Community-Based Responses to Negative Health Impacts of Sexual Humanitarian Anti-Trafficking Policies and the Criminalization of Sex Work and Migration in the US

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 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.

Anti-Trafficking in the Time of FOSTA/SESTA: Networked Moral Gentrification and Sexual Humanitarian Creep

“…Post-FOSTA/SESTA, people seen as vulnerable to trafficking may still experience typical forms of street-based policing and vice operations orchestrated by the police. However, participants in our study, many of whom are cisgender and transgender migrants of color, highlighted other harms too-for instance, being forced back to the street and into riskier situations (Hoefinger et al 2020) and difficulties screening clients. Still others described difficulties engaging in harm reduction strategies like sharing information with peers online, a loss of earnings, and housing and food instability linked to the shuttering of particular sites including but not limited to Backpage (Chapman-Schmidt 2019, p. 185).…”

“…An overarching critique of anti-trafficking efforts tied to the criminal legal system is that it transforms seemingly protective laws into a gendered and racialized pipeline to criminal legal system involvement, a trend that expands the criminalization of youth and adults who trade sex, irrespective of whether they self-identify as "trafficked" or not, while enhancing law enforcement authority to surveil and control groups deemed "at risk" (Musto 2016;Gruber et al 2016, p. 15). Negative health outcomes and legal consequences also accompany these interventions (Hoefinger et al 2020;Gruber et al 2016). These trends preclude the passage of FOSTA/SESTA.…”

Early Assessment of Integrated Knowledge Translation Efforts to Mobilize Sex Workers in Their Communities

“…Interviews with members of participating sex worker and allied organizations showed they collectively agreed that training sex workers about their diversity and how to mobilize their occupational and social rights was an ideal way to refocus the research funds to help sex worker organizations and allied agencies achieve some of their longer-range goals. Being open to change, after inviting community partners to the research table is especially important for sexual minorities and other marginalized groups who face daily indignities and is one way to gain trust and maintain a facilitative process (Anasti, 2017 ; Hoefinger et al, 2019 ). In this way, the actual topic of research is less important in collaborative research projects than the process undertaken.…”

“…Policy responses emerging from this body of research includes the use of criminal laws to prohibit commercial sex, media, and other campaigns to condemn it, and exiting programs for workers and rehabilitation programs for men who purchase sex (Thomas, 2009 ). Active sex workers and the organizations providing peer support and advocacy on their behalf are routinely not invited to the research table (Anasti, 2017 ; Hoefinger et al, 2019 ).…”

Framing the Mother Tac: The Racialised, Sexualised and Gendered Politics of Modern Slavery in Australia

“…(1) racialised and gendered constructions of female villainism, (2) agentic accounts of excessive suffering and bounded exploitation (Mai 2018), and (3) a commitment to demonstrating Australia's hard line against modern slavery. By doing so, we contribute to the theoretical landscape of critical anti-trafficking scholarship, which seeks to problematise and deconstruct the way law enforcement, humanitarian interventions, and approaches to human trafficking and modern slavery are driven by anti-sex work and anti-migration agendas and focus on the prosecution of traffickers and immigration offenders rather than on the support and well-being of sex workers with experiences of trafficking and exploitation (Mai 2018;Hoefinger et al 2020;Fehrenbacher et al 2020). In the conclusion, we make recommendations based on our findings.…”