The impetus behind this Special Issue emerged from a quest to move beyond

binary thinking in the contemporary period about people who sell sexual services,

including recent disputes about "sex trafficking vs. prostitution" and

"criminalization vs. decriminalization", to encourage theoretical and empirical

scholarship by exploring how sex work actually operates under different regulatory

regimes. The volume includes contributions from scholars of different social

sciences backgrounds based in five countries- New Zealand, the United Kingdom,

Brazil, the United States and Canada. The article topics range widely,

and both quantitative and qualitative research methods are showcased. The empirical

evidence presented adds to our current understanding of the complexity

of this phenomenon of sex commerce/prostitution, which is found to be largely

a problem of social inequality within and across capitalist societies. The authors

call for policies to address occupational and societal wide inequities faced by sex

workers across many countries.