Ecologies of security: On the everyday security tactics of female sex workers in Nairobi, Kenya

Lorway, Robert, Lisa Lazarus, Claudyne Chevrier, Shamshad Khan, Helgar K. Musyoki, John Mathenge, Peninah Mwangi, u. a. „Ecologies of security: On the everyday security tactics of female sex workers in Nairobi, Kenya“. Global Public Health 0, Nr. 0 (5. März 2018): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2018.1442487.

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Abstract
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This paper highlights important environmental dimensions of HIV vulnerability by describing how the sex trade operates in Nairobi, Kenya. Although sex workers there encounter various forms of violence and harassment, as do sex workers globally, we highlight how they do not merely fall victim to a set of environmental risks but also act upon their social environment, thereby remaking it, as they strive to protect their health and financial interests. In so doing, we illustrate the mutual constitution of ‘agency’ and ‘structure’ in social network formations that take shape in everyday lived spaces. Our findings point to the need to expand the focus of interventions to consider local ecologies of security in order to place the local knowledges, tactics, and capacities that communities might already possess on centre stage in interventions. Planning, implementing, and monitoring interventions with a consideration of these ecologies would tie interventions not only to the risk reduction goals of global public health policy, but also to the very real and grounded financial priorities of what it means to try to safely earn a living through sex work.

 

Usage of the Terms Prostitution, Sex Work, Transactional Sex, and Survival Sex: Their Utility in HIV Prevention Research

McMillan, Karen, Heather Worth, und Patrick Rawstorne. „Usage of the Terms Prostitution, Sex Work, Transactional Sex, and Survival Sex: Their Utility in HIV Prevention Research“. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 5. Januar 2018, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-1140-0.

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Abstract

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This article considers the terms prostitution, sex work, transactional sex, and survival sex, the logic of their deployment and utility to research concerned with people who are paid for sex, and HIV. The various names for paid sex in HIV research are invested in strategically differentiated positionings of people who receive payment and emphasize varying degrees of choice. The terminologies that seek to distinguish a range of economically motivated paid sex practices from sex work are characterized by an emphasis on the local and the particular, efforts to evade the stigma attached to the labels sex worker and prostitute, and an analytic prioritizing of culture. This works to bestow cultural legitimacy on some locally specific forms of paid sex and positions those practices as artifacts of culture rather than economy. This article contends that, in HIV research in particular, it is necessary to be cognizant of ways the deployment of alternative paid sex categories relocates and reinscribes stigma elsewhere. While local identity categories may be appropriate for program implementation, a global category is necessary for planning and funding purposes and offers a purview beyond that of isolated local phenomena. We argue that “sex work” is the most useful global term for use in research into economically motivated paid sex and HIV, primarily because it positions paid sex as a matter of labor, not culture or morality.

Engagement in sex work does not increase HIV risk for women who inject drugs in Ukraine (Open Access)

Tetyana I. Vasylyeva, Samuel R. Friedman, Lenore Gensburg, Pavlo Smyrnov; Engagement in sex work does not increase HIV risk for women who inject drugs in Ukraine, Journal of Public Health, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1 September 2017, Pages e103–e110, https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdw070
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Abstract
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Background

We studied the association between sex in exchange for money, drugs or goods and HIV for women who inject drugs (WWID) in Ukraine, as previous data on this association from the post-USSR region are contradictory.

Methods

Data come from the Integrated Bio-Behavioral Survey of Ukrainian people who inject drugs collected in 2011 using respondent-driven sampling. Participants were interviewed and tested with rapid HIV tests.

Results

The sample included 2465 WWID (24% HIV positive); 214 (8.7%) of which reported having had exchange sex during the last 90 days. Crude analysis showed no association between exchange sex and HIV (OR = 0.644; 95% CI 0.385–1.077). No confounders were found to alter this result in a multivariable analysis. Further modeling showed that exchange sex modifies association between HIV and alcohol use: no association between HIV and daily alcohol use was found for those women who exchanged sex (OR = 1.699, 95% CI 0.737–3.956); while not engaging in sex work and daily using alcohol reduced odds to be HIV infected (OR = 0.586, 95% CI 0.389–0.885).

Conclusions

Exchange sex may have less impact on the HIV status of WWID who are exposed to injecting risks. The finding that daily alcohol use appears protective against HIV among WWID who do not exchange sex requires more research.

Sex Workers Need Public Health Too

Binns, Colin, and Wah-Yun Low. “Sex Workers Need Public Health Too.” Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health, October 14, 2015, 1010539515613230. doi:10.1177/1010539515613230.

The position of sex workers in society ranges across a wide spectrum. At one end of the spectrum there are slaves and the victims of inhumane traffickers. On the other end sex workers can enjoy a high position in society and are celebrated in the highest art forms such as in paintings or like in the opera la Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi. However, Eduard Manet’s painting of Olympia of 1863 brought some realism into this glamorous stereotypical portrayal by painting an image of a woman with a black cat—symbolizing promiscuity.¹ This image of glamor lived on into the 20th century in films like Pretty Woman with its totally unrealistic Cinderella ending.

While the sex industry is present in every country, the reality for many sex workers is far from glamorous. A sex worker is defined by the World Health Organization as a “person who engages in sex work, or exchanges sex for money, which includes many practices and occurs in a variety of settings.” These may include workers who work full time in registered premises, to part time and casual workers working in informal locations.²

Full text available her for free. 

Deportation and HIV Vulnerability among Clients of Female Sex Workers in Tijuana

Shira Goldenberg, Steffanie A. Strathdee, Manuel Gallardo and Thomas L. Patterson, « “People Here Are Alone, Using Drugs, Selling their Body”: Deportation and HIV Vulnerability among Clients of Female Sex Workers in Tijuana », Field Actions Science Reports [Online], Special Issue 2 | 2010

Abstract:

In many settings, migrants are at disproportionately high risk of HIV. The Tijuana-San Diego border is the world’s busiest international land crossing. Deportations in San Diego County have increased by 48% since 2002; many deportees are delivered to deportation stations in Tijuana, Mexico, where associations between HIV vulnerability and deportation have been documented. Female sex workers (FSWs) and their clients are among the populations at highest risk of HIV in Tijuana. Our objective was to explore the relationship between deportation and HIV vulnerability from the perspectives of deported clients of FSWs in Tijuana. Using in-depth interviews conducted in Tijuana’s red light district in 2008 with 20 male clients of FSWs who had ever been deported from the United States, we explored the relationship between the consequences of deportation and HIV vulnerability. Clients perceived deportation as resulting in social isolation and economic dislocation, which were linked to HIV through substance use and unprotected sex with FSWs. These unintended consequences of immigration policy (social dislocation and economic marginalization) warrant corresponding interventions that address social, economic, and political dimensions of vulnerability. Recommended interventions include (1) social and economic support for deportees in border communities; (2) HIV testing, information, and condom provision to deportees; (3) peer education and condom promotion by jaladores (middlemen); and (4) safer sex interventions that address psychosocial factors and substance use among deportees. We argue that the health impacts of migration depend on the context of migration, with deportation posing a form of involuntary migration that exacerbates HIV vulnerability.

Full text available here.

Prostitution in Germany – A Comprehensive Analysis of Complex Challenges

Dorothea Czarnecki, Henny Engels, Barbara Kavemann, Wiltrud Schenk, Elfriede Steffan, Dorothee Türnau (2015): Prostitution in Germany – A Comprehensive Analysis of Complex Challenges.

This analysis of prostitution and female sex workers in Germany presents only the knowledge gained from many years of professional experience and the facts derived from scientific studies, including their complexities and discrepancies. Presented are the results of different surveys helping to provide a more objective and nuanced basis for discussion about prostitution. Women must be able and allowed to decide themselves how to live their lives in compliance with the law. This also has to apply to decisions that others cannot or barely understand, such as when women decide to work in prostitution. Women are entitled to expect their decisions to be accepted and respected. To claim or imply that these decisions are never made freely is to oppose the call by all women for the right to autonomy.

Full report available here

Conflicting Rights: How the Prohibition of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation Infringes the Right to Health of Female Sex Workers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Lisa Maher, Thomas Crewe Dixon, Pisith Phlong, Julie Mooney-Somers, Ellen S. Stein, Kimberly Page: “Conflicting Rights: How the Prohibition of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation Infringes the Right to Health of Female Sex Workers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.” Health and Human Rights Journal. Accessed June 12, 2015.

Abstract

While repressive laws and policies in relation to sex work have the potential to undermine HIV prevention efforts, empirical research on their interface has been lacking. In 2008, Cambodia introduced anti-trafficking legislation ostensibly designed to suppress human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Based on empirical research with female sex workers, this article examines the impact of the new law on vulnerability to HIV and other adverse health outcomes. Following the introduction of the law, sex workers reported being displaced to streets and guesthouses, impacting their ability to negotiate safe sex and increasing exposure to violence. Disruption of peer networks and associated mobility also reduced access to outreach, condoms, and health care. Our results are consistent with a growing body of research which associates the violation of sex workers’ human rights with adverse public health outcomes. Despite the successes of the last decade, Cambodia’s AIDS epidemic remains volatile and the current legal environment has the potential to undermine prevention efforts by promoting stigma and discrimination, impeding prevention uptake and coverage, and increasing infections. Legal and policy responses which seek to protect the rights of the sexually exploited should not infringe the right to health of sex workers.

Full article available here.