Abstract
Julie Ham’s book Sex Work, Immigration and Social Difference explores sex workers’ experiences of safety, agency, and mobility in two different cities and regulatory regimes. Vancouver’s quasi-illegal and Melbourne’s legalized environment is analyzed through Leslie McCall’s (2005) typology of intersectionality methodologies. Ham explores how sex workers’ social differences shift across workplaces and national borders and how the two different regulatory frameworks produce legality and illegality in sex work and migration? Further, she asks how these different regulatory frameworks challenge or enable collective agency in workplaces?
The starting point of the book is the discrepancy between public and policy discourses that focus on sex trafficking and the assumed vulnerability of migrant sex workers. In order to challenge these assumptions, and to critically examine “public and policy perceptions of the ‘migrant sex worker’ by starting from the lived realities of women who embody or experience dimensions of this category” (p. 19), Ham has chosen to interview a very diverse group of women. They consist of 65 sex workers who are perceived in the predominantly white and English-speaking environments of Canada and Australia as racialized or culturally or linguistically diverse, and hence often also as “migrant sex workers.” Some of them have a history of immigration or are migrants, but the majority of her interviewees are citizens (52%).
The theoretical and methodological background of the study (chapters two, three, and four) lays out the agency debate in sex work research and gives an overview of how the “migrant sex worker” has been understood in research and public policy debates. The author applies intersectionality to the field of criminology, where it is little used. In the methods section, Ham provides an important overview of the history of exploitation in the field of sex work research and discusses the researcher’s positionality.
Ham sets as her task to apply McCall’s typology of three intersectionality methodologies, “anti-categorical,” “inter-categorical,” and “intra-categorical,” to her analysis (chapters five, six, and seven). By analyzing her material through an “anti-categorical” approach, Ham deconstructs the public and policy discourses around the category of “migrant sex worker.” Ham’s very broad sampling criteria offers a possibility to examine non-Western and non-native English speakers become the targets of anti-trafficking policies and exclusions irrespective of their immigration status, as well as to demonstrate how the dichotomy citizen/migrant is too simplified to understand the variety of legal statuses people assumed to be “migrant sex workers” occupy. However, Ham’s critique towards researchers’ focus on legal status as one of the most meaningful aspects of migrant sex workers’ situation falls a bit short as the majority of her interviewees either have citizenship (52%) or permanent residence permit (21%). For the majority of her interviewees, the legal status is stable, and the social and affective aspects of citizenship that Ham explores in the book become more important. Other studies demonstrate that migrant sex workers experience immigration status central in defining their working and living conditions.
One of the most valuable contributions of the book is the discussion on how women negotiate illegalities and legalities in sex work. Through comparing women’s experiences in the quasi-illegal and legal contexts of Vancouver and Melbourne and how these legal frameworks affect women’s agency, mobility, and security, the book deepens the understanding of the impact these regulatory regimes have on the everyday lives of sex workers, as well as how sex workers negotiate creatively with legalities and illegalities to create agency and positive identifications. The book demonstrates how Vancouver’s quasi-illegal and Melbourne’s legal frameworks produce different working conditions, professional knowledges, and identities.
While I appreciate Ham’s deep engagement with intersectionality, McCall’s typology rather than representing a “toolbox” to use in single research, describes the three most common epistemological and methodological approaches used in intersectional analysis: deconstructive/post-structuralist (anti-categorical), positivist-comparative (inter-categorical), and grounded approach starting from lived experiences (intra-categorical). This complexity of epistemological approaches is a difficult ground to navigate, and sometimes the different epistemological and methodological understandings makes it hard for the reader to decipher how social differences are discussed and who is defining the categories: policy discourses, previous research, the researcher, or the interviewees. Despite these momentary confusions, this book consolidates the understanding that the anti-trafficking discourse and its victimized images have little resonance in the everyday lives of “migrant sex workers.” The book makes an important contribution to the literature on regulatory regimes by highlighting insightfully the micro- and macro-level dimensions of the quasi-illegal and legal regulatory regimes of Vancouver and Melbourne, as well as how sex workers negotiate with them to create satisfactory working conditions and to advance their lives.