Exploring sexwork and trafficking in a globalized culture and economy, this book offers a critique of increasingly stringent policing worldwide following the UN protocol against trafficking in persons. It highlights the grey area between sex work and trafficking and draws on the themes of gender, migration and deviance.
Human trafficking has been one of the most challenging problems of nation states across the globe since the 20th century. Thailand has lately turned into a country of origin, destination, and transit for human trafficking. So far, the degree of human trafficking into Thailand is still unknown. Studies on human trafficking into Thailand have been mostly carried out in the Mekong Sub-region. The south of Thailand is an under-researched area, particularly when dealing with trafficking for sexual exploitation. This manuscript provides key findings of the research project entitled Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation into Southern Thailand, under the joint support of the Alliance Française Bangkok and the IRASEC. Carried out during December 2006 - December 2007, the study was expected to fill the gap of research in the problem of trafficking for sexual exploitation in Thailand along a qualitative approach. It was designed towards fact-findings for a better understanding with the most updated information on the problem there. In all, the highlight of the contribution of this study is two folds. First, it enriches literatures on human security from the perspective of people on the move through a qualitative study of human trafficking for sexual exploitation into areas of marginal investigation - southern Thailand. Second, it contributes in terms of policy impact for further strengthening of the collaborative efforts at the national and district levels within Thailand as well as at the regional level.
Transnational labor migration often begins with the dream of securing a more stable and prosperous future, a chance to survive. The lure of “global cities” as a place to attain that dream looms large within the context of rural-urban migration flows. This book reveals some of the complex phenomena and processes that strip bare the lives and dreams of migrant workers living abroad, whose life experiences are overwhelmingly dominated by stress and suffering and diminished gendered roles. The book illuminates the intimate aspects of how Thai male migrants have transcended their harsh reality while living under Singapore’s strict regulations governing foreign workers. Stripped bare of the powerful sociocultural, economic, and legal processes that govern their existence at home, these men must recraft their gendered selfhoods, identities, and sensibilities. Using personal and interpretive ethnography, the book explores how popular music, sports, religious beliefs, cultural traditions, sexual desire, and intimacy are refashioned by appropriating cultural and symbolic capital into new cultural experiences. It also provides an extensive look at the sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome (SUNDS) among young healthy Thai construction workers in Singapore. The author’s in-depth analyses of migrant social life and male migrant gendered identitynegotiating processes provide an invaluable contribution to our understanding of labor transnationalism in the Southeast Asian context. Highlights An important contribution to studies of the masculinization of migration Provides ample insight into the lived experience of migrant workers Explores an often forgotten side of labor migration, that of sexual intimacy Adds a rich, detailed understanding of “village transnationalism”
Few subjects elicit greater moral outrage than human trafficking. Media reports of dehumanizing practices such as slavery, abduction, child prostitution, and torture, along with shocking statistics, form the basis of public knowledge. Those who work closely with victims acknowledge the complexity of the issue, and it is this complexity, rather than loose statistics and conjecture, that deserves our attention. With sensitivity and candor, this book addresses the reality of human trafficking in Thailand, dissecting studies, presenting facts, and dismissing stereotypes. It focuses on the areas of fishing, agriculture, domestic work, sex work, and the trafficking of children, weaving individual narratives and official studies into the wider history of Thailand’s changing economy and labor situation. It also details how the Thai government has addressed the issue, reflects on the roots of human exploitation, and suggests a way forward. This book raises much-needed awareness of commonly held misconceptions and clarifies what we know and what we have yet to discover about the trafficking of persons to and from Thailand. Highlights • Concise and accessible study of the reality of human trafficking in Thailand • Thorough critical analysis of current policies and public discourse on trafficking • Details relevant Thai and international laws • Discusses the relationship between the modern economic system and exploitation • Analyzes the changing face of the Thai labor market and the impact of industrialization on the Thai population
Examining the dynamics of the sex trade in both Europe and Asia, this study identifies the role of organized crime and considers the counter measures which governments and law enforcement agencies must take to combat this global problem.
The starting point for this book is the question of how we research sex for sale and the implications of the choices we make in terms of epistemology and ethics. Which dilemmas and ethical aspects need to be taken into account when producing qualitative data within a highly politicised and moral-infected realm? These two questions are exactly what Spanger and Skilbrei aim to unpack in this unusual interdisciplinary methodology book, Prostitution Research in Context. The book offers contributions from a number of scholars who, based on their reflections on their own research practice and the existing knowledge field, discuss ongoing methodological issues and challenges representative of international research on sex for sale. Some chapters deal explicitly with methodological dilemmas in research; others thematise the encounter between prostitution research and general texts on epistemology. Other chapters again actively engage with the ethical dilemmas that research on the topic of sex for sale can entail. The authors represent different disciplines, but share an interest in engaging in reflexive research practices informed by feminism and feminist epistemologies. An authoritative contribution to the field, this innovative volume will appeal to international scholars and students from across the social sciences and humanities in areas such as sociology, anthropology, criminology, media studies, feminist studies, human geography and history.
Comprehensive and authoritative, this state-of-the-art review both charts and develops the rich sub-discipline geographies of sexualities, exploring sex-gender, sexuality and sexual practices. Emerging from the desire to examine differences and exclusions as a key aspect of human geographies, these geographies have engaged with heterosexual and queer, lesbian, gay, bi and trans lives. Developing thinking in this area, geographers and other social scientists have illustrated the centrality of place, space and other spatial relationships in reconstituting sexual practices, representations, desires, as well as sexed bodies and lives. This book reviews the current state of the field and offers new insights from authors located on five continents. In doing so, the book seeks to draw on and influence core debates in this field, as well as disrupt the Anglo-American hegemony in studies of sexualities, sexes and geographies. This volume is the definitive collection in the area, bringing together many international leaders in the field, alongside scholars that are well-established outside the Anglophone academy, and many emerging talents who will lead the field in the decades to come.
As globalization and transnational encounters intensify, people’s mobility is increasingly conditioned by intimacy, ranging from love, desire, and sexual liaisons to broader family, kinship, and conjugal matters. This book explores the entanglement of mobility and intimacy in various configurations throughout the world. It argues that rather than being distinct and unrelated phenomena, intimacy-related mobilities constitute variations of cross-border movements shaped by and deeply entwined with issues of gender, kinship, race, and sexuality, as well as local and global powers and border restrictions in a disparate world.
Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama reflects on the politics, poetics, and ethics of remembering the lives of transnational migrant sex workers in postcolonial Japan. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the port city of Yokohama, the book focuses on the “water trade” in the Koganecho neighbourhood where exploitative and stigmatised labour took place, involving sexual services performed by migrant women. In recent years the city has sought to rebrand Koganecho, evicting transnational migrant sex workers who had been integral to postindustrial development and erasing their past presence. The author explores Yokohama’s memoryscapes in the aftermath of displacement through embodied knowledge, engaging her senses and ethics as a colonizer-researcher as she navigates the elusive past through traces that remain in the present. She examines the city’s built environment, official historical narratives, films, and photographic works. With few brothels and workers remaining, Yoshimizu fills the gap with her own interactions, encounters, and imaginings. Yoshimizu also writes through the imagery of water in ways that are informed by the local usage and imaginations—the ocean, flowing rivers, swamps, humidity, alcohol, the fluidity of relationships, and transient lives. The water also offers a way to sense the “ghost”, or the displaced lives and the effects of displacement, that, like humid air, stick to those who occupy or inhabit the site of displacement today. This interdisciplinary work makes a valuable contribution to sensory studies, memory studies, migration studies, and Asian studies.
The Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research unites 45 contributions from researchers, sex workers, activists, and practitioners who live and work in 28 countries throughout the world. Focusing tightly on the contemporary state of sex industry research through eight carefully selected themes, this volume sets a clear agenda for future research, activism, and policymaking. Approaching the topic from a multidisciplinary perspective on an expanding field frequently divided by political and ideological conflicts, the handbook clearly establishes the parameters of the field while also showcasing the most vibrant contemporary empirical and theoretical work. Unprecedented in its global scope, the Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research will appeal to students, researchers, and policy makers interested in fields such as sociology of gender and sexuality; crime, justice, and the sex industry; sociology of work and professions; and sexual politics.