College Students\u27 Perceptions of Sex Work and Sex Trafficking

The media, public policy, law enforcement, and anti-trafficking campaigns often conflate sex work and sex trafficking, which have negative consequences for both sex workers and those trafficked, and may leave the public misinformed. To assess the degree of confusion over this conflation, this study examined students\u27 attitudes and knowledge on various elements of sex work and sex trafficking. Using an online convenience sample of 160 undergraduate students, 75.6% of participants agreed there is a difference between sex work and sex trafficking, yet results showed they were drastically misinformed about the differences. When presented with a series of news articles and vignettes containing sex work scenarios, the majority of participants believed non-trafficking instances to be cases of sex trafficking. Furthermore, 86.9% agreed that sex trafficking is a highly organized crime, and 89.4% agreed that sex trafficking is a threat to the US. In reality, however, there is no evidence that sex trafficking is a highly organized crime, and viewing sex trafficking as a national threat has provided support to the police to conduct broad-sweeping enforcement tactics that do little to curb sex trafficking, but largely negatively impacts marginalized sex workers (e.g., immigrants, women of color) through arrest and deportation (Meshkovska, Siegel, Stutterheim, & Bos, 2015). Overall, it is recommended the legal definitions of sex work and sex trafficking be assessed and revised to reduce conflation, and changes be made in the way sex work and sex trafficking are depicted and described in the media, public policy, law enforcement, and anti-trafficking campaigns