Search results

In May 2012, nine men from the Rochdale area of Manchester were found guilty of sexually exploiting a number of underage girls. Reporting on the trial, the media focussed on the fact that eight of the nine men were of Pakistani origin, while the girls were all white. It also framed similar cases in Preston, Rotherham, Derby, Shropshire, Oxford, Telford and Middlesbrough as ethnically motivated, thus creating a moral panic centred on South Asian grooming gangs preying on white girls. Despite the lack of evidence that the abuse perpetrated by some Asian men is distinct from male violence against women generally, the media focus on the grooming gang cases has constructed a narrative in which South Asian men pose a unique sexual threat to white girls. This process of ‘othering’ South Asian men in terms of abusive behaviour masks the fact that in the United Kingdom, the majority of sexual and physical abuse is perpetrated by white men; it simultaneously marginalises the sexual and domestic violence experienced by black and minority ethnic women. Indeed, the sexual abuse of South Asian women and girls is invisibilised within this binary discourse, despite growing concerns and evidence that the men who groomed the young girls in the aforementioned cases had also perpetrated domestic and sexual violence in their homes against their wives/partners. Through discourse analysis of newspaper coverage of these cases for the period 2012‒2018, this paper examines the British media's portrayal of South Asian men – particularly Pakistani men – in relation to child-grooming offences and explores the conditions under which ‘South Asian men’ have been constructed as ‘folk devils’. It also highlights the comparatively limited newspaper coverage of the abuse experiences and perspectives of Asian women and girls from the same communities to emphasise that violence against women and girls remains an ongoing problem across the nation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the links between forced marriage, running away/going missing and child sexual exploitation.

An extensive research review and interviews with experts and practitioners across the three fields identified a total of 22 cases in which young people (aged 18 and under) had experienced some combination of all three issues. Of these, nine case studies involving South Asian young people were explored in depth using a case study methodology.

Through adopting constitutive intersectionality as an analytical framework, the power of “community” emerged as a distinct theme within the cases. Concern about both family and community “honour” impacted young people’s decision making and help seeking processes. “Honour” also impacted parental responses to the young people as well as how they engaged with the professionals seeking to support them.

The safety of mothers also emerged as an issue, suggesting that this is an area for further research.

Practical implications for practice included: the need to address barriers to young people disclosing abuse and entering into the criminal justice process; difficulties associated with finding safe spaces to work with young people; the need to identify effective ways of working with abused young people who are unable to draw on relational and social support; and dangers associated with accessing support services.

An extensive review of the relevant research literature failed to uncover links between forced marriage, going missing and child sexual exploitation. This led the author to assert that the risk of child sexual exploitation as it relates to young South Asian young people who run away from home to escape forced marriage has been both under-acknowledged and under-explored (Sharp, 2013). Empirical research undertaken by the author over a 15-month period confirmed this assertion.

The purpose of this research is to understand the vulnerabilities of male youth in the sex trade in Manila, Philippines. Using purposive and a modified respondent-driven sampling methodology, interviews were conducted with 51 young males working as masseurs in the Metro Manila area exploring a wide range of their experiences and vulnerabilities throughout the work including physical, sexual and emotional violence. The mixed method, mostly qualitative research is based on similar surveys conducted throughout the South and South Asia regions.

Research on sexual exploitation of boys and men has largely focused on sexual health and prevention of HIV (Human Rights Watch Philippines, 2004). This research uniquely focuses on a broader range of vulnerabilities for males in the sex trade.

Qualitative discussions reveal instances of forced sex that can take a variety of forms, including physical force and/or violence or coercion involving bribes, verbal abuse or other forms of pressure to provide sexual services. Data also demonstrate stigma and discrimination outside of sex work. This study provides a qualitative assessment of the broader male-to-male sex industry within the Metro-Manila area, including escort services and both direct and indirect male sex work.

For observers, who consider male sexual abuse to be free of violence or discrimination, this provides evidence to the contrary and considerations for organizations that are able to provide funding to support their needs. Education of those involved in addressing the prevention of sexual exploitation should include gendered differences.

Academic and popular commentators of Asia find it almost impossible not to reach for metaphors of breathtaking economic and social change, fanned by the winds of globalization. This chapter explores the extent to which young Asian values concerning gender relations in the household, pornography and prostitution are similar to or different from those of young westerners. While some respondents themselves talk of the impact of globalization on attitudes in their countries, clear differences in attitudes as well as vocabularies or justifications for those attitudes are found, the Asian samples, usually but not always, expressing a different set of responses from the Anglophone or Western samples.

This chapter provides a critical focus on the relationship between masculinities and widespread forms of interpersonal violence. The chapter begins by discussing the contribution of second wave feminist criminology in securing disciplinary attention to the study of gender and its relation to crime, and how the growth and maturation of theory and research on specific masculinities and crime followed logically from this feminist work. As part of this development, examination of masculine perpetrated violence initially commenced with Messerschmidt’s (1993) influential account of masculinities and crime in his book of the same name, and was further expanded through a range of historical and contemporary criminological studies on masculinities and interpersonal violence. The authors discuss the origins and history of critical masculinities theory, its relation to social understandings of interpersonal violence, and how these have shaped criminological research interest and findings. Masculinities are linked intricately with struggles for social power that occur between men and women and among different men, but they vary and intersect importantly with other dimensions of inequality. The authors utilise this conception of masculinities to discuss research on various forms of interpersonal violence, from men’s physical and sexual violence against girls and women, attacks on sexual minorities, violence between/among boys and men, and to the ambiguities of gender, sexualities, and violence by girls, women and men.

Although women are obtaining and maintaining leadership positions in health, education, and social care services, women from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds remain a minority and on the margins. In particular, services working therapeutically with marginalised and oppressed communities often fail to represent the population they serve. In this chapter, the authors will outline the development of an innovative therapeutic service for disenfranchised young people with Black women as leaders. The authors will outline and reflect on how they developed a leadership style drawing on Afrocentric practice, social justice, emancipatory practice and community psychology as they attempted to bring about systems change. The authors will draw on ideas of ‘marginality’ (Collins, 1986) to make visible their experience of ‘be-coming’ leaders, and the challenges that they experienced on several different levels: personal, professional, institutional, political and cultural. It will also examine how race, gender and class intersect in Black women’s leadership experiences, and how they tackle stereotyping in the making of Black female leaders. The chapter will examine how Black female leaders make creative use of their marginal positions to influence and reflect a radical standpoint on self, children, young people, families and community.

The market in trafficked children bought and sold for sexual exploitation is one of the most inhumane transnational crimes that appear to have been facilitated by globalisation and its many effects, such as growing disparity in wealth between North and South. Child sex trafficking (CST) in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) is an extremely complex problem, deeply rooted in historical injustice, gender inequality and poverty. In addition to the complexities of the child trafficking issue, the organisations that seek to combat CST are themselves not always a united force and display their own internal and inter-agency complexities. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the key complexities of responding to CST in Thailand and Cambodia.

The methodology for this research consisted of 22 semi-structured interviews with anti-child trafficking experts in Thailand and Cambodia, in addition to field observations in various child sex tourism hubs in Southeast Asia.

The complexities of the CST problem in Thailand and Cambodia are discussed as well as analysis of the internal and inter-agency barriers faced by the organisations that seek to combat CST. The research finds that, due to limitations in donor funding, anti-trafficking organisations face difficulties in effectively responding to all aspects of the CST problem. The recommendation is made for improved advocacy networking against this transnational crime. Recent success stories are highlighted.

The research for this paper involved semi-structured interviews with staff from non-government organisations and United Nations agencies, but not with government representatives. The lack of available data from Thai and Cambodian government representatives limits the ability of the researcher to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-trafficking organisations’ response to the child trafficking issue. Also lacking is the voice of child trafficking victims, the key beneficiaries of anti-trafficking organisations’ aid and advocacy efforts.

There is an abundance of literature on the subject of CST but a dearth in scholarly literature on the subject of advocacy and policy responses to CST in Southeast Asia. This paper provides a valuable contribution the knowledge base on child trafficking by analysing both the complexities of the CST issue and the complexities, for anti-trafficking organisations, of effectively combating CST in the GMS.

The monograph argues that American racism has two colours (white and black), not one; and that each racism dresses itself not in one clothing, but in four: (1) “Minimal” negative, when one race considers another race inferior to itself in degree, but not in nature; (2) “Maximal” negative, when one race regards another as inherently inferior; (3) “Minimal” positive, when one race elevates another race to a superior status in degree, but not in nature; and (4) “Maximal” positive, when one race believes that the other race is genetically superior. The monograph maintains that the needs of capitalism created black slavery; that black slavery produced white racism as a justification for black slavery; and that black racism is a backlash of white racism. The monograph concludes that the abolition of black slavery and the civil rights movement destroyed the social and political ground for white and black racism, while the modern development of capitalism is demolishing their economic and intellectual ground.

My research builds upon masculinity studies as well as migration and gender theory to evaluate emerging strategies of gendered labor control at work sites within temporary worker programs. In particular, my multisite ethnography consisting of 97 interviews with US guest workers, oil industry employers, and Indian labor brokers shifts focus to the recruitment of male workers into the US oil industry. The study evaluated a multi-country recruitment chain from India to the Middle East and into the US Guest Worker Program. Findings identified a relationship between the construction of masculinities and employer strategies for labor control. The article addresses the following question: how is hegemonic masculinity used as a strategy for labor control? The study identifies the double bind of hegemonic masculinity within contingent employment relationships as a means of labor control for curbing male migrant dissent.