Critical Perspectives on Child Sexual Exploitation and Related Trafficking

This collection is the first major exploration of the issues related to young people who are affected by child sexual exploitation (CSE) and child trafficking for exploitation. These include consideration of the language we currently use to construct and understand CSE; how to conceptualise CSE and sexual violence that takes place in gangs or between peers; issues of how 'consent' relates to young people in abusive or exploitative sexual relationships; how young people themselves might participate in work to improve service delivery; why some looked after young people are at greater risk of CSE than others and how they might keep safe. The volume also reviews policy and practice developments in Scotland; the risk of CSE for young women who go missing to escape forced marriages; the importance of including young people at risk of CSE in decision-making about their care; how and why trafficking and CSE came to be defined as objects of international policy concern and how community organizations might be mobilized to protect young people from the risk of trafficking for CSE.

This volume is essential reading for academics, students, practitioners and policymakers in the fields of social work and social policy, child protection and youth work, criminology and sociology and the health care services.

Margaret Melrose is Professor of Social Policy and Applied Social Research and Director of the Centre for Young People, Poverty and Social Disadvantage at the University of Bedfordshire, UK. She has previously published Poverty, Riches and Social Citizenship (with Hartley Dean); One Way Street: Retrospectives on Juvenile Prostitution (with David Barrett and Isabelle Brodie); Fixing It Young People, Drugs and Disadvantage and Anchors in Floating Lives: Interventions with Young People Sexually Abused through Prostitution (with David Barrett).

Jenny Pearce is Professor of Young People and Public Policy and the Director for the International Centre for Sexually Exploited and Trafficked Young People and Institute of Applied Social Research, University of Bedfordshire, UK. She has previously published Young People and Sexual Exploitation, Growing Up with Risk and Breaking the Wall of Silence.