Duplicitous Freedom: Dichotomous Markets of Care in Global Human Trafficking Rescue

• In Event: 400 - Regular Session. Labor, Gender and Care Work

Abstract

The expansive sociological literature on care work has largely excluded sex work. Focusing primarily on careers in teaching, nursing, and childcare, the analytic category of care work that
emerged in the late 90’s demanded recognition of certain forms of invisible, underpaid or non-paid, feminized forms of work. Sex work had likely been ignored as a form of care work, because sex
work is understood within a highly contested emotional and moral terrain regarding rights, women’s bodies and their relationships to sex and the market.

Since the passing of the 2000 Palermo Protocol, the global anti-trafficking movement has been defined by a crucial impasse: cemented in a modern-day sex war between abolitionists who
believe that all sex work is inherently exploitative and must universally be abolished, and those who
argue sex work must be understood as just one type of work available in a limited global economy. Rather than view the aforementioned perspectives of sex work as antithetical to one another, this paper poses them in relation to care work asking how contemporary sex work and sex trafficking rescue efforts form two inextricable forms of care work in the global economy.

Author

• Elena Shih, Brown University