We are living in a time of great panic about “sex trafficking”—an idea whose meaning has been expanded beyond any real usefulness by evangelicals, conspiracy theorists, anti-prostitution feminists, and politicians with their own agendas. This is especially visible during events like the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games, when claims circulate that as many as 40,000 women and girls will be sex trafficked. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Brazil as well as interviews with sex workers, policymakers, missionaries, and activists in Russia, Qatar, Japan, the UK, and South Africa, Gregory Mitchell shows that despite baseless statistical claims to the contrary, sex trafficking never increases as a result of these global mega-events—but police violence against sex workers always does.
While advocates have long decried this myth, Mitchell follows the discourse across host countries to ask why this panic so easily embeds during these mega-events. What fears animate it? Who profits? He charts the move of sex trafficking into the realm of the spectacular—street protests, awareness-raising campaigns, telenovelas, social media, and celebrity spokespeople—where it then spreads across borders. This trend is dangerous because these events happen in moments of nationalist fervor during which fears of foreigners and migrants are heightened and easily exploited to frightening ends.
Gregory Mitchell is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Williams College and author of Tourist Attractions: Performing Race and Masculinity in Brazil's Sexual Economy.
"Panics without Borders is rooted in the responses of sex workers who are impacted by human rights abuses that happen to us under the guise of rescue missions. Bravely treading geographies of violence, the book surveys the rise of the anti-trafficking industry through a study of xenophobic, racist, anti-sex-worker campaigns and policies during global sports events."—Carol Leigh, Director of BAYSWAN
"Panics without Borders maps the sex trafficking discourse on a global stage and powerfully reveals how larger political patterns of corruption and the weaponization of false statistics lead to the proliferation of harmful myths, which spur moral panics to justify the hyperpolicing of sex workers. This book examines the dangerous shifts within sex-trafficking movements and reveals how women become collateral damage under the guise of rescue and protection. This book is essential reading for understanding bigger questions about how data can be manipulated to serve political purposes and the consequences it has on the lives of real people all around the world."—Kimberly Kay Hoang, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago, and author of Dealing in Desire and Spiderweb Capitalism
"Panics without Borders will make an important contribution in the current literature on sex trafficking. I have not seen any book of this kind that is truly comparative in scope and that challenges the myth of the 40,000 missing girls. It gives serious attention to how the people supposedly being trafficked understand themselves in the world."—Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, author of Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil
"Panics without Borders is the first full-length ethnography to focus on mega events and the trafficking myth. It provides ethnographic evidence to refute the baseless claim that sports events correspond with increases in sex trafficking and exploitation."—Erica Lorraine Williams, author of Sex Tourism in Bahia
318 pp.6 x 9Illus: 7 b/w photos
9780520381773$29.95|£25.00Paper
Sep 2022