Bharatanatyam dancers. Arian Zwegers/Flickr. Creative Commons.
One of the most perplexing features of contemporary child prostitution and sexual trafficking discourses is their conflation with one another. The sexual labour of children is often described as child prostitution and unproblematically equated with the distinctive phenomenon of ‘child trafficking.’ This occurs with such frequency and inattention to cultural context, with such disregard for the lived experiences of the children or youth involved, that many people are often confused. Identifying the unique but overlapping socio-economic, sexual, and political features of child prostitution and sexual trafficking is critical to alleviating this confusion. I seek to nuance discussions of these phenomena using the examples of the Devadasis in India and ‘sex trafficking’ in Canada.
