Teen pimp/ Sex Worker Dyads: Coercion, Cooperation and the Political Economy of the Young

• In Event: Difficult-to-Detect-Violence: An Empirical and Political Discussion

Abstract

Many people are surprised to hear that teen pimps exist. The discourse on domestically trafficked minors tends to conjure images of adult males preying on at-risk youth who are sold to pedophilic men. While this dynamic certainly occurs, according to our research on pimps in Harlem, pimp/sex worker dyads more typically begin with teens pimping teens. Upon hearing several such narratives of teen friends selling sex and adult pimps starting as teens, the study shifted topurposive sampling of 18-23-year-old pimps (n=40). These relationships start in high school hallways, on the block, at teen social clubs or through Facebook hookups, with some to-be pimps coercively swindling their friends into sex for pay, but with many others actually beginning or developing into more cooperative entrepreneurial dyads. These young men legally qualify as domestic sex traffickers because some of their sex workers are 16 and 17, but recurrent stories of teens pimping teens across the spectrum of cooperation to coercion evince complexities glossed over in legal discourses. An under-explored factor is how most young pimps in the study were crucially influenced by the institutional processes of being young in the labor force, which speaks directly to the political economy of youth. Conventional narratives sometimes apply, but many of their accounts challenge assumptions about coercion prevalent in abolitionist and anti-trafficking discourses.

Authors

• Amber Horning, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The Graduate Center, CUNY

• Christopher Thomas, American University