Informal governance and the spatial management of street-based sex work in Aotearoa New Zealand

Neuwelt-Kearns, Caitlin, Tom Baker, and Octavia Calder-Dawe. 2020. ‘Informal Governance and the Spatial Management of Street-Based Sex Work in Aotearoa New Zealand’. Political Geography 79 (May): 102154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102154.

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Abstract
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While informality has long been studied as a feature of governance in the global South, a growing range of accounts examine informal governing arrangements as endemic to cities and nations of the global North. This paper contributes to such scholarship by drawing attention to informal practices and mechanisms involved in the spatial management of sex work in the global North. Existing literature on the spatial management of sex work has long emphasised how informality shapes local sex work practices and mediates formal state-based regulation. We synthesise these studies to suggest three modes of informal governance: as component, catalyst and alternative to formal regulation. Through a case study of street-based sex work management in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, we discuss how informal governance emerged as a de facto component of formal regulation at the national scale and an alternative to formal regulation at the local scale. Specifically, we detail how an ambiguous regulatory environment, combined with highly localised understandings of spatial appropriateness, led to and influenced the informal management of sex work through a community-level partnership between local authorities, residents and sex worker advocates. In doing so, the paper advocates for more attention to the multi-modal and multi-scalar aspects of informal governance.

‘Whore stigma’ as a transformative experience: altered cognitive expectations among Jewish-Israeli street-based sex workers

Zarhin, Dana, und Nicole Fox. „‘Whore stigma’ as a transformative experience: altered cognitive expectations among Jewish-Israeli street-based sex workers“. Culture, Health & Sexuality 19, Nr. 10 (3. Oktober 2017): 1078–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2017.1292367.

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Abstract

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While the scholarship on sex work is substantial, it neglects to explore whether sex work and associated stigma affect sex workers’ cognitive expectations. Drawing on observations of street-based sex work as well as in-depth interviews with Jewish-Israeli sex workers, this study suggests that because stigma is a moral experience that threatens and often destroys what really matters to stigmatised individuals, it leads to recurrent disappointments, which, in turn, may alter sex workers’ cognitive expectations. Sex workers learn to see certain life goals, including maintaining healthy social relationships and a workspace free of violence and humiliation, as unobtainable. However, they also begin to see other aspects of their lives, such as economic autonomy, as achievable through sex work. Tracing how whore stigma becomes a transformative experience allows us to add another layer to the heretofore suggested link between the structural, cultural and individual aspects of stigmatisation.

Violent and Nonviolent Crimes Against Sex Workers: The Influence of the Sex Market on Reporting Practices in the United Kingdom

Connelly, L., Kamerāde, D., & Sanders, T. (2018). Violent and Nonviolent Crimes Against Sex Workers: The Influence of the Sex Market on Reporting Practices in the United Kingdom. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260518780782
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Abstract
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Previous research has shown that sex workers experience extremely high rates of victimization but are often reluctant to report their experiences to the police. This article explores how the markets in which sex workers operate in the United Kingdom impact upon the violent and nonviolent crimes they report to a national support organization and their willingness to report victimization to the police. We use a secondary quantitative data analysis of 2,056 crime reports submitted to the U.K. National Ugly Mugs (NUM) scheme between 2012 and 2016. The findings indicate that although violence is the most common crime type reported to NUM, sex workers operating in different markets report varying relative proportions of different types of victimization. We also argue that there is some variation in the level of willingness to share reports with the police across the different sex markets, even when the types of crime, presence of violence, and other variables are taken into account. Our finding that street sex workers are most likely to report victimization directly to the police challenges previously held assumptions that criminalization is the key factor preventing sex workers from engaging with the police.

Police Enforcement of Street Prostitution as a Quality-of-Life Offense: New York City, United States, and Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Cohen, Bernard. 2018. „Police Enforcement of Street Prostitution as a Quality-of-Life Offense: New York City, United States, and Frankfurt am Main, Germany“. Deviant Behavior 0 (0): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2018.1431096.

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Abstract

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The present paper compares how police in Hunts Point, South Bronx, New York City and Frankfurt am Main Germany manage street prostitution as a quality-of-life offense. Methods utilized for this research include observation and “conversation” in public spaces with prostitutes, police, and community members. This paper deals with characteristics of street prostitutes, police enforcement, actual interaction between police and street actors, and impact of these methods on prostitutes. For decades, broken windows policing has been utilized to counter quality-of-life offenses in urban neighborhoods such as NYC, and evidence regarding its effectiveness has often been questioned. In attempts to address prostitution, two variant policing models were identified and examined through the framework of broken windows theory: Punitive/Criminalization Policing and Containment/Laissez-Faire Policing. Broken windows policing probably lowered the incidence of quality-of-life offenses including street prostitution. However, broken windows theory does not take into account socially constructed myths that persist about prostitution, nor the realities that counter them. This paper addresses these myths and how they may inform policing practices, resulting in negative corollary effects which must be eliminated.

Policing roulette: Sex workers’ perception of encounters with police officers in the indoor and outdoor sector in England

Klambauer, Eva. “Policing Roulette: Sex Workers? Perception of Encounters with Police Officers in the Indoor and Outdoor Sector in England.” Criminology & Criminal Justice, May 16, 2017, 174889581770986. doi:10.1177/1748895817709865.

Abstract

The regulation of sex work continues to be a divisive topic in England and internationally. Policies governing the policing of the sex industry in England are continually revised and debated, but are seldom grounded in empirical evidence of sex workers’ experiences. Based on 49 qualitative interviews with sex workers in England, this article finds that indoor sex workers had far more positive experiences with the police than outdoor sex workers. Despite this difference, both indoor and outdoor sex workers perceive their interactions with the police through the lens of their stigmatized status as sex workers and do not expect respectful treatment by the police. This article presents compelling evidence that an enforcement-led approach to policing creates insuperable barriers to the success of protective policing.

Staging the Trans Sex Worker

Rev, Nihils, and Fiona Maeve Geist. “Staging the Trans Sex Worker.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 4, no. 1 (February 1, 2017): 112–27. doi:10.1215/23289252-3711577.

Abstract

This article interrogates how the figure of the trans street-based sex worker is deployed to argue for positive intervention on behalf of trans individuals, in addition to how it is used at the expense of a variety of trans experiences of sex work. As a corollary, this article addresses how a nuanced account of trans sex work, responsive to these concerns, can provide the basis for a more robust conception of trans theory.

Being Like Your Girlfriend: Authenticity and the Shifting Borders of Intimacy in Sex Work

Carbonero, M. Antònia, and María Gómez Garrido. “Being Like Your Girlfriend: Authenticity and the Shifting Borders of Intimacy in Sex Work.” Sociology, February 14, 2017, 38038516688609. doi:10.1177/0038038516688609.

Abstract

In the last decades a series of sexual services that offer company, talk, and more generally, what is understood as a ‘girlfriend experience’, are increasingly offered to a middle and upper-middle class clientele. These services involve a change in the boundaries of intimacy. We argue that they can be interpreted as part of the general process by which late capitalism has subsumed the 1968 critique that demanded liberation and authenticity. Based on an analysis of in-depth interviews with escorts and street walkers, we explore the discourse of authenticity in escort work in Spain and how the line is drawn between an ‘authentic intimacy’ that is sold, and a ‘private intimacy’, which involves the non-commodified affective life of the sex worker. We argue that escorts and street walkers draw these borders differently, the former emphasising authenticity in their service. Both, however, deploy a form of emotional labour.

‘They won’t change it back in their heads that we’re trash’: the intersection of sex work-related stigma and evolving policing strategies

Krüsi, Andrea et al. “‘They Won’t Change It Back in Their Heads That We’re Trash’: The Intersection of Sex Work-Related Stigma and Evolving Policing Strategies.” Sociology of Health & Illness (2016):

Abstract

In Vancouver, Canada, there has been a continuous shift in the policing of sex work away from arresting sex workers, which led to the implementation of a policing strategy that explicitly prioritised the safety of sex workers and continued to target sex workers’ clients. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 cisgender and five transgender women street-based sex workers about their working conditions. Data were analysed thematically and by drawing on concepts of structural stigma and vulnerability. Our results indicated that despite police rhetoric of prioritising the safety of sex workers, participants were denied their citizenship rights for police protection by virtue of their ‘risky’ occupation and were thus responsiblised for sex work related violence. Our findings further suggest that sex workers’ interactions with neighbourhood residents were predominantly shaped by a discourse of sex workers as a ‘risky’ presence in the urban landscape and police took swift action in removing sex workers in the case of complaints. This study highlights that intersecting regimes of stigmatisation and criminalisation continued to undermine sex workers citizenship rights to police protection and legal recourse and perpetuated labour conditions that render sex workers at increased risk for violence and poor health.

‘Who’s the Slut, Who’s the Whore?’ Street Harassment in the Workplace Among Female Sex Workers in New Zealand

Armstrong, Lynzi. “‘Who’s the Slut, Who’s the Whore?’ Street Harassment in the Workplace Among Female Sex Workers in New Zealand.” Feminist Criminology, May 29, 2015, 1557085115588553. doi:10.1177/1557085115588553.

Abstract:

Street-based sex work is commonly portrayed as a social nuisance in the urban landscape. However, a wealth of research has shown how sex workers on the street experience frequent harassment from other members of the public in the course of their work. This article explores the experience of street harassment among women working on the street in New Zealand, where sex work is decriminalized. In this article, I consider the social, legal, and cultural factors that underpin the street harassment that the women described. I consider the significance of this form of harassment when situated in the “workplace” of street workers in a decriminalized street-based sex industry. I argue that these experiences are inextricably linked to the continued subordination of women in contemporary society and to social norms regarding female sexuality. I argue that challenging this harassment is critical in supporting the human rights of street-based sex workers, but that doing so requires a fundamental shift in societal views on women and sexuality in general.

Recovery Narratives, War Stories, and Nostalgia: Street-Based Sex Workers’ Discursive Negotiations of the Exclusionary Regime

Dewey, Susan C. “Recovery Narratives, War Stories, and Nostalgia: Street-Based Sex Workers’ Discursive Negotiations of the Exclusionary Regime.” Anthropological Quarterly 87, no. 4 (2014): 1137–63. doi:10.1353/anq.2014.0063.

Abstract

This article draws upon 18 months of participant observation with 50 street-based sex workers living in a transitional housing facility. Subsequent in-depth interviews with 50 different women actively working on the street also inform analysis presented here, which explores discursive practice as one of the most salient means by which women maneuver within a socio-legal system that targets them as individuals engaged in criminalized behavior. Findings presented in this article build upon the larger project’s goal of articulating the complex and highly individualized ways in which US street-based sex workers struggling with addiction negotiate the move from membership in a criminalized group to what more than a few women describe as “being a productive member of society.” Street-based sex workers engage in this complex shift while embedded in what I term an exclusionary regime, a dense coalescence of punitive forces which involve both governance in the form of the criminal justice system and engagement with the courts and other state agents, and regular patterns of action, including myriad forms of discrimination resulting from stigma. This article discusses three narrative forms that partially enable street-based sex workers to negotiate the exclusionary regime: recovery narratives, war stories, and nostalgia. These highly context-bound expressive forms function as powerful tools that help women to obtain resources and status, as well as convey the complexities of their experiences in ways that move beyond the otherwise constrained identities available to them.