The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #49031

Carole S Vance, PhD, MPH, Program for the Study of Sexuality, Gender, Health, and Human Rights, Columbia University, 722 West 168 Street (#950), New York, NY 10032, 212 305 1535, csv1@columbia.edu

In the past five years, campaigns against abuse and violence associated with "trafficking" have gained momentum. Public health professionals are being called on to provide services, develop preventive strategies, and formulate policy aimed at reducing the harms and health consequences associated with trafficking.

This paper examines and analyzes the variable, often slippery definitions of "trafficking" used in contemporary policy debates and activism. The term is a contested one, incorporating elements of sexual and non-sexual labor, coercion, abusive conditions of work, migration, global inequality, gender, and sexuality in complex and varied ways. The paper argues for more careful definitions of trafficking and sex work, and demonstrates that these definitions have consequences for public health practice, as well as the health and human rights of trafficked people and sex workers.

Specifically, the paper examines five elements of "trafficking" that require more critical attention: 1) late 19th century campaigns about social purity and women's sexuality; 2) the requirement of "innocence" to qualify as a "trafficked person"; 3) the assumption that only women are trafficked; 4) the emphasis on sexual, rather than non-sexual, forms of exploitation; and 5) the focus on sex work and exploitation as an isolated moral evil, rather than a complicated and multi-layered phenomenon involving not only individuals, but institutions and flows of power. The paper demonstrates by example that definitions of trafficking are not "only words," but they have direct and observable consequences for public health practice and the individuals and groups that public health professionals wish to help.

Learning Objectives:

• recognize the diverse forms of prostitution and sex work that fall under the label "trafficking"
• analyze the relationship between specific forms of sex work and appropriate health interventions
• identify assumptions about prostitution, sex work, and trafficking which influence public health interventions

Keywords: Sex Workers, Human Populations

Related Web page: cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/gender

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.