Young Women involved in the Sex Economy in Chicago: In Their Own Words

• In Event: 304 - Regular Session. Children/Youth/Adolescents: Youth Identities: Voices and Perspectives

Abstract

The majority of research and popular discourse surrounding young women involved in the street sex trade argues that underage girls are coerced into the trade by controlling adults and need to be rescued. Listening to what young women involved in the sex economy have to say reveals a more complex picture. This paper draws on focus group interviews conducted in 2006 and field interviews conducted from 2011 to 2013 with youth involved in trading sex for money or other survival needs in an urban setting. Accounts of the ideas and activities of young women who addressed this issue directly complicate three popular discourses surrounding the issue: the notion of a universal, ahistorical, uncritical “childhood innocence” approach to understanding the plight of contemporary disenfranchised young urban women of color; the idea of a homogenous and universal “type” of commercially sexually exploited child; and their representation as “trafficked victims in need of rescuing” that permeates the dominant discourses around adolescent girls, sexuality, financial survival, and the legal system. Through a positive youth-strengths perspective, young women are positioned as experts of their lives. In addition to deepening our understanding of the contexts of their plight, this perspective locates youth as resourceful actors fighting an onslaught of brutal injustice such as homelessness, family violence, sexual assault, and more. This contextual positioning of youth is rare and not usually available to them—or the public—because the young women have been represented, and therefore have seen themselves, in the derogative as prostitutes, victims, and delinquents.

Author

• Laurie Schaffner, University of Illinois-Chicago