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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SEXHUM (Sexual Humanitarianism: understanding agency and exploitation in the global sex industry)

Teaser

Summary

Since October 2016 the project SEXHUM (Sexual Humanitarianism: Migration, Sex Work and Trafficking) funded by the European Research Council (ERC CoG 682451) and based in Kingston University London (United Kingdom) and at Aix-Marseille University (France), has been studying the relationship between migration, sex work and human trafficking by analysing the understandings, experiences and priorities of the migrants who are directly involved. SEXHUMâ€™s main aim is to produce new emic (subject internal) concepts and data needed to develop innovative theorizations of migrant agency and more efficient and ethical policies addressing migrants working in the sex industry. SEXHUM also investigates the impact of anti-trafficking and other humanitarian and social interventions targeting migrant sex workers on their lives and rights.

SEXHUM is meeting these two sets of aims through the following objectives:
â€¢ gather qualitative data on a stigmatized and under-researched group, migrants working in the sex industry, including sexual minority migrants;
â€¢ develop an innovative conceptual and social intervention framework to address the interplay between migration, sex work, exploitation and trafficking;
â€¢ impact on existing social interventions addressing sex work, trafficking and asylum by producing and disseminating policy recommendations;
â€¢ produce a definition and indicators of what constitutes exploitation in the sex industry that is informed by the experiences and understandings of migrant sex workers;
â€¢ propose an innovative and collaborative ethical framework to study vulnerable populations and disseminate findings including film-making as a form of participative expression.

SEXHUM adopts an interdisciplinary approach bringing together visual anthropology, sociology, gender and queer studies and human geography to study the relationship between migration, sex work, exploitation and trafficking. The project takes place in eight cities in France (Marseille and Paris), the United States (New York and Los Angeles), Australia (Melbourne and Sydney) and New Zealand (Auckland and Wellington) that are characterized by different policies on migration, sex work (criminalization, regulation, decriminalization) and trafficking. In each of these cities, teams of researchers are undertaking ethnographic observations of emerging issues and interviewing cis and trans women and men working in the sex industry to understand their experiences and what needs to be done to improve their situation.

In addition to ethnographic observations and interviews, in each of its 4 national settings the project will produce a short documentary based on the collaboration with a group of migrants who will be invited to participate in the collective writing of fictional characters and a story expressing their life experiences. The characters and the story written by the participants will be interpreted by actors to protect their identities. This method, which combines documentary and fiction in order to better understand and represent reality, is called ethnofiction.

In order to meet its aims and objectives the project hired 6 postdoctoral researchers for 36 months to undertake fieldwork in each of the 4 national settings of the project. Each of the 6 researchers is currently undertaking a period of intensive ethnographic observation (minimum duration of 18 months) and social interaction with the research participants.

Work performed

During the first three months after the start of the project the PI set up an advisory board including people who have sponsored the IRB validation of the project and key researchers and representatives of strategic organisations supporting migrant sex workers in each national setting of the project. The PI also set up a provisional website presenting the main dimensions of the project, its research team and its advisory board.

The successful recruitment of SEXHUM\'s research team took place across several months (between November 2016 and June 2017) in order to identify and select the most suitable candidates in each site. All but one of the research team members were recruited and started working by March 2017. The Australia-based one started in June 2017.

Since March 2017 the project focused almost exclusively on data gathering by undertaking both participant observations and semi-structured interviews in all of its 4 national settings. In the US, where the research team in New York City and Los Angeles is composed of three part-time researchers, the project has gathered around 90 per cent of the planned 50 semi-structured interviews. In Australia, France and New Zealand, where the project employs one researcher in each country, the project gathered around 75 per cent of the planned 50 semi-structured interviews. The SEXHUM research team aims to finish all data gathering by the end of May 2019.

Final results

The SEXHUM research team was able to gather across all of its four national settings the experiences of a great variety of people working in the sex industry, in terms of their ethnicity, area of work, migration, sex-gender identity, class and race. This is a great early achievement of the project, which will be able to analyse strategically different and comparable experiences of agency and exploitation in relation to sex work and to the impact of anti-trafficking and other humanitarian and social interventions on migrant sex workersâ€™ lives and rights. We expect the great diversity of our research participants to challenge constructively the stereotypically sex-gendered and racialised criteria of victimhood guiding humanitarian and other social interventions, which risk exacerbating migrantsâ€™ exploitability in the sex industry and in other labour sectors by misreading their real vulnerabilities, ignoring their priorities and limiting their agency.