Edited by Shira M. Goldenberg , Ruth Morgan Thomas , Anna Forbes, Stefan Baral

This open access book provides a comprehensive overview of the health inequities and human rights issues faced by sex workers globally across diverse contexts, and outlines evidence-based strategies and best practices. Sex workers face severe health and social inequities, largely as the result of structural factors including punitive and criminalized legal environments, stigma, and social and economic exclusion and marginalization. Although previous work has largely emphasized an elevated burden and gaps in HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) services in sex work, less attention has been paid to the broader health and human rights concerns faced by sex workers. This contributed volume addresses this gap. The chapters feature a variety of perspectives including academic, community, implementing partners, and government to synthesize research evidence as well as lessons learned from local-level experiences across different regions, and are organized under three parts: Burden of health and human rights inequities faced by sex workers globally, including infectious diseases (e.g., HIV, STIs), violence, sexual and reproductive health, and drug use Structural determinants of health and human rights, including legislation, law enforcement, community engagement, intersectoral collaboration, stigma, barriers to health access, im/migration issues, and occupational safety and health Evidence-based services and best practices at various levels ranging from individual and community to policy-level interventions to identify best practices and avenues for future research and interventions Sex Work, Health, and Human Rights is an essential resource for researchers, policy-makers, governments, implementing partners, international organizations and community-based organizations involved in research, policies, or programs related to sex work, public health, social justice, gender-based violence, women's health and harm reduction.

Cham: Springer, 2021. 272p.

EDITED BY Thomas E. Sheridan and Randall H. McGuire

The Border and Its Bodies examines the impact of migration from Central America and México to the United States on the most basic social unit possible: the human body. It explores the terrible toll migration takes on the bodies of migrants—those who cross the border and those who die along the way—and discusses the treatment of those bodies after their remains are discovered in the desert. The increasingly militarized U.S.-México border is an intensely physical place, affecting the bodies of all who encounter it. The essays in this volume explore how crossing becomes embodied in individuals, how that embodiment transcends the crossing of the line, and how it varies depending on subject positions and identity categories, especially race, class, and citizenship. Timely and wide-ranging, this book brings into focus the traumatic and real impact the border can have on those who attempt to cross it, and it offers new perspectives on the effects for rural communities and ranchers. An intimate and profoundly human look at migration, The Border and Its Bodies reminds us of the elemental fact that the border touches us all.

Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2019.

By The Scottish Government, Social Research

This paper is part of a series of rapid evidence summaries which aim to explore current understanding of prevention strategies and interventions in relation to human trafficking and exploitation in the UK. These include an overarching paper on prevention approaches, and three smaller, more focused reviews on preventing criminal exploitation, sexual exploitation and labour exploitation. This paper focuses on the prevention of criminal exploitation of adults and children, with a focus on the latter, reflecting the evidence base. It was undertaken to inform the Scottish Government’s refresh of its Trafficking and Exploitation Strategy. Whilst evidence is lacking on ‘what works’ to prevent criminal exploitation, the available information hopefully provides some useful insight into the challenges and opportunities for prevention. The research findings and views summarised in this report do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Scottish Government or Scottish Ministers.

Key findings

Robust evidence on public health approaches to preventing criminal exploitation is lacking, and in particular evidence on primary and secondary prevention interventions. There is therefore a lack of robust ‘what works’ evidence on how to prevent and respond to criminal exploitation.

That said, a number of common themes for preventing criminal exploitation arose in the literature reviewed. These included the need for more effective multi-agency working and information sharing; better evidence and data; and calls for a statutory definition of criminal exploitation.

Other ‘promising practices’, mostly relating to child exploitation, were methods for engaging with children and young people at risk of exploitation (e.g. mentors); specialist education and therapeutic support in schools (e.g. restorative justice); and, effective training and awareness raising for those in contact with children, young people and/or families.

Though early intervention (secondary prevention) is considered essential to prevent and respond to child criminal exploitation, the literature reviewed for this paper raises concerns about a lack of a contextual safeguarding approach - which assesses risks outside the family/home environment, including online.

Much of the literature focuses on the criminal justice response (tertiary prevention). A common theme concerning child exploitation was the prioritisation of prosecution over safeguarding.

Also in relation to tertiary prevention, the literature reviewed raises a number of concerns about service responses. Access to tailored, specialist support for criminal exploitation is reported to be limited in the UK. Moreover, a lack of suitable accommodation and appropriate mental health support were flagged as key barriers to preventing child re-exploitation.

Edinburgh: The Scottish Government, 2025. 17p.