Global Class and the Commercial-Sexual Exploitation of Children: Toward A Multidimensional Understanding

Abstract

This Essay draws together several focal points of the Third Annual National People of Color Conference in 2010, human trafficking, racial contexts, criminal law, immigration law and international law, while addressing the core theme of post-racialism and other “posts.” The purpose of this Essay is three-fold. First, it challenges the notion that we live in a post-race, post-class, or post-feminist environment in which race, class and gender disparities in contemporary law and society have diminished or are diminishing to a point at which discussing inequalities along these lines is unavailing. Second, using a Multidimensional approach that includes childhood and age as significant dimensions of inequality, this Essay develops a concept of class to enhance Critical Class Theory (“Class Crits”). Third, it challenges “the posts” through a social problem that epitomizes “multidimensional subordination”—child sex trafficking—with particular focus on the commercial sexual exploitation of children through prostitution in the United States.