Anti-Trafficking in the Time of Fosta/Sesta

Networked Moral Gentrification and Sexual Humanitarian Creep

Bibliographic Data

ID5936629
AuthorsJ Musto (0000-0002-3925-6228, Wellesley College), Anne E Fehrenbacher (0000-0002-0880-2660, University of California, Los Angeles), H Hoefinger (0000-0002-1312-1229, Berkeley College), N Mai (0000-0001-6073-0820, University of Newcastle Australia), P G Macioti (0000-0003-3742-5726, University of Technology Sydney), Calum Bennachie (0000-0001-9250-676X, Kingston University), C Giametta (0000-0003-1351-9103, Aix-Marseille Université), Kate D’adamo (Reframe Health and Justice, Washington, DC 20002, USA)
Year2021
Volume10
Issue2
Pages58
Publication date2021-02-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2076-0760 • E-ISSN: 2076-0760
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/socsci10020058
OpenAlexW3127381373
LanguageEN
Citations received29
References cited22

Globally, sex workers have highlighted the harms that accompany anti-prostitution efforts advanced via anti-trafficking policy, and there is a growing body of social science research that has emerged documenting how anti-trafficking efforts contribute to carceral and sexual humanitarian interventions. Yet mounting evidence on the harms of anti-trafficking policies has done little to quell the passage of more laws, including policies aimed at stopping sexual exploitation facilitated by technology. The 2018 passage of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the corresponding Senate bill, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), is a case study in how efforts to curb sexual exploitation online actually heighten vulnerabilities for the people they purport to protect. Drawing on 34 months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with sex workers and trafficked persons (n = 58) and key informants (n = 20) in New York and Los Angeles, we analyze FOSTA/SESTA and its harmful effects as a launchpad to more broadly explore how technology, criminalization, shifting governance arrangements, and conservative moralities cohere to exacerbate sex workers' vulnerability

Business · Computer security · Corporate governance · Criminalization · Criminology · Ethnography · Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV · Human sexuality · Human trafficking · Political science · Psychological intervention · Sex trafficking · Sex work · Sociology · Vulnerability (computing · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk · Law · Medicine · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology

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