“Sexual Exploitation” as a Logic, and Its Effects of Power in Contemporary Brazil

The present article analyzes the category of “sexual exploitation” based upon the practices that are generally pointed to as part of this category, paying particular attention to its implications and effects on the lives of adolescents and upon state, social movement, and academic abilities to understand the social relationships framed by this category. Our analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2010 and 2015 among state agents and youth in the sex markets of two Brazilian cities in the Amazon border region. Our empirical data are connected to national and international literature, institutional documents, and our participation in educational activities regarding “sexual exploitation”. Our work indicates that “sexual exploitation” has been institutionally constructed as a poorly defined device that mobilizes conservative moralities regarding youth, sexuality, money, mobility, and gender experimentation. We also find that the youth involved in sex markets do not recognize the legitimacy of the policies carried out in the name of “combatting anti-sexual exploitation”. We conclude that the performative production of “sexual exploitation” as a logic of governmentality feeds back into an institutional grammar of distancing, perplexity, immobility, and excuses. This grammar does not contemplate—let alone care about—the gender experiences, sexualities, economic lives and affective troubles of the youth it targets for surveillance and tutelage.