ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part explores global discourses on the sex industry from the Americas, Europe, and Africa to demonstrate the complexity inherent to prostitution and its regulation within particular contexts while remaining attuned to how such discourses circulate among and within these contexts in ways that directly impact sex workers’ lives. It examines how these global knowledge flows adhere to particular cultural scripts and political rhetoric that, in turn, provide them with performative powers. The part identifies gaps between dominant anti-trafficking discourses of rescue/reintegration and the realities faced “on the ground” by third-sector and government workers tasked with the policing or management of commercial sex. It analyzes the challenges and benefits of a participatory arts-based project with sex workers that facilitated creative self-expression and capacity-building to assist sex workers in producing a newsletter to help them advocate for their rights.
