Selling Sex Overseas

2013 Outstanding Book Award Winner from the Division of International Criminology, American Society of Criminology Every year, thousands of Chinese women travel to Asia and the United States in order to engage in commercial sex work. In Selling Sex Overseas, Ko-lin Chin and James Finckenauer challenge the current sex trafficking paradigm that considers all sex workers as victims, or sexual slaves, and as unwilling participants in the world of commercial sex. Bringing to life an on-the-ground portrait of this usually hidden world, Chin and Finckenauer provide a detailed look at all of its participants: sex workers, pimps, agents, mommies, escort agency owners, brothel owners, and drivers. Ultimately, they probe the social, economic, and political organization of prostitution and sex trafficking, contradicting many of the ‘moral crusaders’ of the human trafficking world.

Every year, thousands of Chinese women travel to Asia and the United States in order to engage in commercial sex work. InSelling Sex Overseas, Ko-lin Chin and James Finckenauer challenge the current sex trafficking paradigm that considers all sex workers as victims, or sexual slaves, and as unwilling participants in the world of commercial sex. Bringing to life an on-the-ground portrait of this usually hidden world, Chin and Finckenauer provide a detailed look at all of its participants: sex workers, pimps, agents, mommies, escort agency owners, brothel owners, and drivers. Ultimately, they probe the social, economic, and political organization of prostitution and sex trafficking, contradicting many of the 'moral crusaders' of the human trafficking world.

Men Who Sell Sex is the first comprehensive international account of male prostitution and AIDS. While much is known about female prostitution and sex work, relatively little is known about men who sell sex - either to women or other men. This book brings together an authoritative collection of essays from different countries and examines sexual behaviour, the reasons men sell sex, the meanings involved, and implications for HIV prevention. The authors are all experts in their fields and individual chapters offer a compelling description of the reasons men sell sex and the pleasures and risks involved.

In Chongqing, Ling Ling had been a waitress earning twenty-five dollars a month; a few years later in Hong Kong she was making six times that each day. Kelly taught preschool in Beijing for ten years before moving to LA and opening a brothel. These are just two of the eighteen Chinese women interviewed in this book about how they came to sell sex in Hong Kong, Macau, Taipei, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Los Angeles, and New York. The women’s candid stories put a human face on globalized commercial sex and off er a raw, inside view of the moneydriven transnational sex industry. The author, an expert in the field of criminal justice, frames these personal accounts with contextual details and incisive commentary to provide a rich understanding of the realities and myths of prostitution and global sex trafficking. Every year, the United States alone spends hundreds of millions on programs to combat human trafficking and rescue trafficked victims. But what do sex workers themselves have to say about these issues? These eighteen interviews were gathered as part of an extensive research project for the author’s 2012 book, Selling Sex Overseas. With the publication of these full, unvarnished accounts, we are now able to hear firsthand how and why these women left China to work in the sex trade abroad, how much they make, what hardships they face, and what hopes they have for the future. What Others Are Saying “Ko-lin’s in-depth fieldwork has set a new standard for nuanced sociological inquiry into thorny social issues. The women he interviews deserve not judgment but understanding of the complex circumstances and challenges they face. Through sheer tenacity and painstaking documentation, Ko-lin allows us to see for ourselves the human stories behind each veiled entrance and every dimly lit doorway.” —Sheldon Zhang, San Diego State University “Ambitious in global scope while staying focused on individual stories, this book vividly and poignantly reveals the impact of anti-traffi cking laws and campaigns on the everyday experiences of Chinese sex workers overseas, and illuminates the ways these policies imperil the very people they purport to assist.”—Tiantian Zheng, Professor, Anthropology Highlights - Stories of life in the transnational sex trade, told by the women themselves - Details on the inner workings of the sex industry - Interviews collected and presented by an expert on Asian criminal networks - On-the-ground perspectives on transnational sex trafficking

"Despite being dubbed "the world's oldest profession," prostitution has rarely been viewed as a legitimate form of labour. Instead, it has been criminalized, sensationalized, and polemicized across the socio-political spectrum by everyone from politicians to journalists to women's groups. Interest in and concern over sex work is not grounded in the lived realities of those who work in the industry, but rather in inflammatory ideas about who is participating, how they wound up in this line of work, and what form it takes. In Selling Sex, Emily van der Meulen, Elya M. Durisin, and Victoria Love present a more nuanced, balanced, and realistic view of the sex industry. They bring together a vast collection of voices - including researchers, feminists, academics, and advocates, as well as sex workers of differing ages, genders, and sectors - to engage in a dialogue that challenges the dominant narratives surrounding the sex industry and advances the idea that sex work is in fact work. Presenting a variety of opinions and perspectives on such diverse topics as the social stigma of sex work, police violence, labour organizing, anti-prostitution feminism, human trafficking, and harm reduction, Selling Sex is an eye-opening, challenging, and necessary book."--Publisher's website.

Provides a history of prostitution in Australia from before European colonisation, and situates this history within an international context of labour migration and policy formation. This work draws on archival research and interviews to chart the ways in which prostitution contributed to women's economic survival and to colonisation.

Selling Sex in the City offers a worldwide analysis of prostitution since 1600. It analyses more than 20 cities with an important sex industry and compares policies and social trends, coercion and agency, but also prostitutes' working and living conditions.