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Social Sciences
Special Issues
Sex Work, Gender Justice, and the Law
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Sex Work, Gender Justice, and the Law

A special issue of Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760). This special issue belongs to the section "Gender Studies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2019) | Viewed by 20803

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Crystal Jackson

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Sociology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice-CUNY, New York City, NY 10019, USA
Interests: gender and sexuality; sex work; social justice; inequalities; feminism

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

End-demand and mainstream anti-sex trafficking policies and advocacy are persistently popular, in tandem with a rooted liberal feminism at high political levels. Building off the 2016 Special Issue on sex worker rights, we seek innovative and intersectional analyses of sex work and justice in the U.S. and internationally. Manuscripts should address the socio-politics around the sale of sex. How do regulations and institutions sustain systemic violence against sex workers (e.g., in medical care, federal housing assistance, etc.)? How do non-profits and NGOs act as a branch of nation-state social control and/or neo-colonialist social control? How might transnational comparisons, or analyses of the impacts of international policy and advocacy on South World countries, illuminate cracks in the anti-sex worker façade, cracks that may guide new activist approaches to human rights demands and advocacy efforts? What buoys North World nation-states’ resistance to calls to decriminalize the sale of sex—calls from established organizations like the World Health Organization, Human Rights Watch, and UNAIDS?

Manuscripts are invited on topics that include, but are not limited to:

-How white supremacy undergirds prostitution and mainstream anti-sex trafficking policies, public educational outreach, and/or advocacy efforts across different institutions

-Examining U.S. federal programs to train staff in a range of industries to identify sex trafficking victims (e.g., trainings through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Blue Campaign), or the role of “human trafficking” intervention courts

-The consequences of end-demand and anti-sex trafficking efforts and policies on sex worker rights efforts and resilience, locally, nationally, or internationally

-Theorizing how and why transgender sex workers, gender non-conforming sex workers, and cisgender male sex workers are rarely, if at all, addressed in anti-sex trafficking efforts and policies, and/or prostitution policies

-Empirical evidence of the influence of end-demand and/or anti-sex trafficking policies on law enforcement approaches to policing prostitution

-Comparative analyses of regulatory models around sexual labor


Dr. Crystal Jackson
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Social Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sex worker rights
  • prostitution policy
  • anti-sex trafficking
  • decriminalization
  • gender
  • social control

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 270 KiB  
Article
Justice and Civil Liberties on Sex Work in Contemporary International Human Rights Law
by Belinda Brooks-Gordon, Marjan Wijers and Alison Jobe
Soc. Sci. 2020, 9(1), 4; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci9010004 - 10 Jan 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 5768
Abstract
To fulfil obligations in international law State parties have to take the issue of human trafficking seriously. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) provides General Recommendations (GR) to member states on the interpretation of the Women’s Convention. [...] Read more.
To fulfil obligations in international law State parties have to take the issue of human trafficking seriously. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) provides General Recommendations (GR) to member states on the interpretation of the Women’s Convention. In 2018 the CEDAW Committee started to develop a GR on trafficking in women and girls in a process planned to conclude in 2020. The first stage towards this was through the publication of a Concept Note to serve as a basis for dialogue during the two-year international consultation period. The Concept Note is a vital link in a textual chain because it frames the policy problem and actively constructs its own ‘documentary reality’. This article provides a critical analysis of the CEDAW Concept Note on the grounds that such analysis provides an understanding of its discursive construction of trafficking, migrant labour and sex work, by an institution responsible for international jurisprudence on human rights. Analysis of the Concept Note explores the documentary constructions including narratives that merge adult women with girls, the symbolism of exploitation, the silencing of scientific research, the elision of sex worker voices, and sex work as work. The analysis leads us to conclude that the General Recommendation should define what counts as ‘exploitation’, and ‘forced labour’, and address the growing international recognition of best evidence on the wider impact of sex work laws, in order that legal framing and constructions of sex trafficking are not erroneously used to curtail rights of sex workers. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sex Work, Gender Justice, and the Law)
30 pages, 443 KiB  
Article
Community-Based Responses to Negative Health Impacts of Sexual Humanitarian Anti-Trafficking Policies and the Criminalization of Sex Work and Migration in the US
by Heidi Hoefinger, Jennifer Musto, P. G. Macioti, Anne E. Fehrenbacher, Nicola Mai, Calum Bennachie and Calogero Giametta
Soc. Sci. 2020, 9(1), 1; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci9010001 - 23 Dec 2019
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 14383
Abstract
System-involvement resulting from anti-trafficking interventions and the criminalization of sex work and migration results in negative health impacts on sex workers, migrants, and people with trafficking experiences. Due to their stigmatized status, sex workers and people with trafficking experiences often struggle to access [...] Read more.
System-involvement resulting from anti-trafficking interventions and the criminalization of sex work and migration results in negative health impacts on sex workers, migrants, and people with trafficking experiences. Due to their stigmatized status, sex workers and people with trafficking experiences often struggle to access affordable, unbiased, and supportive health care. This paper will use thematic analysis of qualitative data from in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with 50 migrant sex workers and trafficked persons, as well as 20 key informants from legal and social services, in New York and Los Angeles. It will highlight the work of trans-specific and sex worker–led initiatives that are internally addressing gaps in health care and the negative health consequences that result from sexual humanitarian anti-trafficking interventions that include policing, arrest, court-involvement, court-mandated social services, incarceration, and immigration detention. Our analysis focuses on the impact of criminalization on sex workers and their experiences with sexual humanitarian efforts intended to protect and control them. We argue that these grassroots community-based efforts are a survival-oriented reaction to the harms of criminalization and a response to vulnerabilities left unattended by mainstream sexual humanitarian approaches to protection and service provision that frame sex work itself as the problem. Peer-to-peer interventions such as these create solidarity and resiliency within marginalized communities, which act as protective buffers against institutionalized systemic violence and the resulting negative health outcomes. Our results suggest that broader public health support and funding for community-led health initiatives are needed to reduce barriers to health care resulting from stigma, criminalization, and ineffective anti-trafficking and humanitarian efforts. We conclude that the decriminalization of sex work and the reform of institutional practices in the US are urgently needed to reduce the overall negative health outcomes of system-involvement. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sex Work, Gender Justice, and the Law)
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