Kari Lerum: Rights, not rescue

IAS faculty member Kari Lerum researches the rights of sex workers and how anti-trafficking campaigns can bring more harm than good. “The general public is so conditioned to think about sex work as right or wrong and sex workers as free or coerced,” she said. “But what’s more useful is to think about how the state regulates and surveils sex workers who are just trying to make ends meet, especially when they are Black and brown, poor or transgender. These policies do nothing to alleviate poverty, racism or transphobia.”