Documents sex worker 12 results

"This article provides an analysis of regulatory approaches to sex work, the status of sex workers' labour rights, and the conflation of sex work and human trafficking, with reference to the example of Germany. It assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Germany's approach to the regulation of prostitution and the ways it has been influenced by international debates challenging the status of sex work as work, as well as concerns about human trafficking. It analyses the Prostitution Act 2002 (ProstG), and the Prostitute Protection Act 2017 (ProstSchG), and their effects on the rights and working conditions of sex workers, as well as their aim of improving the safety of vulnerable sex workers and reducing the level of human trafficking and exploitation in the German sex industry. In particular, the article considers the impact of this legislation on those working in the sex industry, especially migrant women and those at risk of exploitation. Through its analysis of the existing approach to sex work in Germany, the direction of reform and the absence of a labour-rights approach to the regulation of sex work and the prevention of trafficking, the article highlights the fact that even a country that is -in principle - willing to accept sex work as work, has failed to grant labour rights to sex workers. The article argues that the Prostitute Protection Act has in some ways increased the vulnerability of sex workers rather than promoting their safety. In addition, it is argued that legislators should consider labour protection and labour rights as an alternative means of protecting sex workers, rather than (re)criminalizing aspects of sex work in the name of ‘protecting' women by means of prohibition or control. Adopting a labour-rights approach rather than paternalistic approach would have the potential to bring about far-reaching reform of the relevant legislation both in Germany and internationally."

"Sex Worker Unionisation examines the challenges and opportunities offered by unionisation for Sex Workers. Exploring unionisation projects undertaken by Sex Workers in most major economies, this ground-breaking study shows how sex-workers have collectively sought to control and organise their work and working lives by co-determining the wage-effort with their de facto employers. It highlights the range of significant obstacles that have impeded their progress, including owner hostility, state regulation and the sway of radical feminism that is present in many unions. Outlining a more efficacious model for sex worker unionisation based upon combining occupation unionism and social movement unionism, this pioneering and controversial new book offers an important study of business organization in a unique industry."

"Entry into sex work is not typically considered as an occupational choice comparable to entry into other jobs. In the sex work literature, initiation is often thought to occur through predisposing factors deep in the structure of society, including childhood disadvantage, abuse and neglect. Some studies have also identified need for money as the main reason for entry, while others document entry due to a desire for more disposable income. Few studies have focused on agency-level factors guiding entry, including seeing sex work as a viable career or professional choice. Analysis of data from interviews with a purposive multi-gender sample (N = 218) reveals the multiple reasons for entry into sex work in Canada. Participants identified three overlapping structural and agentic reasons for entry: critical life events; desire or need for money; and personal appeal of the work. These findings are discussed in light of the occupational choice and sex work literatures."

"The idea of ‘exiting' the sex industry plays a powerful symbolic role in the feminist debates around the morality, legitimacy and regulation of sex work. Drawing on interviews with 39 women sex workers in Australia and Canada, we explore three key contrasts between dominant narratives and interventions that frame ‘exiting' as escape from trauma or exploitation, and sex workers' assessments of ‘exiting' as a personal or professional strategy. First, we explore sex workers' perceptions of sex work as temporary work. Second, we analyse the symbiosis between exit plans and current work practices. Third, we examine workers' assessment of the value of ‘exiting' sex work in the context of changing market forces within the sex industry, the ‘square' labour market (or non-sex work sectors) and exiting interventions (i.e. programmes to assist workers in leaving sex work). "

"‘Hoezo, je wil een boek over ons schrijven?' Een van de eerste prostituees waar Hans Vandecandelaere zijn wild idee aan uitlegde, keek hem verbaasd aan. Daarna volgde een lange uiteenzetting over de vele gezichten van sekswerk in België. Want je hebt vrouwen, mannen en transgenders. Er zijn ook raamprostituees, pornoacteurs en seksuele dienstverleners voor personen met een beperking. En dan zwijgen we nog over de wondere wereld van massagesalons, champagnebars, escorts en sekswebcams. Reporters zijn vermetel. Drie jaar lang reisde Vandecandelaere het land door. Op bedden in raambuurten, op sofa's in lounges van sterrenhotels of wiebelend op bierbakken in een achterkamer van een café: overal sprak hij met sekswerkers. Hij trok ook hun entourage aan de mouw: raamverhuurders, managers van escortbureaus en privéhuizen, gezondheidswerkers, juristen, leden van de recherche, het parket en de sociale inspectie. Betaalseks is misschien wel een van de laatste taboes in onze samenleving. Dit is een van de eerste boeken die u zo'n brede blik achter de coulissen gunt."

"Sex work remains a contentious area of debate. Whether or not sex work is considered to be a form of labour is in itself contested. As discussion is often about rather than with sex workers, this article brings Sarah's experiences of being both a student and a sex worker, in two different areas of the UK, to centre stage. This candid account highlights the precarious and competitive nature of being self-employed within the current neoliberal climate, as well as the similarities sex work shares with other ‘mainstream' forms of labour particularly within the ‘gig economy'. Existing research has focused on how/why students enter the sex industry leaving a gap in the literature regarding what happens after university in this context. It appears from Sarah's account that leaving sex work behind may not be as straightforward as she had originally anticipated, for reasons other than just making money. "

"This article explores under which circumstances a labour law approach could make a meaningful contribution to combatting human trafficking into the sex industry. In this, I critique the existing criminal law approach to human trafficking and its policies, which focus on trafficked persons as idealised victims in need of protection, rather than on their rights as workers, migrants and women. Furthermore, I also challenge the exclusion of sex workers from arguments for a labour law response to human trafficking, as they maintain the construction of trafficking for sexual exploitation and trafficking for labour exploitation as separate phenomena. Instead, this article advocates an alternative labour law approach to human trafficking, which incorporates wider interdisciplinary issues of gender equality and societal exclusions for women and migrants, and particularly female migrant sex workers, within a labour response. My focus is therefore on exclusions maintained by existing labour legislation, which are based on the standard employment contract and amplified by barriers to labour protections faced by workers in female-dominated service jobs in general and by sex workers in particular. As sex workers' embodied feminised labour is deemed not to be ‘real work', they seem to be unworthy of labour protections. My proposed labour response to human trafficking into the sex industry therefore combines some of the strengths of the existing labour rights-focussed anti-trafficking and exploitation discourse with arguments from feminist labour law theory in order to tackle the intersectional dimension of human trafficking into the sex industry. "