Tourists as sex buyers : An ethnographic study of the interaction between tourists and the sex industry in Thailand

The aim of this study is to investigate how it is possible that tourists who are not actively seeking child prostitutes still account for the majority of child sex tourists. The study includes tourists, locals, people working in the sex industry and staff from Swedish embassy and ECPAT international in Bangkok. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach and an ethnographic method, using field observations and interviews to collect the empirical data. The data has then been categorized in to different themes and analyzed using previous research on the subject. Hirschis theory of social bonds was then used to further interpret the results. The results of this study show that the tourists in Thailand, who are not seeking out child prostitutes, will most likely come in contact with them anyway. This will happen because of the availability to the vast sex industry and the fact that the sex industry markets itself by offering youthful prostitutes. The tourists will have weaker social bonds because they have left their normal social surrounding but depending on how weak these social bonds are the tourists may or may not experiment with buying sex. In combination with that about 25 percent of the prostitutes are under the age of 18, this may lead to that some of the tourists will sexually abuse children even if they were not seeking them out