In 2020, COVID-19 spread worldwide, and a state of pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization. Female sex workers are in many ways dependant on the social conditions of society and have, throughout time, been considered as a highly victimized group. This study aims to gain insight into the changes and consequences the COVID-19 pandemic has had on female sex workers in Sweden by conducting semi-structured interviews with individuals who, through their employment, have connections to female sex workers. The collected data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The results revealed four themes that describe the changes and consequences witnessed by the participants. The first theme entails the vulnerabilities and circumstances that female sex workers are conditioned by in society. The second theme demonstrates the economic consequences which the pandemic outbreak caused. Not only in relation to expenses and difficulties traveling but also in terms of an increased market due to unemployment and lockdowns in Central Europe. This theme also includes a subgroup of physical consequences as a result of the competition created by the increased market of female sex workers in Sweden. This has caused the women to have to take additional risks and abuse. The third theme includes the bureaucratic and social complications caused by the social restrictions enforced to hinder the spread of the COVID-19. The fourth and last theme presents the participants' post-pandemic predictions.

Women engaged in street prostitution are among the most vulnerable populations, due to the conditions they work in, their often disadvantaged backgrounds, and their limited choices and agency. In order to surmount the multiple barriers that they encounter when trying to exit prostitution, both at the structural and the individual level, women need holistic support that addresses their diverse needs (Hester & Westmarland, 2004). Extant theoretical frameworks of exiting prostitution failed to incorporate this important element of support into the exiting process. Some of these frameworks are based on mixed samples of women in indoor and street prostitution, despite their different situations and needs. Furthermore, while researchers generally agree on the need for wrap-around holistic support of a range of services, it has not been sufficiently explored, neither in depth nor systematically. Questions remain as to what support looks like, what is its influence, and what is the best timing for offering support to women exiting street prostitution. This study set out to better understand the patterns of exiting street prostitution, to explore the role of support in facilitating successful and long-term disengagement from prostitution, and to determine the more effective time to offer support in the exiting process. The study employed a mixed-method design combining qualitative interviews with an Agent-Based Model (ABM), an innovative computerized simulation tool that has never been applied to street prostitution. In-depth interviews with 29 women from five recovery programs for women with substance abuse disorder who have exited prostitution were analyzed in ATLAS.ti to provide thorough responses to the research questions about support and helped refine the ABM. The ABM was designed based on the theoretical framework offered by Baker, Dalla, and Williamson (2010), enhanced by support and some additional elements incorporated into this framework. This framework conceptualizes exiting as a staged process, starting when women are immersed in prostitution, moving on to the Awareness stage, then to Deliberate Planning, then to Initial Exit and at last to the Final Exit stage. A simplified structure of the stages was applied in the ABM, whereby virtual agents representing women immersed in street prostitution made a series of decision to determine whether they eventually exited prostitution, first to the initial exit stage and later to the final exit stage. The ABM model was a computerized representation of a 10-year virtual longitudinal study, during which a support intervention was offered, first consistently to all agents and then in a second model only to agents who enter the Initial Exit stage. Two more interventions, suggested by the women’s narratives, were tested to determine the influence of spirituality on exiting and the impact of offering women more support when they were ready to exit. street prostitution. The qualitative findings of the study indicated the importance of peers over professionals as facilitators of women’s exiting journeys. Peers provided women with hope and a nonjudgmental understanding of women’s experiences in prostitution; helped alleviate guilt and shame by normalizing these experiences; and allayed women’s loneliness. Another important source of support for women was discovering their spirituality. Women often spoke of God in similar terms to their peers, as an entity that offers knowledge, love and experience. The qualitative findings informed the operationalization of several variables in the ABM and contributed a new variable, Spirituality, to the model. Another important qualitative finding was the importance of offering support at the moment women were ready to exit, which resulted in an interaction between women’s intention to exit and support in the ABM. Additional qualitative findings highlighted the importance of treating both substance abuse and prostitution to unravel the prostitution-drugs nexus in order to achieve a successful exit. Women described their relapse into drugs, which almost always preceded a return to prostitution, as a gradual internal process of a growing desire to use drugs which culminated in an opportunity to use drugs. Such a process mirrored their readiness to exit– an internal process of despair which ended with reaching out for support, or a “hook for change” (Giordano et al., 2002). However, while women were fully aware of both the moment of relapse and the moment of readiness to exit and could easily identify what had led to their relapse, the elements that led to being ready to exit remained nebulous. More research is warranted on this issue. The quantitative findings clearly demonstrated that once virtual women received support in the exiting process, more of them exited, their exit was more permanent (in other words, more of them moved from the Initial to the Final Exit stage and stayed there), and they exited earlier in the process. The more support we offered, the more these findings were pronounced. The best model fit to the data was the one including all support types– continuous support, additional support for the Initial Exit stage, spirituality, and the interaction between readiness and support. While the model without support was characterized by oscillating exiting trajectories regardless of the final outcome, offering support helped smooth the curve and prevented the back and forth movement that characterized women’s journeys in and out of prostitution, both in the quantitative and the qualitative data. This research elaborates the theoretical foundation of the process of exiting prostitution, and specifically, the impact of support, and what support means, in the exiting process. The findings of this study have important implications for service providers and policy makers in deciding on how much, when, and what type of support to offer women who are exiting street prostitution—for example, incorporating peer support in programs that assist women. The quantitative inquiry revealed the impact and benefits of offering support in the exiting process; the qualitative inquiry revealed the multidimensional nature this support. The ABM may be further applied to other exiting processes in related fields, such as recovery from substance abuse. The mixed-method design combining ABM with qualitative interviews should serve as a model to study vulnerable populations with simulation tools. / Criminal Justice

Sex work is one of the rare elements of our society that is both accepted and stigmatized. Ironically enough, it is stigmatized without being studied in depth. The truth is we know very little about sex work and even less about pornography—the most legal of genres. While researchers have spent a great deal of time determining the effects that pornography has on viewers, particularly juvenile viewers, little research has been done on the men and women who make pornography. A 43 question survey was created and disseminated to those in the pornographic film industry, both amateur and professional, resulting in 210 respondents from all walks of life. The results of the inquiry show that social scientists know relatively little about working in pornography, having a profound impact on the current discussion and future research. Additionally, this investigation presents a new and creative method for surveying hard to reach, hidden, or sensitive subject populations that will aid in aspects of future research on sex work and other stigmatized behaviors.

In this thesis, I explore how law enforcement officials in Mississippi and Alabama make sense of and respond to human sex trafficking cases. The central questions guiding this research project are: How do law enforcement officials perceive sex trafficking and what does this mean for victim identification and treatment? By conducting 20 interviews with law enforcement officials, I offer insight into how the training, or lack of training, officers receive impacts victim identification, labeling, and treatment. Further, I examine how perceptions, experiences, and training work to influence officer responses to those that do not fit a typical victim narrative, such as sex workers, immigrant, and migrant populations.

No description available.

No description available.

In India, the estimated number of people in sex work is high - figures show an appraisal of three million female sex workers. Most women who enter sex work tend to be very young and do so due to severe economic circumstances. The situation is considered especially severe in some parts of India due to a combination of poverty and the low status of females, which contribute to their exploitation in the sex industry. This vulnerability often leads to women being marginalized and stigmatized from society.   The aim with this thesis is to investigate how social workers, at an organization in Pune, India, work with women in sex work and their children. What motivates the social workers to pursue work with this group? How do they feel about their work and their clients? Further questions we wanted to answer were how the organization worked to secure good and sufficient living conditions for the children. Our initial goal for this study was to examine how the staff members at Saheli Sangh work to prevent the children from entering sex work. While doing so, we gained knowledge about the social worker’s own thoughts, values and experiences of doing social work with this group. Hence, this newfound knowledge became our main focus throughout our study.   The results showed that education and safe housing were the primary interventions offered to prevent children from entering sex work. It also showed that the staff in the organization forms a special bond with the children and women with whom they work. To provide the needed interventions, the organization needs more resources and more support to combat negative perceptions and stigma from the society of women who do sex work and the social workers who help them address their needs. / I Indien är det uppskattade antalet personer i sexarbete högt - siffror visar en uppskattning på tre miljoner kvinnliga sexarbetare. De flesta kvinnor som börjar med sexarbete tenderar att vara väldigt unga och gör det på grund av svåra ekonomiska omständigheter. Situationen anses särskilt svår i vissa delar av Indien. Detta på grund av en kombination av fattigdom och kvinnornas låga ställning i samhället, vilket bidrar till deras utnyttjande i sexindustrin. Denna utsatthet leder ofta till att kvinnor marginaliseras och stigmatiseras.   Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur socialarbetare, i en organisation i Pune, Indien, arbetar med kvinnor i sexarbete och deras barn. Vad motiverar socialarbetarna att arbeta med denna grupp? Hur upplever de sitt arbete och sina klienter? Ytterligare frågor vi ville ha svar på var hur organisationen arbetade för att säkerställa goda och tillräckliga levnadsvillkor för barnen. Vårt ursprungliga syfte med denna studie var att undersöka hur socialarbetarna i organisationen arbetar för att förhindra barnen från att börja med sexarbete. Under processens gång fick även kunskap om socialarbetarens egna tankar, värderingar och erfarenheter av att arbeta med denna grupp. Därigenom blev denna nyfunna kunskap vårt huvudfokus under resten av vår studie.   Resultaten visade att utbildning och tryggt boende var de primära insatserna som erbjuds för att förhindra att barn börjar med sexarbete. De visade även på ett starkt band mellan personalen och de kvinnor och barn som de arbetar med. För att kunna erbjuda nödvändiga insatser behöver organisationen mer resurser samt stöd från samhället för att bekämpa den rådande negativa uppfattningen som finns om kvinnor i sexarbete.

The reasons why African women become engaged in sex work have received little attention in academic research. While it is largely acknowledged that there exists a connection between entering the sex trade and poverty, not all women who are poor enter sex work. Through the use of life histories with 21 women between the ages of 18 and 42, this thesis explores the combination of factors that lead women and girls to become commercial sex workers in Nairobi, Kenya. This method provides a detailed look at initiation into sex work as it occurs over the life course for women and girls in this context. Additionally, this thesis examines how structural violence impinges on their lives, thereby increasing vulnerability to engagement in sex work. Examining the larger socio-political and economic contexts illustrates how issues such as HIV/AIDS, migrant labour, changing gender roles, the erosion of existing familial structures and gender inequities structure risk for suffering for women. These issues result in many girls losing caregiver support by being orphaned, while additionally, women are burdened with providing total economic and social support for the family in a society that has gendered economic opportunities. Both girls and women are left with few options other than the sex trade to survive.

The reasons why African women become engaged in sex work have received little attention in academic research. While it is largely acknowledged that there exists a connection between entering the sex trade and poverty, not all women who are poor enter sex work. Through the use of life histories with 21 women between the ages of 18 and 42, this thesis explores the combination of factors that lead women and girls to become commercial sex workers in Nairobi, Kenya. This method provides a detailed look at initiation into sex work as it occurs over the life course for women and girls in this context. Additionally, this thesis examines how structural violence impinges on their lives, thereby increasing vulnerability to engagement in sex work. Examining the larger socio-political and economic contexts illustrates how issues such as HIV/AIDS, migrant labour, changing gender roles, the erosion of existing familial structures and gender inequities structure risk for suffering for women. These issues result in many girls losing caregiver support by being orphaned, while additionally, women are burdened with providing total economic and social support for the family in a society that has gendered economic opportunities. Both girls and women are left with few options other than the sex trade to survive.

While there is a considerable body of academic literature on prostitution and sex work, there is relatively little research exploring the working conditions and occupational structures for men and women working in the indoor sex industry. There is a continuing tension between the theoretical position that considers prostitution as gendered exploitation and that which views commercial sex as work, although more recent studies have begun to explore different labour practices in some types of sex work. This thesis moves beyond previous analyses through framing the research theoretically as an occupational study, encompassing the experiences and transitions of female and male sex workers, as well as a small number of transgender participants, and setting these in the context of broader labour market theories and research. Using a qualitative approach, the study considers diverse labour processes and structures in indoor markets and adult sex workers perceptions of the terms and conditions of their work. The research develops an understanding of sex workers agency in relation to state structures, policy frameworks and varied working circumstances. It theorises the relationship of human agency to social stigma and recognition or denial of rights. It extends on existing classifications of pathways into and from sex work and develops typologies incorporating transitions between sub-sectors in the indoor sex industry, as well as temporary and longer-term sex working careers related to varied settings and individual aspirations. While the research identified gendered structures in indoor markets, which reflect those in the broader economy, the findings also contest gender-specific constructions of exploitation and agency through emphasising the diverse experiences of both male and female sex workers. I argue for development of a continuum of agency, which incorporates interlinking concepts such as respect, recognition and economic status and includes both commercial and private intimate relations. I contend that acknowledgement of sexual labour as work is a necessary precondition for recognising sex workers rights and reducing instances of physical and social disrespect. Nonetheless, this is not sufficient to counter social stigma, which is perpetuated by state discourses and policy campaigns which fail to recognise sex workers voices and, in doing so, create new forms of social injustice.