Seeking reliable evidence - claim that closing sweatshops leads to child prostitution

I've been looking for reliable evidence of a claim I've heard a few times. The claim is that the closing of sweatshops (by anti-globalization activists) has resulted in many of the child workers becoming prostitutes. The idea is frequently proffered as an example of do-gooder foolishness ignoring basic economics and screwing people over.

However, despite searching for a while, I can't find anything to indicate that this actually happened.

Some guy at the Library of Economics and Liberty mentions it here:

In one famous 1993 case U.S. senator Tom Harkin proposed banning imports from countries that employed children in sweatshops. In response a factory in Bangladesh laid off 50,000 children. What was their next best alternative? According to the British charity Oxfam a large number of them became prostitutes.

But in the article, Paul Krugman mentions the Oxfam study without citation:

In 1993, child workers in Bangladesh were found to be producing clothing for Wal-Mart, and Senator Tom Harkin proposed legislation banning imports from countries employing underage workers. The direct result was that Bangladeshi textile factories stopped employing children. But did the children go back to school? Did they return to happy homes? Not according to Oxfam, which found that the displaced child workers ended up in even worse jobs, or on the streets -- and that a significant number were forced into prostitution.

I looked at some Oxfam stuff, but couldn't find the study.

A similar claim is made in The Race to the Top: The Real Story of Globalization by Tomas Larsson (go here and use the search tool for the word 'prostitution'), but doesn't mention the Oxfam study:

Keith E. Maskus, an economist at the University of Colorado, has studied the issue... He concludes that... "The celebrated French ban of soccer balls sewn in Pakistan for the World Cup in 1998 resulted in significant dislocation of children from employment. Those who tracked them found that a large proportion ended up begging and/or in prostitution,"

I looked for a paper or something by Maskus but came up empty.

I was taught this fact at a Poli Sci class in college, but I'm starting to think it's more likely to be an information cascade. Can anyone do a better job than me?

Thanks in advance.

However, despite searching for a while, I can't find anything to indicate that this actually happened.

Some guy at the Library of Economics and Liberty mentions it here:

In one famous 1993 case U.S. senator Tom Harkin proposed banning imports from countries that employed children in sweatshops. In response a factory in Bangladesh laid off 50,000 children. What was their next best alternative? According to the British charity Oxfam a large number of them became prostitutes.

But in the article, Paul Krugman mentions the Oxfam study without citation:

In 1993, child workers in Bangladesh were found to be producing clothing for Wal-Mart, and Senator Tom Harkin proposed legislation banning imports from countries employing underage workers. The direct result was that Bangladeshi textile factories stopped employing children. But did the children go back to school? Did they return to happy homes? Not according to Oxfam, which found that the displaced child workers ended up in even worse jobs, or on the streets -- and that a significant number were forced into prostitution.

I looked at some Oxfam stuff, but couldn't find the study.

A similar claim is made in The Race to the Top: The Real Story of Globalization by Tomas Larsson (go here and use the search tool for the word 'prostitution'), but doesn't mention the Oxfam study:

Keith E. Maskus, an economist at the University of Colorado, has studied the issue... He concludes that... "The celebrated French ban of soccer balls sewn in Pakistan for the World Cup in 1998 resulted in significant dislocation of children from employment. Those who tracked them found that a large proportion ended up begging and/or in prostitution,"

I looked for a paper or something by Maskus but came up empty.

I was taught this fact at a Poli Sci class in college, but I'm starting to think it's more likely to be an information cascade. Can anyone do a better job than me?

Thanks in advance.

"Why Economists Are Wrong About Sweatshops and the Antisweatshop Movement"
John Miller
Challenge, Vol. 46, No. 1 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2003), pp. 93-122
Published by: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40722184

Of interest, but only uses the word 'prostitutes' once.

The following implies that it's an obvious logical argument:

... For some activists the trafficking of women into the sex industry is morally wrong and exploitative because of its association with commercial sex, while for others forced prostitution is inseparable from global inequities of capital and labor that leave women in the global economy with few viable options aside from sweatshop labor or the typically more lucrative sex industry work.
[Soderlund, G. (2005). "Running from the rescuers: New U.S. crusades against sex trafficking and the rhetoric of abolition." NWSA Journal, 17(3), 64-87. Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ff/summary/v017/17.3soderlund.html]

I think we're finally getting somewhere:

Hence, too, the often uncritical feminist embrace of a figure like New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who rants and rages against the exploitation of female prostitutes halfway across the globe, even as he sings the praises of sweatshops. The faulty logic at work here—that closing sweatshops forces people into prostitution—not only problematically relies upon Kristof’s own moralizing determination that the sex industry unilaterally offers comparatively worse wages and working conditions than the sweatshop industry but also, incredibly, offers sweatshops as a solution to the problem of poverty driving many to work in any number of different capacities for very low wages in terrible conditions.
["Sex, Work, and the Feminist Erasure of Class"
Brooke Meredith Beloso
Signs, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Autumn 2012), pp. 47-70
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Article DOI: 10.1086/665808
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665808]

I finally found something. I put it in a new comment.