Sex Work, Justice and Decriminalisation: Beyond a Politics of Recognition in Promoting a Social Justice Response to Women at the Margins

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-100
Author(s):  
Anastacia Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Politics Of Recognition

scholarly journals Pursuing social justice through collaborative archaeologies in Aboriginal Australia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Smith ◽  
Heather Burke ◽  
Jordan Ralph ◽  
Kellie Pollard ◽  
Alice Gorman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Politics Of Recognition ◽  
Aboriginal Australia ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Global Movement ◽  
General Concern

This paper identifies the emergence of the pursuit of social justice as a core focus of collaborative archaeologies in Aboriginal Australia. A wide range of case studies are examined, especially in relation to efforts to redress a ‘deep colonisation’ that silences Indigenous histories and fails to engage with Indigenous voices or experiences. This research is part of a wider global movement of community-based, activist and engaged archaeology that encompasses two principle approaches to social justice: the redistribution of resources and goods and the politics of recognition. It is informed by a more general concern with human rights, structural violence and ethical globalisation. In Australia, social justice archaeologies are both confronting, in terms of frontier violence, intentional structural violence and racism, but also inspirational/aspirational, in terms of Aboriginal nation building and the cultural facilitation of Aboriginal research ethics. The development of collaborative projects between Indigenous peoples and (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) archaeologists can be challenging. Indigenous archaeologists face particular challenges, including balancing sometimes conflicting expectations from communities with the demands of the profession. For non-Indigenous archaeologists, the challenge lies in the shift from working with Indigenous peoples to working for Indigenous peoples as part of a process in which social justice outcomes are a product, rather than a by-product, of archaeological research.

Sex workers access to health and social care services: A social justice response

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-348
Author(s):  
Leigh-Ann Sweeney ◽  
Leonard Taylor ◽  
Michal Molcho
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Social Care ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Care Services ◽  
Health And Social Care ◽  
Provision Of Services

This research explores service providers’ views on the barriers that prevent women in the sex work industry in Ireland from accessing co-ordinated health services. A purposive sample of eight service providers in the field of women’s health and social care in the West of Ireland were selected and interviewed for this study. The service providers were asked about their perception of the barriers of sex workers accessing health and social care services. Using thematic analysis, three key themes were identified: (1) lack of knowledge of women’s involvement in sex work; (2) identified barriers to health services; and (3) legislative and policy barriers to providing supportive services. While the service providers acknowledged that they do not knowingly provide services for sex workers, they all recognise that some of their service users are at risk of, and potentially are, involved in sex work. Yet, they were able to identify some of the barriers sex workers face when accessing their services. All these barriers were the result to the services’ limited capacity to support women engaging in sex work. At the time of data collection, the legislative context meant that selling sex under certain conditions was outside the law. This study highlights the consequences that criminalisation can have on the health of sex workers and the need for a paradigm shift in existing health and social care services. In this paper, we propose that a social justice rather than a criminal justice approach has the potential to address sex workers’ right to access appropriate health care. This paper gives due recognition to marginalised women, and advocates for better provision of services for women in the sex industry, while considering the new legislation of 2017.

scholarly journals Is it time to drop the term ‘prostitution’ from policy discourse?

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasha Mulvihill
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Policy Discourse ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Policy Action ◽  
Survival Sex ◽  
Policy Interventions ◽  
Loaded Term

In this paper, I wish to explore whether it is time to drop the use of the term ‘prostitution’ in English policy discourse. I argue here that ‘prostitution’ is a culturally loaded term and is insufficiently precise in describing the different contexts in which the exchange of sex for money or other resources between adults takes place. This lack of clarity has implications for policy action, which in turn materially affects the lives of those involved in the sex industry. I draw on MacKinnon’s (1989) thesis of the eroticisation of dominance as a productive framework for explaining why violence, harm and coercion are possible within the exchange of sex for money (or other resource), though not inevitable. I propose that we distinguish four categories: sex entrepreneurship, sex work, survival sex and sexual exploitation. For some scholars, such categorisations overlook how disparate practices are connected (Jeffreys, 2009), most obviously by patriarchy or economic inequality. However, I believe we need to see both the connections and the distinctions: if we conflate different practices, we lose the particularity of the contexts of practice and weaken the rationale for policy action. Worse, policy interventions may be harmful. I suggest these four categories can help us identify and distinguish between structural and interpersonal harm and structural and interpersonal coercion and help to formulate attendant criminal justice and social justice measures.

scholarly journals Aesthetic Grammars of Social Justice: Sex Work Reimagined

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Phoebe Kisubi Mbasalaki
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Racial Stratification ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Formed Part

ABSTRACT Against a backdrop of the persistence of coloniality through structural forms of privilege and bias across socioeconomic manifestations, inequality and racial stratification of labour in South Africa, creative activism offers a lens, voice and perspective of sex workers. We relate these glimpses to rehumanisation and re-membering, challenging historically distinct modes of turning humans into objects as part of decolonial possibilities. We seek to make decolonization a praxis of making human and hence we ask two central questions: what provocations arise from aesthetics of creative activism? And what might rehumanizing/re-membering concretely mean? We consider these questions through an analysis of the activism, exhibitions and performance with participant sex workers that formed part of the GlobalGRACE project launch in South Africa. Ultimately, we argue that art practices fundamentally engage the imagination and open up possibilities for re-imagining, re-storying and re-centering marginalized knowledges.

scholarly journals Problematizing the Educational Messaging on Sex Trafficking in the US “End-demand” Movement: The (Mis)Representation of Victims and Anti-Sex Work Rhetoric

Affilia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 088610992110588
Author(s):  
Ran Hu
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
The Us

This study adopts a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach to problematize the representation of victims in the online educational messaging on sex trafficking promoted in the US “end-demand” movement. The websites of 20 US anti-trafficking groups are analyzed. While these website-based messages are positioned to educate the public about sex trafficking, they are predominately framed toward problematizing sex work and essentializing women with racialized and marginalized identities in sex work, with no discursive recognition of intersectional structural inequalities (e.g., racism, sexism, poverty, homo/transphobia) that lead to trafficking. These ideologically charged messages, when presented as “facts,” further the anti-sex work sentiment among the public, powerfully (re)produce and sustain the public (mis)perception equating “anti-sex trafficking” with “anti-sex work,” and legitimize the carceral feminist anti-trafficking practice that primarily criminalizes, censors, and oppresses the agency, behaviors, and needs of structurally marginalized communities. This paper calls attention to how injustice may be (re)produced in the way trafficking is represented and how representational injustice may translate into material consequences, further subjecting already marginalized groups to criminalization and surveillance. Through incorporating representational justice into our conceptualization of racial and social justice, we may (re)build an anti-trafficking framework that is structurally competent, rights-inclusive, and centered on humanization.

scholarly journals A social justice approach to rural school staffing: The need for a politics of distribution and recognition to solve a perennial problem

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-146
Author(s):  
Hernán Cuervo
Keyword(s):  
Rural Education ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Rural School ◽  
Australian Government ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Politics Of Recognition ◽  
School Staffing ◽  
School Placement

AbstractThe last Australian government review on rural education reveals that staffing schools continues to be a challenge. To examine this problem, the paper draws on data from semi-structured interviews with pre-service teachers undertaking rural school placement. The aim is to address rural school staffing through a bi-dimensional social justice approach by drawing on a politics of distribution and recognition. While distributive justice has always been at the centre of the problem, it is argued that a solution might also encompass a politics of recognition that puts “place” as a significant category to understand the complexities of rural staffing.

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