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1
Introduction
The new intimacies and mobilities of sex work: who does it, where and why?
Mobility is the central organizing theme of this volume about womenâs labour in the sexual services industry. Our central focus is sex worker mobility within the industry, particularly across the borders of legal and illegal sex work, between regulated spaces and unregulated spaces, across state and national borders, and in and out of the sex industry. Importantly, in this volume, we recognize our mobility across the borders of political and feminist thinking. One of the key questions always posed in sex work scholarship is where the speaker falls or locates herself along the agency/servitude continuum that defines discussions of sex work. Despite recognition that polarized accounts of womenâs power or powerlessness in the sex industry do not account for the complexities of womenâs sex work (see OâConnell-Davidson 2006, Wolkowitz 2006, Weitzer 2009a for persuasive critiques), this contest between pro- and anti-sex work voices often directs attention away from understanding sex work as work. It directs attention away from a clear and targeted analysis of how contemporary employment and migration patterns shape womenâs sex work. In Sex Work: Labour, mobility and sexual services, our efforts are directed at understanding womenâs decisions to undertake sex work, and how their interactions with existing state and national regulatory systems, and their mobility across national borders shape their work experiences.
Teela Sanders has observed that âa defining characteristic of the contemporary sex industry is the mobility of women at both a global and local levelâ (Sanders 2005a: 168). For us, the mobility of women creates, interacts with and extends other forms of mobility in the global sexual services industry. These mobilities include changes in the meaning and experience of sex, changing patterns of work, and significant structural changes in the sexual services industry. This volume integrates feminist, criminological and sociological frameworks to examine how sex workers from Melbourne, Victoria negotiate their labour in relation to existing local and border regulatory systems and changing conceptualizations of sex, intimacy and embodiment.
We are very conscious that writing in this field usually requires a declaration of principle in relation to sex work, especially for feminist scholars. The intensity of the debate between pro- and anti-sex work researchers and thinkers dominates the field, and as we explore later in this volume, influences the conceptualization and implementation of regulation. Despite the emergence of much valuable scholarship that explores womenâs working lives (Bernstein 2007a, Day 2007, Sanders 2005a offer wonderful examples) and calls for more nuanced âon-the-fenceâ positions, binarized accounts of and approaches to sex work continue. Political identifications and feminist ideas about the inherent violences of heterosexuality and existing gendered civic, political and economic inequalities determine the nature of interventions. The choice of language (sex work vs. prostitution, migrating labour vs. trafficking, agency vs. coercion) is often understood to identify oneâs political position. For us, one of the under-examined effects of this polarization is how it influences research methodologies with consequent flow-on to findings, conclusions and ultimately to regulation and enforcement (see Koken 2010).
Our thinking is profoundly influenced by the voices of sex workers we interviewed in Melbourne, Australia about sex work labour and migratory trajectories. We are extremely grateful to these women for sharing their experiences and their reflections on sex work, on what does and does not work for them in the industry, and on how they consider sex work is changing. We have sought in our analysis to render their experiences as faithfully as we can. This is always a difficult process. Researchers must reflect as fully as possible on the data collected, recognize the influences that shape interpretation and attend to ethical obligations in every phase of research. In the field of sex work, these expectations and practices create particular points of pressure and tension in the conduct of the research.
In our view, the binarized political context shapes sex work research methodologies in ways that are not often explicitly acknowledged. In reviewing sex work studies, the descriptions of research practices illuminate these particular tensions. There are those researchers who embed themselves in the sexual services industry and seek to experience the work context of the street worker: picking up clients and getting arrested as Elizabeth Bernstein (2007a) has done on the streets of San Francisco. There are some who ground their work in long-term outreach with support organizations, such as Sophie Day (2007) in the Praed Street project in London. There are others who locate their sex work research in the framework of human trafficking, where the principles guiding research and research design are grounded in a human rights approach that emphasizes exploitation. Some scholars argue that themes of sex and abuse are overly dominant in research approaches (Kesler 2002, Koken 2010, Weldon 2010). The extant political ideologies regarding sex work seem particularly important in the methods adopted and in the research justification. Ideologies of course always shape research practice, but the tensions around interviewing nurses about contested nurseâpatient ratios in a neo-liberal healthcare system, or prosecutors about decisions to recommend diversionary programmes for offenders, are perceived as considerably less complex than those that inflect research into sex work. We have read and valued all of these contributions to our understanding of what the women we interviewed were describing. The commitment of researchers to engage the complexities and particularities of this field of work is well demonstrated. The varying and complex methodological approaches adopted have assisted us in thinking critically about our own approach and conclusions.
We are aware of the position of some sex worker activists who maintain that sex work research can only be conducted by sex workers themselves. In our primary study undertaken in Melbourne, the major city in the state of Victoria in Australia, this position meant an activist organization advised its members not to talk to us. This request was sent out in a public circular. We should mention this information wasnât reported to us in any recruiting activity in the brothels, which may suggest the limited reach of activist organizations into many working womenâs lives and networks. This âsex workers onlyâ research position is one of necessity we have to question, as this empirical and conceptual work was conducted by us as industry outsiders. We are not insiders and we cannot speak for workers in an unmediated way. We recognize, as Oakley has observed, that âself-representation is a luxury [workers] are deniedâ (Oakley 2007: 12) in many research studies.
We have learnt an enormous amount from studies where researchers have been embedded in sex workersâ communities and practices (see Bernstein 2007a, Day 2007, Sanders 2005a) and from worker voices (Holden 2007, Oakley 2007), but we would reject the argument that one can only understand sex work from the position of insider or partial insider. Such an assertion implies sex workers cannot speak fully and effectively for themselves through carefully designed research studies as we would expect other workers to be able to (nurses, finance officers, female executives, aged care workers). In our view, this assumption that the experiences of sex workers in sex work cannot be analysed in the same manner as findings from other industries rehearses and embeds âthe disabling assumption that women [working in sex work] cannot assess or explain their own interestsâ (Wolkowitz 2006: 127).
The research methods used in the primary study that underpin this volume are grounded in conventional social sciences approaches. We interviewed workers about their work experiences, their ideas about regulation, and the constraints that they face as sex workers. Overwhelmingly, these interviews were undertaken within participantsâ workplaces. In analysing their responses, we have been guided by our ethical research obligations and our feminist commitments. We have relied heavily on what they had to say about sex work and sex work regulation.
We have been deeply influenced by Margrete Sandelowskiâs argument for thematic qualitative description as a valuable methodological approach that allows everyday meanings to be drawn from qualitative data. Sandelowski suggests this method produces âa comprehensive summary of an event, in ⊠everyday termsâ (Sandelowski 2000: 336) that would be recognized as valid by both researchers and participants. She argues that this approach is still clearly âinterpretiveâ (Sandelowski 2010: 79) since data can never speak for itself. However, âdescriptive validityâ (Sandelowski 2000: 363) emphasizes the need to retain the everyday meaning of the data produced. This approach was particularly valuable in our primary study since we are expressly interested in worker experience and views. It is helpful too because of the contested nature of the terrain, the tensions around insider/outsider research practices, and the extent of political feeling generated in discussions of sex work. When there are still contests over whether sex work is work, and whether intimacy can or should be commodified, focusing on the everyday shared meanings of data is especially important. We hope our insights illuminate and improve the work contexts and conditions for sex workers in Victoria. We consider that giving weight to workersâ views about their work and their work conditions is the best way to achieve grounded and thorough knowledge.
In Sex Work, we focus on research findings from interviews in conjunction with critical analyses of contemporary work conditions and current thinking about sex and sexual practices more generally. We take a critical approach to regulation within state and national borders and regulation of human mobility across borders. It is our view that this mixed approach does allow for the recognition and integration of workersâ views, which Fawkes below argues is often absent from research.
I argue that in Australia, similarly, there is a reluctance to listen to and believe sex workers and that some feminists have developed or adapted theories and practices which actively silence the sex worker âvoiceâ and replace our âtruthsâ, history and our sex work experiences with the âtruthâ as written by anti sex work feminists. Effectively this has excluded sex workersâ own feminist analysis of their work from feminist spaces and debates.
(Fawkes 2005: 22)
We do think, however, that researchers can also make a contribution to revealing sex workersâ accounts of their own labour. This is our aim here. The ethical obligation is of course complicated and requires monitoring and reflexivity. As revealed by OâConnell-Davidsonâs (2008) account of the changing and complex ethical obligations in her research relationship with the sex worker DesireĂ©, the ethical contract must be discharged across time and with attentiveness to changing contexts.
These questions about positioning and methodological commitment are not only relevant to the ethical and professional obligations of researchers and scholars. In writing this volume, we were struck by the intensity of feeling in the scholarship in terms of bodies, material practices, ideas about sex, politics and power, and in particular by the visceral nature of feminist writing in the area. Wolkowitz (2006) has argued that we must keep the materiality of the body in sight while investigating forms of labour where bodies interact. She defines body work as work âthat takes the body as its immediate site of employment, involving intimate, messy contactâ (Wolkowitz 2006: 147). Sex work is clearly body work that takes us directly to a broader set of material yet socially constituted corporeal locations that constitute sex. These locations include private body parts, sexual fluids, intimate practices and affect and emotion. Although the bodies of all body workers are drawn into intimate relationship with the bodies of the cared for, the body and labour of the sex worker attract particular attention, because of the nature of the intimate work. This work involves the touching of sexual body parts, the exchange of fluid, and intense and complex sexual feelings and pleasures which many feel cannot or should not be exchanged in a commodified space or transaction.
In particular, the sex workerâs body is at once subject, object and labour site in sex work. Ideas about sex work are grounded in the sex workerâs body as a sexed body in its proximity to the body of the male client. This emphasis on the body of the sex worker influences moral debates, public health discussions and harm minimization strategies. These tendencies are always already plain in regulatory frameworks through which workersâ bodies are identified as objects of surveillance, of investigation and at times of disrespect. As OâNeill (2001) observes, the sex workerâs body is the place where the questions and tensions of sex work regulation are most often managed. Regulatory schemas focus on health checks, on medical certificates, on securing as much as possible the purity of the notionally impure body of the sex worker, and on minimizing the bodily intersections in each sex work transaction. Yet this attention to bodies in the field of sex work seldom includes attention to the workerâs body as a working body. In regulatory documents and frameworks, there are rarely discussions of safe numbers of clients, safe guidelines for commonly requested practices, or for the management of the health and well-being of the worker. OâConnell-Davidson has observed that there is inadequate discussion of safe work practices for workers in sex work debates and discussions.
[There is an] absence of debate on the specificity of sex work, the details of labour regulation, and the minimum standards that should be applied to the work of prostitutes, and on what constitutes an unacceptable level of âexploitationâ within prostitution (self-exploitation as well as by an employer).
(OâConnell-Davidson 2006: 19)
Sanders and Campbell comment on the same issue. âIssues of violence and trafficking today raise questions about oppression, feminism, and the role of the state, but rarely work conditionsâ (Sanders and Campbell 2007: 9). This absence suggests it is the body of the worker as it impacts on and interacts with other bodies, rather than the safety and security of the worker body itself that shapes regulatory approaches. Wolkowitz has observed that âthe prostitute body is seen as the obverse of the sovereign bodyâ (Wolkowitz 2006: 118); it seems ironic then that harm minimization approaches reinforce the stateâs interest in the workerâs body but not as a sovereign body. The workerâs body is rather a site to be managed so other bodies may be protected. Despite the surveillance of the sex workerâs body, there is a reluctance to engage closely with the body of worker and the labours of that body. Our focus in Chapters 3 and 4 is on the body work of the sex worker and how sex workers seek embodied agency and mobility in their everyday labours.
This limited recognition of the sex workerâs body as the object in sex work is linked to and reflected in âthe construction of the prostitute as an innocent wounded bodyâ (Wolkowitz 2006: 143), whereby individual subjectivity and agency are rendered provisional in and through the commercial sex transaction. These interlinked notions of intimacy with the body of the worker, and provisional subjectivity and agency form a critical nexus for thinking about sex work. Specifically, they determine how workersâ labour conditions are understood. If most regulatory schemas make visible sex workersâ bodies as objects while deliberately avoiding the need to define safe or appropriate working practices, they address the safety of clients and the community rather than that of workers. This is significant because it leaves workers in a rapidly expanding and complex service sector without clear occupational health and safety criteria and guidelines. Wolkowitz (2006) observes that body work in all its guises is increasingly important in developed and developing economies because this is work that cannot be outsourced. Sex work in a changing technological and global context is being transformed through changing practices, social media and new ideas about sex but it remains intimately bound to the bodies of workers in their exchanges with clients. The practices and safety of sex workersâ bodies need to be more fully addressed and accounted for.
For us, there is a further layer of body work that could usefully be considered when we write about and research sex work. The approach outlined above in which the sex workerâs body is understood to require particular forms of surveillance ignores the reality that all other forms of labour are also embodied. Explicit and sometimes fetishized attention is paid to bodies doing sex work. Yet, the intermingling of intimacies, occupations, identities and sex is everywhere as Brewis and Linstead (2000a) have argued. In particular, we would argue that questions of sex and eroticism influence scholarly writing about sex work. There is inevitably a relationship of the body of the writer/researcher to ideas of sex, and to the sexual practices that constitute the work of the sex worker. When we read or write about sex, there is a visceral intersection of corporeal reactions and conceptual tools. Our notions, experiences and corporeal memories of sex and our personal preferences, fantasies and curiosities are aroused and engaged.
In much of the writing on sex work, this intersection is not acknowledged. Yet, in our view, it fuels and frames the theories and agendas that dominate the field. When workers describe their sex work, personal preferences, aptitudes and aspirations in relation to sex, as well as pragmatic considerations of money and safety, influence their work practices. These elements define the bodily and emotional boundaries of sex work for each worker. As writers, researchers and thinkers about sex and sexual practice, our personal preferences and commitments also form part of our conceptual apparatus as we work and are inevitably revealed in the resulting scholarship. Therefore, in writing and scholarship about sex work, the meaning and experiences of sex are important for all actors in the field.
Acknowledging this importance means recognizing that when we write and talk about the intimacies of sex work, we are bringing ourselves into visceral contact with those intimacies. Mountz and Hyndman (2006) have proposed that feminists need to employ âembodied epistemologiesâ when researching women as they labour in challenging global labour market conditions. Our writing about sex work in this volume seeks to engage with the âmicropolitics of sexâ (Wolkowitz 2006: 139) and work towards such âembodied epistemologiesâ. In negotiating the binaries that structure sex work scholarship, whether sex can be considered as work, whether intimacy can be transacted, and what is gained and lost when sex is commodified, personal preferences, experience and aspiration will be central. We cannot adjudicate on these matters, but only be aware that our thinking about sex work is inevitably influenced by these factors. These factors are reflected in our analysis throughout this book.
In the remainder of this introductory chapter, we lay out the framework for this volume. Twenty-first-century societies are marked by increasing human mobility, broad scale social change in partnerships and family relationships, and the dominance of market-based philosophies underpinning work and labour relations. In this landscape, sex work offers a unique intersection of physical intimacy, service work and global labour. Sex workers operate at key intersections in the global economy; they negotiate social, educational and national conditions as they carry out sex work. Increasingly mobile populations of sex workers are crossing national and cultural borders. The availability of sexual service options via new communication technologies means workers in the sexual services market are offering older-style service delivery in tandem with newer entrepreneurial opportunities. In this chapter, we argue that normative accounts of sex work framed within discourses of power and powerlessness do not fully engage with the realities of global market conditions and changing notions of sex and intimacy. We argue for the centrality of mobility in seeking to understand sex work, as everyday practice, as regulatory site and as global employment sector. In each of these domains, workers, industry operators, government regulators and international frameworks create and r...
