlands’s Anti-Trafficking Coordinator for the Ministry of Justice, has a Ph.D. in law and works towards unveiling the best ways to combat human trafficking. She’s not only educated in the human trafficking world, but she has both power and first-hand experience as an anti-trafficking coordinator who works for one of the 12 ministries that comprise the Finnish government. Her book compares the contradicting positions on prostitution and details the modern legal instruments adopted to prevent trafficking and protect its victims. I can use this book as an informative source for detailing the grey areas of sex work and trafficking and recommending solutions to the challenges of Finland’s Anti-Trafficking strategies. The study argues that human trafficking is complex, therefore the laws made to regulate them need to be just as well developed; Roth presents possible alternatives and specific methods that focus on judging trafficking situations through the victim’s perspective rather than an authorities’ viewpoint. This book can be useful for bringing forth proper solutions to dealing with human trafficking and will also have a refreshing perspective on this subject since Finland is, legally, more progressive when it comes to sex work. 

  1. “More attention should be paid to the conditions in which the women sell sex as well as to their vulnerabilities and dependencies which increase their risk of being exploited.”
  2. “The law enforcement agencies, prosecution services and judiciary need more training on human trafficking, as they often lack adequate knowledge of the phenomenon.”

“Implementation of a Screening Tool for Child Sex Trafficking among Youth Presenting to the Emergency Department – A Quality Improvement Initiative.” by Loralie J. Peterson et al.

Isabel Dela Cruz

Peterson, Loralie J., et al. “Implementation of a Screening Tool for Child Sex Trafficking among Youth Presenting to the Emergency

Department – A Quality Improvement Initiative.” Child Abuse Negl, vol. 125, 2022, pp. 105506–105506.,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2022.105506.

Loralie J. Peterson is a research coordinator at the University of Minnesota and specializes in the Department of Pediatrics, making her a credible and well-informed source on a heavy topic like child sex trafficking. Her article discusses the importance of the healthcare system providing resources for sex-trafficked children and proposes different tools that can be implemented. Routine standardized screening, for example, was something that the authors believed could benefit patients in child sex trafficking (CST). Most people within the healthcare system aren’t trained to identify CST, so these screenings will involve specially trained teams that, with the help of validated tools, can identify whether or not a child is at risk for trafficking and exploitation. Once they are identified, a comprehensive assessment with resource provision will be utilized to fully make sure that the child is being trafficked at the time of their healthcare visit. Since one prevalent issue in human trafficking is simply correctly identifying if someone is being trafficked, a tool like this for children can save lives. This article can be used to propose more ideas that can bring awareness to and protect exploited children.  

  1. “Screening and identification of youth at risk for CST allows healthcare providers to tailor referrals and resources to mitigate risk of exploitation, and to complete appropriate mandatory reporting when exploitation is disclosed.”
  2. “In one study of sex trafficked youth, 82.5% of adolescents had received care in a pediatric healthcare system within 1 year and 95.2% had been seen in the emergency department (ED) or urgent care.”

“Framing Sex Worker Rights: How U.S. Sex Worker Rights Activists Perceive and Respond to Mainstream Anti–Sex Trafficking Advocacy.” by Crystal A. Jackson

Isabel Dela Cruz

Jackson, Crystal A. “Framing Sex Worker Rights: How U.S. Sex Worker Rights Activists Perceive and Respond to Mainstream Anti–Sex

Trafficking Advocacy.” Sociological Perspectives, vol. 59, no. 1, 2016, pp. 27–45., https://doi.org/10.1177/0731121416628553.

In this journal article, Crystal Jackson, a sociologist whose teachings include gender & sexuality, social justice, sex labor, and feminism, interviews 19 sex worker rights activists within the U.S. between 2010 and 2012. With her research focusing on feminist and queer understandings of sex work, Jackson is well-versed in critiquing institutionalized inequalities within the criminal justice system. The main results drawn from the interviews focused on rejecting the conventional victimization of sex workers and confronting the unsound anti-sex trafficking efforts. The victimization of sex workers can easily, even if it’s indirectly, further silence sex workers and fail to address their oppression and lack of rights. While my paper isn’t focused solely on the rights and legalization of sex work, this journal article is one of the few that not only considers but is based on the perspectives of sex workers and sex worker rights activists. It’s important to consider the concerns that the workers who are personally and daily affected by these issues in order to reach a healthy compromise between protecting their rights while also keeping trafficking laws a priority.

  1.  In an interview with Charm, a Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) member, she “puts it twofold: first [the problem] is a victimizing framework is heavily emotional, whereas a workers rights framework may not evoke the same level of emotion.”
  2. “In a way, the U.S. anti–sex trafficking movement has galvanized and mobilized sex worker rights organizers as sex workers feel the impact of antiprostitution policies enacted to end trafficking.”

“The National and Moral Borders of the 2016 French Law on Sex Work: An Analysis of the ‘Prostitution Exit Programme.’” by Giametta, Calogero, and HÉLÈNE Le Bail

Isabel Dela Cruz

Giametta, Calogero, and HÉLÈNE Le Bail. “The National and Moral Borders of the 2016 French Law on Sex Work: An Analysis of the

‘Prostitution Exit Programme.’” Critical Social Policy, 2022, p. 26101832211011., https://doi.org/10.1177/02610183221101167. 

This article analyzes what France’s prostitution exit programme fails to do for women in the industry and points out the flaws and damage these laws create. Following Sweden’s approach to regulating prostitution, France’s ultimate goal is to abolish sex work by punishing clients rather than the workers and utilizing an exit programme to encourage and support women only if they leave sex work entirely. This article includes interviews with sex workers between 2016 and 2018 where they discuss their thoughts on the exit programme. They believe that it connects back to the conventional idea that women in sex work are victims that need help from the law in order to stop prostituting themselves. It also fails to properly protect and support the rights of working women; it encourages the thought of sex work being immoral and disregards the autonomy and rights of these women as long as they choose to stay in sex work. This programme also has evidently refused immigrant and Nigerian women’s applications due to restrictive immigrant policy and racism. I can use this article to prove that simply legalizing sex work isn’t enough and emphasize the flaws that France specifically creates in their attempt to abolish prostitution. Aside from the racist and misogynistic issues rooted in France’s exit programme, I will also point out the true usefulness of it and if it really does benefit sex workers and those who are trafficked. Calogero Giametta, a professor in criminology, utilizes his Ph.D. in Sociology to specifically research anti-human trafficking policies and how they affect sex workers. Hélène Le Bail has a doctorate in political science and focuses her research on female routes of migration (marriage, sex work, etc.). Both authors are well-educated in sociology and political science and their research focusing on sex work make their article reliable.

  1. “By analysing the exit programme through the prism of sexual humanitarianism reveals how such mechanism can contribute to crystallise gendered narratives of sexual predation and victimisation and deny sex workers’ diversity and agency.”
  2. “By instituting a distinction between the deserving and non-deserving sex workers, the government’s plan to eliminate sex work strengthens the stigma around those who have decided to do this work.”

“Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?” by Cho, Seo-Young, et al.

Isabel Dela Cruz

Cho, Seo-Young, et al. “Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?” World Development, vol. 41, 2013, pp. 67–82.,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.05.023. 

As a senior researcher for quantitative cultural policy studies and empirical economist that focuses on migration, gender, culture, and institutions, Seo-Young Cho’s article analyzes the correlation between legalized prostitution and human trafficking inflows. Seo-Young Cho, as a woman with a doctorate in economics, has created a “3P Anti-Trafficking Policy Index” to evaluate governmental anti-sex trafficking efforts for each country and each year. In her article she discusses two theories: the scale effect, where legalized prostitution causes an increase in human trafficking, and the substitution effect, which reduces trafficking since legal sex workers would be in higher demand than illegal trafficked ones. Since research isn’t well-developed enough and data collection on human trafficking remains inadequate, cogent causal inference has yet to be an easy feat, so the two effects based on economic theory are used instead. The study’s quantitative empirical evidence leads us to believe that legalized sex work increases human trafficking, but Cho also points out how the furtivity of both the sex work and trafficking industries needs to be accounted for. This article utilizes cross-section data, robustness tests, and case studies and is constructive considering the research and data collection on such a taboo and polarizing subject falls short. The results won’t be used as fact, but they can help develop the idea that simply legalizing sex work isn’t enough when it can and has shown, in Germany, for instance, a rise in trafficking as a result. 

  1. “Our quantitative empirical analysis for a cross-section of up to 150 countries shows that the scale effect dominates the substitution effect…[however] the problem here lies in the clandestine nature of both the prostitution and trafficking markets”
  2. “On average, countries with legalized prostitution experience a larger degree of reported human trafficking inflows. We have corroborated this quantitative evidence with three brief case studies of Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.”