A Marxist-feminist approach to improving sex worker vulnerability

该项目将探索性工作者易受伤害的主观经验，以期了解这些经验是如何由资本主义关系塑造的，并评估马克思主义-女权主义理论见解如何为性工作者自己所希望的有效法律和政策改革提供参考。学生将通过马克思主义-女权主义理论的视角，对资本主义社会关系如何形成性工作者的脆弱性进行社会法律分析，并了解她们的自我概念化如何使她们与其他非标准工作者的经历相一致。该项目将建立在性工作和劳动法领域现有研究的基础上，强调有必要将有关性工作的法律和政策考虑牢牢地纳入工作领域。由于性工作者的脆弱性源于迫使工作者进入不安全工作条件的法律环境(Graham，2017)，人们将争辩说，纳入主流劳动法提供了合法性、赋权和保护(Van der Meulen，2012；Lope，2005)。文献中不太流行的是一种批判性观点，它相信性工作的合法性，但认识性工作者的脆弱性是更广泛资本主义失败的征兆，这意味着纳入正规经济的实际好处有限(Cruz，2013)。这项研究将以这一视角为基础，通过追问性工作者的主观经历如何构成资本主义诱导的早孕来创建详细的账户，以支持马克思主义-女权主义对资本主义的理解，资本主义是压迫关系的框架，包括那些塑造性工作者生活的压迫关系(Holstrom，2020)。具体地说，这项研究将发展克鲁兹关于存在于劳动不自由连续体上的(再)生产关系的资本主义概念(2018年，第72页)。通过让性工作者直接参与这一努力，这项研究将确保马克思主义-女权主义理论家(例如，见福吉，2014；克鲁兹，2013；林迪奥-麦戈文，2020)提出的更激进的结构性改革建议得到更大的认可，但被性工作者自己认为是有用的，以增加他们为有效政策改革提供信息的潜力。该项目将包括人种学方面(取决于公约19的偶然性)以及与学术和政策文献的接触。头18个月(除了研究培训)将用来回顾文献，提炼研究问题，并与布里斯托尔的相关慈善机构和组织建立关系，以便观察工作可以在第二年结束时进行。通过采用马克思主义-女权主义方法进行经验性工作研究，这项研究将对一个迄今仅在理论上探索的视角做出重要的学术贡献。它将产生强大的概念影响，允许与“自由派”性工作文献进行确凿的批判性接触，帮助重新构建辩论框架，以确保脆弱和剥削的经历，从平凡到极端，与它们产生的更广泛的社会背景联系在一起。收集的详细数据将有助于更好地了解这些脆弱性的复杂性，以便更好地为法律和政策辩论提供信息。

The project will explore the subjective experiences of vulnerability of UK sex workers with a view to understanding how these experiences are shaped by capitalist relations, and to assessing how Marxist-feminist theoretical insights can inform effective legal and policy reforms identified as desirable by sex workers themselves. The student will undertake a socio-legal analysis, through the lens of Marxist-feminist theory, of how capitalist social relations shape sex workers' vulnerability, and in order to understand how their self-conceptualisation aligns them with the experiences of other non-standard workers. The project will build on existing studies in the fields of sex work and labour law, highlighting the need for embedding legal and policy considerations about sex work firmly within the sphere of work. As sex workers' vulnerability stems from a legal environment that forces workers into unsafe working conditions (Graham, 2017), it will be argued that incorporation under mainstream labour law offers legitimacy, empowerment and protection (Van der Meulen, 2012; Lopes, 2005). Less prevalent in the literature is a critical perspective that believes in the legitimacy of sex work but recognises that the vulnerability of sex workers is symptomatic of wider capitalist failures, meaning incorporation into the formal economy is of limited practical benefit (Cruz, 2013). The research will build upon this perspective by asking how sex workers' subjective experiences are constitutive of capitalism-induced precarity to create detailed accounts supporting the Marxist-feminist understanding of capitalism as the framework within which relations of oppression, including those that shape the lives of sex workers, operate (Holstrom, 2020). Specifically, the research will develop Cruz's conceptualisation of capitalist relations of (re)production existing on a continuum of labour unfreedom (2018, p.72). By involving sex workers directly in this endeavour, the research will ensure that the more radical suggestions for structural change recommended by Marxist-feminist theorists (see Fudge, 2014; Cruz, 2013; and Lindio-McGovern, 2020 for examples) receive greater recognition but are identified as useful by sex workers' themselves to increase their potential for informing effective policy reform. The project will include an ethnographic dimension (subject to the contingencies of covid19) as well as engaging with scholarly and policy literature. The first 18 months will be spent (in addition to research training) in reviewing the literature, refining the research questions and building relationships with relevant charities and organisations in Bristol so that the observation work can be carried out towards the end of year 2. In adopting a Marxist-feminist approach to empirical sex work research, the research will make important academic contribution to a perspective that has only been explored theoretically thus far. It will have a strong conceptual impact by allowing for substantiated critical engagement with the 'liberal' sex work literature, helping to reframe the debate to ensure that experiences of vulnerability and exploitation, from the commonplace to the extreme, are linked to the broader social contexts in which they are engendered. The detailed data gathered will encourage better understanding of the complexity of these vulnerabilities so as better to inform legal and policy debate.