Renewing the War on prostitution: The spectres of 'trafficking' and 'slavery' |
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| Authors: | Guest editorial by Sophie Day |
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| Institution: | Began her study of sex workers in 1986, and has since conducted a series of studies on the sex industry. Together with Helen Ward she established the Praed Street Project in the 1980s, a service for sex workers that includes clinical and outreach arms as well as providing advice and referrals. This project is now supported by the National Health Service. She was awarded the Wellcome Medal for her monograph On the game;(2007). |
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| Abstract: | The 1990s saw government initiatives restricting immigration in many countries, and a good deal of popular unease. Associated policies have targeted sex workers, as with the Policing and Crime Bill that is currently in its Third Reading in the House of Commons (UK). In the name of 'victims' of a trade organised by 'evil' traffickers, this Bill seeks further sanctions against all of those involved. This editorial asks whether initiatives during the current recession might not seem to succeed but for the wrong reasons. Immigrants are already leaving the UK in search of a living while local workers, who were promised safer working conditions in the wake of the murder of five women in Ipswich (2006), will be punished more and more. With its apparently humanitarian efforts to 'stop the traffic', the UK government will turn out to have replaced our 'slaves' from abroad with home-grown substitutes, and effectively solidified and further excluded an underclass. This situation suggests striking parallels with the panic over white slavery during the last comparable period of globalisation culminating in the First World War. |
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