ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes some of the prevailing discourses on the sex industry in the Americas, Europe, and Africa, the regions in which we have each worked for many years. Globally, regulations designed to govern the sex industry derive from ideological stances that reflect dominant cultural values and social concerns, including those regarding sexual behaviours, public health, labor, and human rights. Neo-abolitionists in the Americas regard all aspects of the sex industry as morally reprehensible either because of its perceived violation of religious-moral principles. As a geographical entity, Europe is the smallest of the continents, although its political boundaries and borders remain contested around divergent notions of what constitutes a modern and unitary European identity and what might be its core values. The anti-prostitution movement, perhaps, the dominant voice on sex work in Africa, rejects sex work as a viable means of livelihood or economic survival. Criminal justice-social services alliances are a poorly developed response to sex work in Africa.
