Reading Between the Lines: A Case Study of British and Canadian National News Coverage of Sex Trafficking

Abstract

Current scholarship on migrant sex work warns us to avoid viewing female migrant sex workers as either passive "victims" of male dominated trafficking schemes or ruthless villains who chose prostitution and illegal migration. This thesis concentrates on the print media in two democratic states, Canada and the United Kingdom in order to investigate how the public is being educated on migrant sex work. Specifically, this thesis analyzes representations of female migrant sex workers in news articles published by the British newspaper The Guardian, and the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail . A total of 100 articles are selected by keyword search from the years 2000-2008. They are analyzed by using frame analysis. Overall, this thesis concludes that the audiences of The Globe and Mail and The Guardian are provided with a partial account of who migrant sex workers are and how or why they end up in the sex trade.