What kind of work is sex work?: Examining sex work on a continuum of everyday labour practice and lived experience

性工作被定义为本质上的剥削。历史和当代的争论将性工作简化为受害者的逻辑，经常将卖淫与暴力和贩运混为一谈，而不是将性工作视为合法工作的经济因素-甚至是其他形式的结构性剥削和社会不平等的可行替代方案。相比之下，本博士研究侧重于性/工作/性工作之间的联系，将性工作置于日常劳动实践的连续体中，并确定与其他工作、生计和生活经验的相互联系点。英国的经济不稳定——受COVID-19大流行影响的紧缩和劳动力市场、生活成本、债务和零工经济——使这些主题变得及时。不同形式的性工作可能会越来越吸引人，因为它既是经济上的，也是对已经岌岌可危的生活的本体论解决方案。我的研究涉及线上和线下，农村和城市人口。被“性工作是一种什么样的工作”这个问题所驱使？，我把工人当作复杂的主体，他们的欲望和责任与个人生活和工作生活重叠。在英国，越来越多的性工作者并不仅仅以性产业为生，而是将性劳动纳入了一系列职业。“性工作者”和“非性工作者”的范畴无法清晰地界定，而且人们认识到性工作与其他工作角色具有相同的属性。考虑到研究对象在进入这个行业之前感觉自己已经在从事性工作的程度，我想知道性/性和亲密关系的当代建构是如何受到性工作的影响和形成的。休闲约会应用和社交媒体网红营销的工作是起点，让人对“真实的”工作、爱情和性的理解，以及关系和交易之间的界限感到困惑。主体化理论发挥了关键作用，研究了当代金融主体是如何形成性工作者的，而不是扮演一个角色或被强迫进入这个行业。性工作研究面临着方法论上的僵局：由于实证和统计方法的饱和，研究往往将性工作者复杂的生活世界简化为犯罪或公共卫生利益。这就使现有的知识失去了合法性，更不用说人文和视觉艺术在性工作研究中作为富有成效的学科了。通过Back和Puwar（2012）的现场社会学视角，我提出了一个创新性的案例来扩展性工作研究的方法。活的方法有能力捕捉和产生影响、反应、感觉和具体化的经验。它们与我促进性工作者参与和合作的意图一致。将开发三种方法：1。基于参与者的写作和视觉工作坊。2 .协同在线内容平台。与参与者进行半结构化访谈。工作坊提供了一种知识生产的生成模式，捕捉主观叙述重叠的点。多种招募方法将形成2-3个焦点小组：一个是独立的性工作者，另一个是非性工作者。这些因素包括以客户为中心的服务提供商、弹性工作制和受薪工人等子群体。最初的研讨会将是半结构化的，从概念性问题开始，如“工作何时开始和结束？”，并设定一个写作任务。在二级工作坊中，photovoice被认为是一种形成对生活经验的见解的定性方法，邀请同意的参与者通过摄影和移动图像记录他们的生活。我的研究目标是挑战社会和政治话语，这些话语将超越身体的认知劳动和影响资本主义生产，同时未能承认商业性行为之外的剥削性劳动行为。我也寻求在性工作研究中扩展跨学科的方法。

Sex work has been defined as inherently exploitative. Historic and contemporary debates have reduced sex work to the logic of victimhood, often conflating prostitution with violence and trafficking instead of engaging with economic factors that present sex work as legitimate work - or even a viable alternative to other forms of structural exploitation and social inequalities. In contrast, this PhD research focuses on the nexus of sex / work / sex work, situating sex work on a continuum of everyday labour practice and identifying points of interconnectedness with other work, livelihoods and lived experience.Economic instability in the United Kingdom - austerity and labour markets affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, costs of living, debt, and the gig economy - make these themes timely. Sex work in its differential forms may increasingly appeal, as both a financial and ontological solution to an already precarious life. My research attends to both online and offline, rural and urban populations.Driven by the question 'what kind of work is sex work?', I engage with workers as complex subjects, with desires and duties overlapping personal and working lives. An increasing proportion of sex workers in the UK do not make a living exclusively in the sex industry but incorporate sexual labour into a portfolio of occupations. The categories of 'sex worker' and 'non-sex worker' cannot be neatly delineated, and it is recognised that the work of sex work shares attributes with other job roles.Considering the extent to which subjects feel they were already doing the work of sex work before entering the industry, I ask how contemporary constructions of sex/uality and intimacy are both informed by and formative of sex work. The labour of casual dating apps and social media influencer marketing are starting points, troubling understandings of 'authentic' work, love and sex, as well as limits between the relational and the transactional. Theories of subjectivation play a key role, examining how contemporary financial subjects are formed as sex workers, as opposed to assuming a role or being coerced into the industry.Sex work research faces a methodological impasse: saturated by empirical and statistical approaches, research often reduces the complex lifeworlds of sex workers to criminal or public health interest. This delegitimises situated knowledges, not to mention humanities and visual arts as productive disciplines in sex work research. I put forward an innovative case for expanding methods in sex work research through Back and Puwar's (2012) lens of live sociology. Live methods have the capacity to capture and produce affects, reactions, sensory and embodied experience. They align with my intention to facilitate participation and collaboration with sex / workers. Three methods will be developed:1. Participant-based writing and visual workshops.2. A collaborative online content platform.3. Semi-structured interviews with participants.Workshops offer a generative mode of knowledge production, capturing points at which subjective narratives overlap. Multiple methods of recruitment will form 2-3 focus groups: one of independent sex workers, another of non-sex workers. This factors in sub-groups including client-focused service providers, flexibilised and salaried workers. Initial workshops will be semi-structured, starting with conceptual questions such as 'when does work begin and end?' and setting a writing task. In secondary workshops, photovoice is considered as a qualitative method forming insights into lived experience, inviting consented participants to document their lives through photography and moving image. I aim for this research to contest social and political discourses which valorise cognitive labour beyond bodies and affects within capitalist production, meanwhile failing to concede exploitative labour practices beyond commercial sex. I also seek to expand interdisciplinary methodologies in sex work research.