The trouble with trafficking: Conceptualizing women's sexual labor and economic human rights

The “trafficking debates” have divided radical and sex work feminists who disagree on the relation of trafficking to prostitution and the best ways to advocate for women in the international sex trade. I analyze the ways that paid sexual labor has been conceptualized in the debates, suggesting that women's economic rights have either been ignored or too narrowly defined, and I argue for the incorporation of a critical analysis of women's rights and security under globalization. Feminist scholars, especially those in the social sciences, can contribute by developing a political economy of the international sex trade that explicitly analyzes gender, class, racial/ethnic and national inequalities in comparative and global contexts. Such an approach could help reorient the trafficking debates and focus attention on the intersecting inequalities that facilitate and are reinforced by the international sex trade.