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Purpose – The purpose of this study is to get information on how the communication process transaction of commercial sex workers with customer occurs in province that practices Syariah law system.

Design/Methodology/Approach – A qualitative design using phenomenological approach with purposive sampling technique was utilized to obtain data. Subjects were female commercial sex workers with age around 16–45 years. The subjects were from district Banda Sakti and Muara Dua Lhokseumawe.

Findings – The result of study showed that subjects used interpersonal communication of self-disclosure through social media communication which was supported by verbal and non-verbal communication that gives an equal reaction. The type of communication used by commercial sex workers during the process of transactions were through face to face and media communication. However, it was found some barriers that interfere while doing interpersonal communication during the transaction, such as adjustment problem of subject, an error communication, and misperception between the subject and the customer that used their services.

Research Limitations/Implications – The study only focuses on how communication process of transaction occurs; therefore, it is important to do further research that focuses on how the Syariah law system impacts psychological attitudes toward commercial sex workers and how it will reduce the activity of commercial sex workers in Aceh, as well as how the communication occurs between parent and child that contribute them to become a commercial sex worker.

Practical Implications – Government should prevent commercial sex workers increase in Aceh as well as parents should more aware about their children’s activities outside home and be more communicative with their children.

Originality/Value – This paper gives information to the Aceh government to make further decision making and implement Syariah law system consistently and with commitment.

This paper aims to describe the unique health challenges facing female commercial sex workers (FSWs), including issues related to their marginalisation and difficulty accessing health care. It proposes solutions to some of these problems.

This paper addresses this sensitive subject through the methodology of a literature review, drawing on a variety of relevant published literature to inform a modern understanding of the current health challenges faced by this population.

This paper discusses issues around criminalisation of commercial sex workers, complexities of family planning, sexually transmitted infection prevention, mental health and substance abuse and how increasing health-care worker awareness of the health needs of this vulnerable population can be a positive step in building trust within this relationship. Although adoption of the proposed recommendations put forth in this paper may help to eliminate some of the barriers encountered by female sex workers, further research is recommended.

The subject of commercial sex worker health care is neglected in the academic literature. This review explores the topic in an open and balanced manner and presents a broad and updated overview of the current health-care challenges faced by FSWs as well as opportunities for optimising access and quality of sex worker health care.

The essay aims to suggest policies that can help strategically deconstruct and dereproduce the establishment of (child) sexual exploitation in Thailand and Cambodia in phases, for the purpose of upholding child and human rights and rebranding the global image of these two regional commercial sex hubs in the long term.

This essay is constructed based on the theoretical framework of the social control and general strain theories. Supported by the theories, the essay examines what are the socioeconomic determinants driving the prevalence of the (child) commercial sex industry in Thailand and Cambodia. Here the essay highlights and summarises how the (child) commercial sex industry has been constructed and reproduced. Next, the essay presents the existing policy gaps in relation to (child) sex tourism and sex exploitation. Last, and more importantly, the essay delivers perspectives on how Thai and Cambodian lawmakers and policymakers should respond to the severe societal problems of (child) sex trafficking and prostitution in relation to the prevailing sex tourism.

At the national level, Bangkok and Phnom Penh have an urgent need to rebrand their countries, despite partially allowing commercial sex activities. Moreover, to promote gender equality, Bangkok and Phnom Penh should redistribute their education and occupational opportunities, enabling more school-aged girls or work-aged women to obtain a fairer share of life chances for self-empowerment. At the regional level, Bangkok and Phnom Penh have to tighten regulations against (child) sex exploitation. At the community level, the promotion of community policing can be conducive to minimising any prostitution activities. At the family level, more positive socialisation should be exercised. When more children, including girls, are subsidised to enter school, and are positively parented, there are more educational opportunities for school-aged cohorts.

This essay contains scholarly originality and significance in the presentation of the socioeconomic construction of (child) sexual exploitation, and its relationship to sex tourism and (child) prostitution in Thai and Cambodian contexts, grounded in up-to-date, relevant sociological arguments. A major area that identifies the originality of this essay is the examination of existing, relevant policy gaps in a timely fashion, and correspondingly, the suggestion of policy development that helps deconstruct and deproduce (child) sexual exploitation at the national, regional, community and family levels.

Historically, sex, tourism, and the labor market have long been inextricably linked, but media concerns about sex as the main purpose of tourism, and its effects on the host group and its sex workers, date from the mid-1990s, in the wake of the spread of HIV, the collapse of communism, the rise of the Internet, and the increasing influence of NGOs concerned with women's and children's welfare. This chapter argues that in order to understand fully the relationship between tourism, sex, and the labor market, we need to adopt a broader perspective and look at the various intersections between the three factors, and how they blend into and influence each other. It conceptualizes the three domains of tourism, sex, and work as intersecting circles and analyzes the forms of activity typical of each. “Sex tourism,” as popularly defined, is the space where all three overlap, but there are significant areas of sexual activity associated with tourism that are not commercial, and yet that generate significant and increasing business activity in some destinations. There is also a tendency for partners in commercial sex to define their relationships in terms of other sectors, as “love” or “romance.” The chapter concludes that with economic development, there is a tendency for roles in the sex industry to become increasingly professionalized and differentiated, and that as the industry is unlikely to disappear, regulation should focus on the empowerment and welfare of sex workers rather than abolition and suppression.

Radical feminists position any forms of sex work as gender violence against individuals and more broadly for all women in society. I argue against the ideological stance that sex work is inherently violent and as a result should be outlawed, setting out how this ideology and dogma has allowed structural factors to persist. In this paper, I argue that despite the unacceptable high levels of violence against sex workers across the globe, violence in sex work is not inevitable. Through a review of the literature as well as drawing on research from the United Kingdom, I deconstruct the myth of inevitable violence. In turn I argue that violence is dependent on three dynamics. First, environment: spaces in which sex work happens has an intrinsic bearing on the safety of those who work there. Second, the relationship to the state: how prostitution is governed in any one jurisdiction and the treatment of violence against sex workers by the police and judicial system dictates the very organization of the sex industry and the regulation, health and safety of the sex work communities. Third, I argue that social status and stigma have significant effects on societal attitudes toward sex workers and how they are treated. It is because of these interlocking structural, cultural, legal, and social dynamics that violence exists and therefore it is these exact dynamics that hold the solutions to preventing violence against sex workers. Toward the end of the paper, I examine the UK’s “Merseyside model” whereby police treat violence against sex workers as a hate crime. It is in these examples of innovative practice despite a national and international criminalization agenda against sex workers, that human rights against a sexual minority group can be upheld.

Since the first case of AIDS was reported in 1986, several HIV/AIDS intervention program operates at the national and regional level in India, to control the spread of this epidemic. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate one intervention program in a major city of India – Kolkata that targets specifically the commercial sex-workers challenged with socio-economic-health disparities. This intervention program called the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) is located in the Sonagachi area and nicknamed as the “Sonagachi Project.”

The behavioral change of about 500 sex-workers participating in the survey was studied in 2005. The data were collected from the focus groups of the sex-workers; official records and DMSC officials were also interviewed to collect data. The “short-term” outcome and the “long-term” impact of the program were compared with a baseline survey conducted in 1992 by another study.

Participants experienced increased awareness of the disease, increased literacy rate and increased social and economical empowerment. The incidence of HIV/AIDS has gone down significantly among this high-risk group due to safe-sex practice.

This community-based organization adopts a unique method of engaging the sex-workers as peer educators to train other sex-workers about safe-sex practices and has become the role model for sex-workers in other parts of the world to fight socio-economic-health disparities.

This research was conducted by directly contacting the program directors and members of the Sonagachi project and in that sense is first hand information. It gives valuable insights into the struggles these sex-workers had to go through to gain social and economic empowerment.

In line with the escapist dimension of hospitality settings, the article investigates how the front office staff of high-end hotels deal with clients' secret sexual encounters.

The article draws on data collected through a participant observation study conducted in two high-end hotels in Milan (Italy), during which the author held the role of front-line receptionist.

The research illustrates the ways in which workers frame events and conduct operations to guarantee the appropriate conditions for guests' extra-marital adventures and paid sexual encounters. In revealing the role of shared knowledge as well as non-formalised procedures in meeting guests' needs, the article shows how employees seek to protect their own work and the hotel's image.

The article sheds light on the very features of high-end service work by illustrating how workers satisfy clients' secret needs and unexpressed demands.

This study examines the relationship between commercial sex workers and their employers using the results of interviews with 83 commercial sex workers from 35 establishments in the Bangkok area. The intentions were to gain insight into the motivations and working conditions of the workers and to see whether the nature of the employment relation gives support to the mainstream economic theory of “implicit contracts” concerning labour exchanges that occur in a risky world. Despite the existence of obvious risks (e.g. contracting HIV/AIDS) there is little evidence of risk‐sharing implicit contracts. This could in part be explained by the ignorance of risks shown by commercial sex workers. But even where, in the case of the poorest prostitutes, there is apparent evidence of risk‐sharing, it is argued that this is better explained in terms of a theory of debt‐bondage.

Shows, in detail, how many African countries have concentrated on prevention of HIV through changing their citizens sexual behaviours with Ghana being spotlighted. Posits that Ghana is at the mid‐stage of the epidemic and uses data to explain this. Uses tables to show the lack of knowledge, by the citizens of Ghana, to AIDS prevention. Concludes that this study has tried to resolve two major problems in AIDS prevention: 1, specific nature of items of knowledge and behaviour influenced by mass media; and 2, neglecting control for exposure to interpersonal communication channels, thereby playing an important part in AIDS information provision omission.

This chapter juxtaposes human trafficking of children by their families with structural disadvantage characterizing cycles of violence to suggest that carceral approaches alone cannot break trajectories of crime. It highlights contexts where familial violence is culturally normalized and where the victim–offender binary is challenged. The devadasi system in a district in the Northern region of the State of Karnataka, India, and stories of women and communities in urban India provide a context for the discussion. This chapter posits the need to explore community corrections, restorative and transitional justice, and social justice in criminal justice administration to build safe families and communities for children.