Survivors of sex trafficking report numerous intrapersonal, interpersonal, and contextual challenges which likely play a role in their transition out of commercial sexual exploitation. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to begin investigating survivors’ perceptions of the transition process, namely barriers they encounter along the way. Researchers facilitated semi-structured qualitative interviews with six survivors enrolled in a residential recovery program. Analyses yielded two themes: 1) intrapersonal barriers and 2) service barriers. Intrapersonal barriers included codes such as emotional control, self-perception, addiction, and mental health. Service barriers included codes related to specialized professional support, non-professional support, tangible resources, and intangible resources. This poster will provide an overview of themes and codes, as well as a description of the practical significance of the study results. Findings have important implications for the broader understanding of sex trafficking survivor needs during a particularly vulnerable point in their long-term recovery process.

Trafficking for sexual exploitation is a phenomenon that greatly affects the individual as well as society. The effect is grim for the victims and their families, as sex trafficking violates their basic human rights, can shatter families, and cause severe psychological trauma. Sex trafficking has also negative effects on societies, it can adversely affect the economy, public health, national security, and gender equality. Policies have been implemented in response to sex trafficking, both in Sweden and in Europe. The thesis aims to show how sex trafficking is framed by the Swedish Government and the European Commission, based on the application of framing theory integrated with Bacchi's WPR-approach. The research method used is a qualitative, descriptive, comparative, small-N case study with a qualitative content analysis of textual data. Through this method, 11 different documents provided by the Swedish Government and the European Commission were analyzed. The result of the analysis shows that the documents from the Swedish Government use a more prominent frame of human rights, while for European Commission the most significant was organized crime. When it comes to Bacchi’s WPR-approach, the underlying assumptions behind these frames can be argued to be influenced by the national versus supra-national level and how many actors are involved, as well as ideological and legislative differences. Silences were complicated to find in the European Commission, while in the Swedish Government, sovereignty was not discussed. There could also be seen a difference in trend over time, where the European Commissionshifted more towards ‘human rights’ as recently as 2020-2021, while the Swedish Government was more constant in their frame of ‘human rights’.

By working with an anti-human trafficking organization in Sarasota, Florida, and sex-worker activists based in St. Petersburg, Florida, this research focuses on the process by which trafficking victims and sex workers are identified and dealt with by the criminal justice system and NGO rehabilitation programs. The study focused on understanding how stakeholders decide between identifying someone as a criminal or a victim of sex trafficking and how women identify themselves and subjectively experience their interaction with the criminal justice system and a faith-based rehabilitation program. By exploring the victims’ process of going through the criminal justice system, this study problematizes the ideas of victim certification, diversion programming, and the idea that sex work is inherently exploitative and never agentive. Due to anti-prostitution laws in the United States (US), the lack of trauma-informed care within the criminal justice system, and the stigma surrounding sex work that stems from dominant American culture, sex workers and trafficking victims are often further harmed when they become involved with the criminal justice system. My findings reveal narratives produced around the “innocent victim” perpetuate an image of human trafficking that focuses on White women and children in forced prostitution. This image contributes to constructions of ‘deservingness’ for different populations involved in exchanging sex and alters whether or not individuals are identified as victims of sex trafficking depending on their adherence to this narrative. Common narratives surrounding trafficking can also harm sex workers who want to be recognized as agentive adults in the sex industry. I present the multiple realities that exist in the criminal/legal systems surrounding sex trafficking and consensual sex work in Florida and how participants perceive their treatment by various organizations such as law enforcement, the court system, diversion programs, and NGOs by conducting interview analysis, participant observation, and performance ethnography through the production of a fictionalized scene written with research participants and stakeholders.

Sex trafficking is a form of modern slavery which includes the sexual exploitation of individuals for personal gain. It currently affects 4 million people globally, and around 9 thousand in Europe. Although it affects individuals of all genders, races and sexual orientations, women and young girls have been recognised as the most vulnerable segment, accounting for 72% of victims in Europe. Along these lines, the majority of suspected and convicted sex traffickers in Europe are male individuals. It has been described as a discrete and subtle crime, hidden in plain sight, affecting every facet of society. In the tourism industry, the most affected segment is the hotel sector, which possesses some characteristics which act as enablers of sex trafficking. However, previous research has failed to properly identify such characteristics. In fact, sex trafficking is generally a highly neglected topic in research. To fill the current research gap, the thesis aimed at identifying, from employees´ perspective, the factors of the hotel industry which act as sex trafficking enablers in Amsterdam. The latter was chosen as focus area mainly because of its legislate on on prostitution, which was legalised in 1999. Previous research has recognised such legalisation as a challenge for institutions fighting sex trafficking, and various authors have recognised the importance of scientific research to solve the issue in the area. Through 15 individual interviews and two online questionnaires, this thesis identified 15 factors which act as crime enablers in the hotel industry in Amsterdam. They have been divided into macro, meso or micro level, depending on their nature. Among the main findings there are: the impact of current legislations, the police, hospitability and transiency, training and ease of access. These findings stand out because redeemed as having the most potential in contributing to fighting the issue, if properly taken into consideration. They summarize the need for a proper support system designed by the police and the government, which takes into consideration hospitability and transiency as characteristics of the hotel industry exploited by sex traffickers and takes a closer look at hotels with inappropriate training and ease of access to the hotel rooms, as these might be more susceptible to sex trafficking. The thesis is descriptive in nature; thus, it does not aim at finding solutions to the findings. The thesis concludes by giving suggestions of further research, such as adopting a strategic approach to find solutions to the identified factors.

Sex trafficking is a global phenomenon affecting mainly women. This phenomenon is highly apparent in Greece, where thousands of migrant women end up trafficked. In order to understand why this happens, it is important to know the underlying causes of it. Therefore, this researched aimed to find the reasons why migrant women end up as sex trafficking victims in Greece. This was done through primary material gathering, in form of interviews with anti-trafficking agents in Greece, followed by a theme analysis, finding six key themes with reasons why migrant women are trafficked. These were, Vulnerability (of migrant women), Greece as the Portal to the EU, Government Deficiency, Hostility and Segregation (hostility of Greek national towards migrants which leads to their segregation), Trafficking as a Profitable Industry and Cultural Gender Oppression. To further analyze these themes, a triangulation method was used, which compared these results to previous literature on the issue and then further problematized it through different migration and gender-related theories.

This thesis explores to what extent prostitution policy can influence human trafficking for sexual purposes. It questions if criminalization of prostitution and legalization of prostitution can result in different outcomes, interfering with sex trafficking. This research is conducted as a comparative case study where Sweden illustrates the criminalization of prostitution and the Netherlands legalization of prostitution.  This study will focus on three main theories to understand the complexity behind the issue and the background of the different policy designs. First, the three-pronged approach commonly used in trafficking legislation will be implemented as a framework to analyze the national action plans to combat human trafficking. Moreover, the prostitution policies will be explored from a sexual liberal and radical feminist perspective. The main findings are that both criminalization and legalization of prostitution affect the establishment of sex trafficking within the country. Sweden and the Netherlands share the aim of combatting human trafficking by implementing their prostitution policy. However, they disagree on how to do so effectively. The conclusion will suggest that both approaches can succeed if enough resources and funding are put towards the issue.

In the relatively sparse field of economics of prostitution, studies have in recent years investigated the relationship between prostitution legislation and the presence of sex trafficking. This study investigates the issue further by using both a cross country model with time fixed effects and a country fixed effect model to estimate the effect on the amount of sex trafficking of changing legislation to the so-called Nordic Model, something no other known study has managed to do. In contrast to what previous research has estimated, this thesis finds no significant effect on sex trafficking from changing legislation to the Nordic Model. The obvious difficulties of presenting reliable data on an illegal activity such as sex trafficking and the fact that few countries have changed their legislation to the Nordic Model are likely reasons to the insignificant results and cautions against a causal interpretation.

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This study aims to explore the working methods used by service providers in Germany when working with women affected by sex trafficking, as well as connected challenges and how these can be tackled. The authors used a qualitative research approach, semi-structured interviews were used as a data collection tool. The participants of the study consisted of four service providers working with women affected by sex trafficking in Germany. The collected empirical data was analysed with the ecological systems theory. The collected data was divided into three themes: methods and interventions, challenges, and tackling challenges and desired changes. These themes represented the most important information collected within this study.  These findings illustrate trust-building as the most important method to effectively work with women affected by sex trafficking. Besides that, one of the key challenges identified was lack of awareness and misconceptions on the issue of sex trafficking.

Thesis advisor: Thomas M. Crea / Thesis advisor: Scott D. Easton / This qualitative study collected and analyzed original interview data with mental health clinicians and survivor mentors exploring their perspectives on and experiences in aftercare/recovery work with survivors of domestic and international sex trafficking in the United States, through multidisciplinary and multisystemic contexts. This study addresses the significant gap of research on mental health recovery support with survivors of sex trafficking, which exists despite disturbing prevalence rates of sex trafficking, especially amongst girls and women of Color living in the United States. The study examined mental health providers’ perspectives on treatment approaches they employ, the processes they find to be effective, and their views on emancipatory approaches in recovery work. This study collected, transcribed, and analyzed semi-structured interview data with 13 mental health providers (including clinicians and peer/survivor mentors), and employed qualitative conventional content analysis. The study is the first to explore mental health providers’ experiences with service provision/accompaniment with a focus specifically on their work within multidisciplinary and multisystemic environments. It aims to increase understanding about the perspectives and approaches held by multidisciplinary therapists and survivor mentors, who specialize in accompanying survivors of sex trafficking, and may hold important insights into this complex work. The study found that therapists and peer mentors are challenged by barriers, and leverage key opportunities in their work through multidisciplinary and multisystemic contexts, and benefit from partnering with each other in survivor recovery work. It also found that survivor community and peer mentors are central to aftercare/recovery work, and that providers work to employ an intersectional/emancipatory healing lens. Analyses identified fifteen approaches to recovery work, organized into four categories: 1) integrated structural and trauma-sensitive emotional support; 2) community and emancipatory healing approaches; 3) peer mentor as a critical role; and 4) multiple systems challenge recovery. Implications for future research, clinical practice and policy are discussed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.