Exploring the impact of military conflict on sex work in Ukraine: Women’s experiences of economic burden

Lazarus, Lisa, Nicole Herpai, Daria Pavlova, Maureen A. Murney, Olga Balakireva, Tatiana Tarasova, Leigh McClarty, u. a. 2022. „Exploring the impact of military conflict on sex work in Ukraine: Women’s experiences of economic burden“. Global Public Health 0 (0): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2022.2092187.

Abstract

Little is known about the impact of military conflict on sex work from the perspective of sex workers. We attempt to explore the meaning of conflict on sex work by asking women about the changes that they have experienced in their lives and work since the beginning of the 2014 military conflict in eastern Ukraine. The findings in this article are based on qualitative interviews with 43 cisgender women living and practicing sex work in Dnipro, eastern Ukraine. Our analysis highlights the meanings that sex workers have linked to the conflict, with financial concerns emerging as a dominant theme. The conflict therefore functions as a way of understanding changing economic circumstances with both individual and broader impacts. By better understanding the meaning of conflict as expressed by sex workers, we can begin to adapt our response to address emerging, and unmet, needs of the community

Biographical work and the production of credibility in sex work interviews

Gheorghiu, I. & Ham, J. (2022). Biographical work and the production of credibility in sex work interviews. The British Journal of Criminology, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azac003

Abstract

This article explores the concept of biographical work as a sustained pursuit during interviews with persons engaging in stigmatized and criminalized work. Based on interviews with women engaging in sex work and intimate economies in Hong Kong, the article examines the research interview as an interactional and institutional encounter where interviewer and interviewee jointly create meaning and articulate experiences to produce credibility. Relying on the sex workers’ rights framework and its adjacent debates, the article argues that social theory and critique construct reality by shaping public discourse and moral sensitivities in institutional encounters and act as moral resources that inform positionalities. The article argues for the importance of attending to both interactional and institutional demands made by interview encounters in data interpretation.

Walking, Talking, Imagining: Ethical Engagement with Sex Workers

Murphy, Doris. „Walking, Talking, Imagining: Ethical Engagement with Sex Workers“. Ethics and Social Welfare 0, Nr. 0 (7. February 2022): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496535.2022.2033809.

Abstract

This article describes a walking interview with a sex worker who is an advocate for sex worker rights in Ireland. Walking interviews have been proposed as a biographical method which can be used to explore the relationship between personal concerns and public questions, and the method is characterised by mobile, relational and embodied practice (O’Neill and Roberts [2019. Walking Methods: Research on the Move. London: Routledge]). Walking with research participants addresses the power imbalances inherent in interviews, striving for ethical praxis, by allowing a shared perspective and a shared sensory experience. Together we investigate the ethics of sex work research, allyship and education, and we consider ways to strengthen alliances between sex working and non-sex working feminists. Opportunities for social justice for sex workers are considered, and a radical democratic imaginary is proposed, where sex workers are afforded full citizenship of an inclusive society. This imaginary follows work by O’Neill [2010. “Cultural Criminology and Sex Work: Resisting Regulation Through Radical Democracy and Participatory Action Research PAR.” Journal of Law and Society 37 (1): 210–232], O’Neill and Seal [2012. Transgressive Imaginations: Crime, Deviance and Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan] and FitzGerald, O’Neill, and Wylie [2020b. “Social Justice for Sex Workers as a ‘Politics of Doing’: Research, Policy and Practice.” Irish Journal of Sociology 28 (3): 257–279], who have imagined full participation for sex workers in civic, political and social spheres. Starting with a radical openness to and acceptance of each other, as well as a firm dedication to bodily autonomy and social justice for all, we propose a path towards this imagined society.

The Racialised Bordering Politics of Sexual Humanitarianism: Migration, Sex Work and Trafficking

Mai, Nicola, P.G. Macioti, Calum Bennachie, Annie E. Fehrenbacher, Calogero Giametta, Heidi Hoefinger, and Jennifer Musto. (2021). The Racialised Bordering Politics of Sexual Humanitarianism: Migration, Sex Work and Trafficking. Ethnic and Racial Studies. Ethnic and Racial Studies, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2021.1892790.

Abstract

The article presents the findings of the SEXHUM project studying the impact of the different policies targeting migrant sex workers in Australia, France, New Zealand, and the United States. It draws on the concept of sexual humanitarianism, referring to how neoliberal constructions of vulnerability associated with sexual behaviour are implicated in humanitarian forms of support and control of migrant populations. Based on over three years of fieldwork we examine the differential ways in which Asian cis women and Latina trans women are constructed and targeted as vulnerable to exploitation, violence and abuse, or not, in relation to racialized and cis-centric sexual humanitarian canons of victimhood. Through our comparative analysis we expose how the implication of sexual humanitarian rhetoric in increasingly extreme bordering policies and interventions on migrant sex workers impacts on their lives and rights, arguing for the urgent need for social reform informed by the experiences of these groups.

Community-Based Responses to Negative Health Impacts of Sexual Humanitarian Anti-Trafficking Policies and the Criminalization of Sex Work and Migration in the US

Hoefinger, Heidi, Jennifer Musto, PG Macioti, Anne E Fehrenbacher, Nicola Mai, Calum Bennachie, Calogero Giametta (2020) Community-Based Responses to Negative Health Impacts of Sexual Humanitarian Anti-Trafficking Policies and the Criminalization of Sex Work and Migration in the US, Social Sciences, Special Issue: Sex Work, Gender Justice and the Law, 2020, 9(1), 1-30,  https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci9010001. 

Abstract

System‐involvement resulting from anti‐trafficking interventions and the criminalization of sex work and migration results in negative health impacts on sex workers, migrants, and people with trafficking experiences. Due to their stigmatized status, sex workers and people with trafficking experiences often struggle to access affordable, unbiased, and supportive health care. This paper will use thematic analysis of qualitative data from in‐depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with 50 migrant sex workers and trafficked persons, as well as 20 key informants from legal and social services, in New York and Los Angeles. It will highlight the work of trans‐specific and sex worker–led initiatives that are internally addressing gaps in health care and the negative health consequences that result from sexual humanitarian anti‐trafficking interventions that include policing, arrest, court‐involvement, court‐mandated social services, incarceration, and immigration detention. Our analysis focuses on the impact of the criminalization on sex workers and their experiences with sexual humanitarian efforts intended to protect and control them. We argue that these grassroots community‐based efforts are a survival‐oriented reaction to the harms of criminalization and a response to vulnerabilities left unattended by mainstream sexual humanitarian approaches to protection and service provision that frame sex work itself as the problem. Peer‐to‐peer interventions such as these create solidarity and resiliency within marginalized communities, which act as protective buffers against institutionalized systemic violence and the resulting negative health outcomes. Our results suggest that broader public health support and funding for community‐led health initiatives are needed to reduce barriers to health care resulting from stigma, criminalization, and ineffective anti‐trafficking and humanitarian efforts. We conclude that the decriminalization of sex work and the reform of institutional practices in the US are urgently needed to reduce the overall negative health outcomes of system‐ involvement.

An Ethnographic Analysis of Escort Services in Poland: An Interactionist Approach

Ślęzak, Izabela. 2020. “An Ethnographic Analysis of Escort Services in Poland: An Interactionist Approach.” Qualitative Sociology Review 16(4):122-144. Retrieved 11/2020 (URL: http://www.qualitativesociologyreview.org/ENG/archive_eng.php). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.16.4.08

Abstract

Abstract: In the Polish literature on the subject, prostitution is analyzed from various theoretical perspectives, but, first of all, from the perspective of social pathology. This approach makes the researchers focus mainly on the social maladjustment of women providing sex services and the reasons for their violation of the normative order. In my ethnographic research conducted in escort agencies in Poland, I was willing to go beyond this narrow outlook. I have adapted an interactionist perspective to analyze the escort agencies as organizations where intense interactions between employees, as well as employees and clients, take place, the sex work process is organized, and the meanings of prostitution are negotiated. I conducted the analysis according to the procedures of the grounded theory methodology. It allowed me to see and describe such processes as: (re)defining the situation of providing sex services from vice to work, sex work as a collective action, performing sex work, secondary socialization for sex work. The adaption of an interactionist perspective opens some new directions for analysis, which could help to understand the phenomenon of women getting involved in and continuing to provide sex services for a long time.

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Honesty and economy on a highway: Entanglements of gift, money, and affection in the narratives of Ukrainian sex workers

Rachok, Dafna. ‘Honesty and Economy on a Highway: Entanglements of Gift, Money, and Affection in the Narratives of Ukrainian Sex Workers’. Economic Anthropology, Early View. https://doi.org/10.1002/sea2.12187.

Abstract

Sex work provides a particularly good example to consider the relationships of money, authenticity, and intimacy. Many scholars who research intimacy point to the fact that seeing sex work as an exchange of money (or goods) for sex is a simplistic and reductive approach. Building on the existing research that complicates the idea of sex work as an emotionally detached sex‐for‐money transaction, this article looks at the coexistence of references to gift exchange, informal economy, and service economy in the narratives of street sex workers from the cities of Kropyvnyts’kyi and Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine. Focusing on sex workers’ attempts at discursive legitimization of sex work and on the narratives of their relationships with clients, I argue that the market rhetoric and the gift economy are not incommensurable for my participants. I show that though sex workers’ local “workplace ethic” is permeated with references to competition and productivity, they still don’t see sex work as qualitatively different from other forms of intimacy and don’t treat their clients as mere customers because of multiple emotional and affectionate attachments that exist between them. I conclude by considering the coexistence of various economic narratives in relation to the economic self.

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Rates, roses and donations: Naming your price in sex work.

Ham, Julie. (2020). Rates, roses and donations: Naming your price in sex work. Sociology 2020 (Online First). https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0038038520906773

Abstract

Questions about payment and what it signifies, lie at the heart of feminist debates concerning the morality and legitimacy of sex work. Yet the materialities of payment still remain interestingly under-explored in sex work research. This article addresses this gap by examining immigrant, migrant and racialized sex workers’ pricing practices in Vancouver, Canada and Melbourne, Australia. Determining one’s prices or rates in the sex industry was not a neutral, market-driven calculation for many workers, but was infused with strong ideas about safety, risk, experiential knowledge and the specificities of sex work. Analysing prices and pricing practices through a practice theory lens offers an opportunity to re-think the role of choice in feminist debates about sex work, by highlighting the decisions workers make on a day-to-day basis and capturing the myriad knowledges gained more commonly through experience rather than instruction.

“Sex Workers’ Personal and Professional Lives” – Special Issue of Sexual and Relationship Therapy 34(3), 2019.

“Sex Workers’ Personal and Professional Lives” – Special Issue of Sexual and Relationship Therapy 34(3), 2019.

Antebi-Gruszka, Nadav, Daniel Spence, and Stella Jendrzejewski. 2019. ‘Guidelines for Mental Health Practice with Clients Who Engage in Sex Work’. Sexual and Relationship Therapy 34 (3): 339–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2019.1573978.

Bahri, Jacenta. 2019. ‘Boyfriends, Lovers, and “Peeler Pounders”: Experiences of Interpersonal Violence and Stigma in Exotic Dancers’ Romantic Relationships’. Sexual and Relationship Therapy 34 (3): 309–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2019.1617415.

Bloomquist, Katie, and Eric Sprankle. 2019. ‘Sex Worker Affirmative Therapy: Conceptualization and Case Study’. Sexual and Relationship Therapy 34 (3): 392–408. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2019.1620930.

Dickson, Holly. 2019. ‘Sex Work, Motherhood, and Stigma’. Sexual and Relationship Therapy 34 (3): 332–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2019.1573980.

Johnson, Joey. 2019. ‘Dating While Sex Working: Civilian Dates Carry More Risk for Sex Workers’. Sexual and Relationship Therapy 34 (3): 329–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2019.1624713.

Matos, Bella, and Lola Haze. 2019. ‘Bottoms up: A Whorelistic Literature Review and Commentary on Sex Workers’ Romantic Relationships’. Sexual and Relationship Therapy 34 (3): 372–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2019.1636958.

Rayson, Josephine, and Beatrice Alba. 2019. ‘Experiences of Stigma and Discrimination as Predictors of Mental Health Help-Seeking among Sex Workers’. Sexual and Relationship Therapy 34 (3): 277–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2019.1628488.

Sawicki, Danielle A., Brienna N. Meffert, Kate Read, and Adrienne J. Heinz. 2019. ‘Culturally Competent Health Care for Sex Workers: An Examination of Myths That Stigmatize Sex Work and Hinder Access to Care’. Sexual and Relationship Therapy 34 (3): 355–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2019.1574970.

Tempest, Tiffany. 2019. ‘Relationship Boundaries, Abuse, and Internalized Whorephobia’. Sexual and Relationship Therapy 34 (3): 335–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2019.1574400.

Wolf, Ariel. 2019. ‘Stigma in the Sex Trades’. Sexual and Relationship Therapy 34 (3): 290–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2019.1573979.

Pussy Patrols in Academia: Towards a Disobedient, Sex-Worker Inclusive Feminist Praxis

Heineman, Jenny. 2019. ‘Pussy Patrols in Academia: Towards a Disobedient, Sex-Worker Inclusive Feminist Praxis’. Feminist Formations 31 (1): 45–66. https://doi.org/10.1353/ff.2019.0008.

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Abstract

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The “pussy patrols” in academia are the economic, discursive, sexual, and epistemological forms of violence in academia that control, silence, and reroute all femmes—not just cis women—in higher education. Although feminists have long examined sexual harassment in educational and occupational spaces, very few have turned their attention to the specific, embodied experiences of sex-working academics. Employing “epistemic disobedience” and “Critical Life Story” interviewing methodologies, I look at the experiences of thirteen sex-working academics, including my own experiences as a sex-working undergraduate and graduate student. I disrupt the false dichotomy of empowerment/oppression in the sex industry; I ask if higher education is necessarily emancipatory; and I offer suggestions, based on the forced rerouting and silencing of sex-working academics, for moving forward as activist-academics. Indeed, the time for rebelling against the strict academic codes that rely on Cartesian dualism is now.