Privileging work not sex: flexibility and employment in the sexual services industry

We present findings from a study of sex workers recruited in indoor licensed premises in Victoria. While the study addressed regulation, enforcement and working conditions, we focus on the value of flexible well‐paid work for two particular groups of female workers (parents and students). We link this issue of flexibility to broader gendered employment conditions in Australia, arguing the lack of comparable employment is crucial to understanding worker decisions about sex work. Debates and regulation focus on gendered inequalities related to heterosexuality much more than they recognize gendered inequalities related to labour market conditions. The focus on criminalization, harm, exploitation and stigma obscures the centrality of work flexibility and conditions to women's decision‐making. A more direct focus on the broader employment context may produce better recognition of why women do sex work.     

Do self‐assessment and self‐directed support undermine traditional social work with disabled people?

In recent years, self‐assessment and self‐directed support have become mainstream options within disability services. The Disabled People’s Movement has advocated the need for such change for a long time but this has been persistently resisted by many social workers. In this article, it will be argued that both self‐assessment and self‐directed support undermine traditional social work and that social workers need to begin to work alongside disabled people, rather than ‘for’ disabled people, in order to achieve substantial system change.     

The politics of sexual citizenship: commercial sex and disability

This paper breaks a long silence by bringing together two areas of literature that have generally been considered separately: that of sexuality and disability with findings from studies on sex work. Presenting empirical findings from two studies, one with sex workers who work from indoor sex markets and the other with men who buy sex, this paper exposes the existing relationships and practices between men with physical and sensory impairments who seek out commercial sexual services from female sex workers. In the discussion the politics surrounding sexual rights and commercial sex will be addressed. In the context of commercial sex, quality of life issues, complex power dynamics and the common ground between disabled people and sex workers rights are discussed. This paper considers the negative aspects of promoting commercial sex for people with impairments, as well as the positive aspects regarding the wider campaign for sexual citizenship. Finally, I set out recommendations and a new research and policy agenda that investigates the complexities of commercial and facilitated sex.     

“I’m Just a Woman. But I’ve Never Been a Victim”: Re-conceptualizing Prostitution Policy through Individual Narratives

Drawing on narrative theory in political science and policy studies, this article argues that narratives serve definitional purposes in the prostitution policy process, but not all narratives are equally influential here. To illustrate, it shares Gloria Lockett’s narrative. Lockett is a 65-year-old African American former sex worker, prostitutes’ rights activist, and the cofounder and the current executive director of the California Prostitutes Education Project, an HIV/AIDS prevention and education nonprofit in the San Francisco Bay Area. Although Lockett’s narrative does not represent all women in prostitution, it complicates dominant understandings of prostitution in the United States, contests the current criminalization regime, and alerts health authorities to sex workers’ occupational health and safety concerns. Yet even as others share and support her narrative, various legal and ideological factors limit its impact in the policy process.     

‘It's Just Acting’: Sex Workers’ Strategies for Capitalizing on Sexuality

This article reports on an ethnographic study of female sex workers in Britain who work in the indoor prostitution markets. The empirical findings contribute to the sex‐as‐labour debate and add to the sociological literature regarding the gendered and sexualized nature of employment, particularly the aesthetic and emotional labour of service work. Grounding the empirical findings in the theory of identity management and emotional labour and work, the article reviews some of the existing examples of how sex workers create emotion management strategies and describes an additional strategy, that of the ‘manufactured identity’. I argue that sex workers create a manufactured identity specifically for the workplace as a self‐protection mechanism to manage the stresses of selling sex as well as crafting the work image as a business strategy to attract and maintain clientele. Drawing on comparisons between sex work and other feminized service occupations, I argue that sex workers who are involved in prostitution under certain conditions are able to capitalize on their own sexuality through the construction of a manufactured identity. The process of conforming to heterosexualized images in prostitution is conceptualized as not simply accepting dominant discourses but as a calculated response made by sex workers to manipulate the erotic expectations and the cultural ideals of the male client.     

Revanchist Masculinity: Gender Attitudes in Sex Work Management

Pimps, or male managers of female sex workers, are commonly represented in popular culture as hypermasculine and as a ubiquitous part of sex work. However, there is little empirical scholarship on pimps or the construction of their masculinity. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, this article demonstrates how pimps produce a “revanchist masculinity” that seeks to reclaim power from women and establish status over other men. Pimps are suspicious of sex workers’ motives and deny them decision‐making power and profit sharing—processes that highlight how work practices can structure gender identity construction.     

Sex-positive criminology: Possibilities for legal and social change

This article provides an introduction to sex-positive criminology and its goals for change. Sex-positive criminology draws from the “thick desire” organizing principle, which is a rights-based approach to human sexuality, as well as from positive sexuality approaches. It also draws from critical, queer, and feminist criminological traditions and abolitionist sensibilities. We discuss examples that pertain to key tenets of sex-positivity: consent and bodily autonomy, education, medical access, harm reduction, and ways to increase agency. Main topics of discussion include addressing deeply harmful and sex-negative laws and policies that perpetuate state violence, such as coerced or forced sterilization, criminalization of abortion and pregnancy loss, sexual and physical assault of sex workers by police, criminalization through medically inaccurate laws, and legislation such as Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act that puts marginalized populations at risk. Throughout, we reflect on possibilities for sex-positive laws and policies and the social impacts they would have, such as improving health and well-being.     

But the kids are okay: motherhood, consumption and sex work in neo-liberal Latin America

Although sex work remains highly stigmatized around the world, its relatively high value (when compared to other kinds of work available for low-income women) allows sex workers to attain some level of economic, if not social, mobility. This article challenges the idea that sex work in 'third world' settings is always about mere subsistence. Instead, it suggests that sex workers in Costa Rica's tourism sector work to survive, but they also demonstrate significant personal ambition and aim not only to increase their own consumption levels, but crucially to get ahead. Women are clear about what sex work enables for their families and themselves: not the maintenance of the status quo, but rather a level of consumption otherwise unavailable to them as low-income and poor women. Sex work offers an opportunity to consume and to get ahead that these women have been unable to attain in other kinds of employment, primarily domestic and factory work. Furthermore, sex work allows women to think of themselves as particularly good mothers, able to provide for and spend important quality time with their kids. The article argues that survival, consumption, and motherhood are discursively deployed, in often contradictory and conflicting ways, in order to counteract the effects that stigma has on sex workers. It also suggests that sex workers may very well be the quintessential subjects of neo-liberalism in Latin America, in their embrace of entrepreneurial work and consumption.     

But it’s not all about the sex: mothering,normalisation and young learning disabled people

This paper is about mothering, young learning disabled people, their sexualised and relationship lives and normalisation – not through the lens of the disabled person, but via a mothers perspective and theoretical discussion. As a mother who has a learning disabled daughter, a feminist and an academic my own mothering experience, my Ph.D. research and social theory are woven throughout this paper with the intention of opening up debate about sex, intimacy and normalisation, and how these impact upon young learning disabled people. I suggest that the relationship between sex, reproduction, intimacy and intellectual impairment and a project to decipher what it means to be human in all its dirty glory are also part of the discourse that needs to be discussed experientially and theoretically. So much so that the messy world within which we all live can be variously and differently constructed.     

UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF THE MOTHER-CHILD RELATIONSHIP ON SEX WORKERS’ DECISION TO ENTER AND LEAVE THE STREETS – LESSONS FOR SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE

This paper focuses on ‘streetwalkers’ and ‘street sex workers’ who are unlicensed sex workers not belonging to a brothel and subject to criminalization. They often face great stigmatization and are usually considered victims by service providers. Five Singaporean ex-streetwalkers (n = 5), who had left the streets for at least six months and were currently receiving or had previously received skills training at a social service agency, participated in this study. Using an agentic framework and social relational theory principles, this qualitative study explored the impact of streetwalkers’ relationship with their children on their decision to enter and leave the streets and reasons for their successful help-seeking experiences. Findings revealed them to be agents who actively used strategies to meet their goals and to sustain close relationships with their children. The mother–child relationship context was a key influence on their decision to enter and/or leave the streets. Social work practice implications include tailoring service delivery to tap into their agentic capacities and identity as mothers; research and training in provision of proactive social services in a non-judgmental manner to preserve the dignity of these women while meeting both their own and their children’s needs.     

The mental health peer worker as informant: performing authenticity and the paradoxes of passing

The inclusion imperative in community care means that disabled people are now increasingly being employed as peer workers in the service systems that manage them. This article offers a timely inquiry into the role of the peer worker in mental health and homeless service sectors. Drawing on a four-year ethnography and in-depth qualitative interviews with fellow peer workers, I explore the paradoxical nature of new expectations for peer ‘authenticity,’ and the ways in which peer workers learn to manage the requirement to perform identity in our work roles. This analysis thus denaturalizes peer identity, and works to develop possibilities for doing disability identity-based work differently.     

Sex work: constructing ‘families’ with community of practice theory

This article examines the construction and maintenance of fictive kinships within a street-level sex work community. The analysis is supported by interviews of 14 street-level sex workers regarding everyday language use within their community. Utilizing community of practice theory to demonstrate how peripheral participants of the sex work community are socialized to understand and participate in fictive kinships, a primary finding is that language use within this community operates as a discursive framework which creates a metaphorical family where kin terms are used as an identity-making strategy. The implications of this research suggest that familial structures impact sex workers' sense of agency in relation to other members of the community. Finally, this article discusses the implications for understanding the discourse of a street-level sex worker community in the context of relationship formation and maintenance.     

Disability and dirty workers: stories of physical,social and moral taint

Returning to classics on dirty work and stigma, I offer another perspective on the difficulties that disabled people experience in employment. I claim that disabled workers with multiple sclerosis (MS) feel like ‘dirty workers’ not because of the work that they do, but because of their MS. Secondary analysis of phenomenological interview data revealed workers with MS feeling physical, social and moral taints normally associated with being a ‘dirty worker’ – but because of their MS-related impairments and disabilities. Two respondent stories are shared to illustrate this association.     

Where The Trans Men and Enbies At?: Cissexism,Sexual Threat,and the Study of Sex Work

In this article, I examine the existing research on transgender sex workers and explore how cissexism and sexism overlap and shape this work. Overall, researchers assume that all trans sex workers are women, and all male sex workers are assumed to be cisgender. Transmasculine and other gender non‐conforming sex workers are absent from studies of sex work. Researchers in public health and criminology dominate the literature and this research is limited because it focuses only on trans women and because it focuses primarily on disease and trauma, and almost exclusively on HIV. The literature I examined treats transgender women as a public health “problem” to be solved, rather than addressing their experiences and needs as workers and as people in our society. I argue that in order to have useful applied and policy implications aimed at harm reduction, researchers must use a sociological lens to document what structural conditions push and pull people of various genders into sex markets in the first place. Finally, I advocate for the use of queer, intersectional, and transnational frameworks in future lines of inquiries as a way to push the sociological and public health literature on sex work forward in a way that will benefit all sex workers, their advocates, and service providers.     

Uneven Divestment of the State: Social Reproduction and Sex Work in Neo-developmentalist Argentina

Abstract

Sex work has been identified as an important dimension of the ‘survival circuits’ which have developed in the majority world in the context of neo-liberalisation, as a response to the deepening misery of the Global South. Yet while much research has explored the role of sex work in contexts of ‘neo-liberal’ regimes of capital accumulation, few have paid sustained attention to sex work in regimes which are not purely ‘neo-liberal’. Drawing on data with sex workers across 10 cities in Argentina gathered between 2007 and 2014, this article examines multiple spaces of sex workers' lives, including the workplace, the home, and the state in a context of what has been dubbed ‘neo-developmentalism’. It argues that sex work contributes multiple forms of value and subsidies for the state and capital. First, sex work provides a subsidy in the form of the provision of ‘employment’; second, female sex workers provide unwaged reproductive labour in the family; and third, in the labour movement. Yet despite these three contributions to the reproduction of the working class and therefore of capital, the state undermines sex workers' capacities through violence and sustained repression. The article concludes that the neo-developmentalism has led to ‘uneven divestment of the state’ in the reproduction of particular sections of the working class, namely those outside the formal and ‘productive’ sectors.     

An Investigation of the Incidence of Client-Perpetrated Sexual Violence Against Male Sex Workers

ABSTRACT

This article discusses exploratory research investigating the incidence and context of client-perpetrated sexual violence against male sex workers. Four different methods (Web-based surveys, tick-box questionnaires, telephone, and face-to-face interviews) were employed in this study of 50 male escorts. The qualitative data were analyzed using an adapted form of grounded theory. It was found that client-perpetrated sexual violence within male sex work appears to be uncommon. However, when sexual violence did occur the cause was a disagreement over barebacking. Escorts’ explanations for the low level of sexual violence within this sector included (1) that gay men were non-confrontational, (2) their clients led clandestine lifestyles avoiding undue attention, and (3) comparatively, female sex workers were perceived to be more vulnerable resulting in the higher level of sexual violence within the female sex work industry.     

Enterprising? Disabled? The status and potential for disabled people’s microenterprise in South Korea

This article explores the position, potential and scope for self-employment and microenterprise for disabled South Koreans. The chronic barriers experienced in disabled people gaining paid work suggest that self-employment and enterprise might offer a good alternative to paid work. The self-determined nature of running a microenterprise has been shown to connect with disabled people who may not conform to standardised notions of body and brain that underpin many mainstream work contexts. Despite this promise, several barriers continue to beset disabled people’s access to micro-enterprise activity; barriers ranging from Confucian precepts, to employment protections that are geared largely towards paid employment and to the lack of training, finance and business support for disabled people starting up and sustaining microenterprise in Korea. The extension of legal protections, meaningful start-up subsidies, better business support and bridges between paid work and microenterprise are all seen as important policy correctives that would better support disabled people.     

“They wouldn't get away with it at McDonalds”: Decriminalization,work, and disciplinary power in New Zealand brothels

New Zealand decriminalized sex work in 2004 with the passage of the Prostitution Reform Act (2003), which sets an explicit intention to prevent exploitation of sex workers and improve their welfare. This has demonstrably improved conditions for sex workers and provides a necessary context for addressing exploitation. However, little research has looked at how this works for brothel-based sex workers in New Zealand. This paper responds to that gap by examining how brothel operators in New Zealand exercise power and control and how sex workers experience that. The study draws on in-depth interviews conducted across New Zealand with 33 participants. These include staff from the New Zealand Sex Workers' Collective (2), brothel-based sex workers (18), operators (8), and sex worker/operators (5). We use a Foucauldian framework and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis to examine how disciplinary power informs brothel management, prompting the production of normative discourses of work that destabilize sex workers' safety at work. We conclude that decriminalization nevertheless provides an essential framework by which sex workers are able to resist disciplinary control (W/C 171).     

Helping People with Learning Difficulties into Paid Employment

Summary

Welfare to work policies have developed partly from policy rhetoric that argues employment as the best way of ensuring social inclusion for marginalised groups. In the United Kingdom, welfare to work policies for disabled people have developed within an enabling rather than a mandatory system, although organisation and practice have lagged behind. This article explores policies that provide this enabling context for facilitating the transition of people with learning difficulties from benefits to paid employment. It also explores the role of social workers, examining the degree to which their practice reflects the empowering rhetoric of the policy framework and of contemporary social work values.     

Student involvement in the UK sex industry: motivations and experiences

The Student Sex Work Project was set up in 2012 in the United Kingdom (UK) to locate students who are involved in the sex industry, to discover their motivations and needs, and in doing so provide an evidence base to consider the development of policy and practice within Higher Education. As part of this initiative, a large survey was undertaken comprising students from throughout the UK. Reporting on the findings from this survey, the article sheds some light on what occupations students take up in the sex industry, what motivates their participation and how they experience the work. The study also offers a much‐needed empirical input to the ongoing academic debates on the nature of sex work. The results suggest that there can be little doubt of a student presence within the sex industry in the UK. The motivations and experiences of student sex workers cover elements of agency and choice as well as of force and exploitation and it is suggested that student sex work is best understood from a polymorphous framework which leaves room for a wide variety of experiences and challenges.