migration and trafficking

Policy Brief: Sex Workers and Travel Restrictions

Sex workers face many barriers to migration and travel, and are often subjected to arbitrary questioning, biased visa refusals and surveillance and discriminatory immigration checks after entering a country. Sex workers’ movement can also be restricted under measures purporting to be ‘anti-trafficking’. Travel restrictions can create a great deal of stress for sex workers, and some sex workers avoid travel altogether because they are afraid of being denied entry, deported or of being identified as a sex worker.

The Anti-Trafficking Review: Special Issue – Sex Work

This special issue of the Anti-Trafficking Review highlights some of the current achievements of, and challenges faced by, the global sex workers' rights movement. Contributors examine the ways in which organising and collectivisation have enabled sex workers to speak up for themselves and tell their own stories, claim their human, social, and labour rights, resist stigma and punitive laws and policies, and provide mutual and peer-based support.

Community Guide: The Impact of Anti-trafficking Legislation and Initiatives on Sex Workers

This resource is a Community Guide to the Policy Brief: The Impact of Anti-trafficking Legislation and Initiatives on Sex Workers. It provides an overview of the full Policy Brief, and provides key recommendations for policy makers and health service providers. 

RAIDED: How Anti-Trafficking Strategies Increase Sex Workers' Vulnerability to Exploitative Practices

RAIDED was developed to forefront the experiences of women in sex work who have been raided, rescued and rehabilitated under the provision of anti-trafficking initiatives in India. It examines women’s narratives along with quantitative data about the strategies of raid, rescue and rehabilitation deployed to combat trafficking of women into sex work. The study unravels the impact of laws and policies on the lives of sex workers.

Policy Brief: The Impact of Anti-trafficking Legislation and Initiatives on Sex Workers

Trafficking in persons has generated increasing global attention in recent decades, largely due to the development of international frameworks, pressure from fundamental feminist and abolitionist groups, and as a reaction to increased migration for labour. International policies on trafficking frequently contain vague or ambiguous language, which can cause harm to sex workers in a number of ways.

Anti-Trafficking Review: Special Issue – Irregular Migrants, Refugees or Trafficked Persons?

International migration has become a ‘mega trend’ of our times, with more than 260 million migrants living outside their country of origin in 2017. Some move in search of better livelihood opportunities, others flee conflict, environmental degradation or natural disasters, and yet others are deceived or coerced into exploitative work. At the same time, the categories developed by the international community for people on the move—such as smuggled migrants, refugees, or trafficked persons—are increasingly inadequate to capture today’s complex migration flows.

GHJP Reports on 'Prostitution Diversion Programs'

Yale Global Health Justice Partnership (GHJP) has released two complementary analyses on prostitution “diversion” programs (PDPs) in the USA: Diversion from Justice: 'A Rights-Based Analysis of Local ‘Prostitution Diversion Programs’ and their Impacts on People in the Sex Sector in the United States'; and 'Un-Meetable Promises: Rhetoric and Reality in New York City’s Human Trafficking Intervention Courts'. One is national in scope and the other focused specifically on New York City programming.