[Upcoming Seminar] Risks, Resources and Allies: Sex Workers’ Strategies for Working with Other Sex Workers

Risks, Resources and Allies: Sex Workers’ Strategies for Working with Other Sex Workers

Speaker: Julie HAM
Time: 1:00 – 2:30 pm, 25 Sept 2015 (Friday)
Venue: Room 401, Humanities Building, New Asia College, CUHK

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Working with others is generally recognized as an important safety strategy for sex workers, yet the ability to choose who one works with remains criminalized in various jurisdictions (e.g. Canada). Public and policy debates regarding if sex workers can or should work with others contrasts with the relative lack of research on how sex workers work with others in the sex industry. Interviews with 65 migrant, immigrant and racialized women sex workers in Vancouver, Canada and Melbourne, Australia revealed three different views that informed sex workers’ workplace relationships with other sex workers – as risks, resources or allies. This presentation explores how these perspectives of workplace dynamics shaped workers’ understanding of the sex industry and work practices.

Julie Ham is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. Her recent research explores the regulation of sex work and migration and its impact on sex workers’ security, mobility and agency. She has published on sex work, anti-trafficking, gender and migration, feminist participatory action research, and activist efforts by trafficking survivors, sex workers and domestic workers.

ALL INTERESTED ARE WELCOME.