Producing Difference, Producing Knowledge

Abstract

The category of the ‘migrant sex worker’ is often used to communicate a range of social difference (e.g. class, race, gender) in immigration, sex work and anti-trafficking discourses. These research, policy, and public discourses have typically focused on the links between social difference, vulnerability and risk. However, the construction and use of social difference by immigrant, migrant and racialised sex workers remains relatively unexamined compared to the social construction of immigrant, migrant and racialised sex workers. This presentation addresses this gap, drawing on data from interviews with 65 immigrant, migrant and racialized sex workers in Melbourne, Australia and Vancouver, Canada. This presentation analyses the role of social difference in sex workers’ decision-making and in their interactions with co-workers and clients. In both cities, sex workers’ decision-making were often infused with assumptions about the social locations of their clients, managers and other workers. For workers, social differences carried a range of meanings about capability (e.g. in ensuring one’s safety and success in the industry), character (e.g. trustworthiness, working ethically), legitimacy in sex work (or one’s ‘fit’ within the industry), and safety (e.g. risk, vulnerability). This presentation uses an intersectional theoretical lens to examine how social difference offers one mode of creating knowledge or serving as a proxy for knowledge in a context where professional knowledge may otherwise be hard to come by, given the immense stigmatization and frequent criminalization of sex work. Workers’ use and constructions of social difference also reveal potential challenges to fostering solidarity among diverse groups of workers in the sex workers rights movement. This paper will conclude by exploring strategies for dialogue about social difference with sex workers, and the challenges in fostering a nuanced understanding of difference that does not pathologize difference.