Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Women's History
Episode: Elisa Camiscioli, "Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migrations" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Description: Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migrations (Cambridge UP, 2024) is an illuminating account of the cultural, social, and economic history of the sale of 'French sex'. It explores the discourses and experiences surrounding the early twentieth century debate on sex trafficking, which mobilized various international reform movements to combat the coerced prostitution of young women abroad. According to popular legend and empirical studies, French women were present in brothels all over the world, where they were the most desired and best paid in the business. But were they trafficking victims or willing migrants? In this timely book, Elisa C...