Third Sector Organizations in Sex Work and Prostitution: Contested Engagements in Africa, the Americas and Europe

Third Sector Organizations in Sex Work and Prostitution is about sex work and prostitution third sector organizations (TSOs): non-governmental and non-profit organizations that provide support services to, and advocate for the well-being of people operating in the sex industries.

With a focus on three vast and extremely diverse regions, Africa, the Americas, and Europe, this book provides a unique vantage point that shows how interlinked these organizations’ histories and configurations are. TSOs are fascinating research sites because they operate as zones of contestation which translate their understandings of sex work and prostitution into different support practices and advocacy initiatives. This book reveals that these organizations are not external to normative power but participate in it and are subject to it, conditioning how they can exist, who they can reach out to, where, and what they can achieve.

Third Sector Organizations in Sex Work and Prostitution is a resource for scholars, policymakers, and activists involved in research on, and work with third sector organizations in the fields of sex work and prostitution, gender and sexuality, and human rights among others.

Isabel Crowhurst is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex, UK.

Susan Dewey is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Alabama, US.

Chimaraoke Izugbara directs the Global Health, Youth and Development program at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) headquartered in Washington, DC, US.