Links to the recordings of the panels can be found below.
Join us in rethinking care in relation to sex work. This symposium explores the boundaries between “care” and “control” in the dominant political thinking on sex work and probes interventions that centre a framework of care. It is interested in care as a potentially transformative and disruptive practice and examines how sex workers can point to new ways of arranging social relations that provide alternatives to our current understandings of solidarity and care. It asks how an ethics of care might be formulated in research practice. Throughout these conversations, we also reflect on the ways in which we talk about sex work and care, including grappling with and navigating the risks of framing sex work as caring labour and social reproduction, and the multiple scales and registers of these conversations.
This event is part of Seminar Series. Co-hosted by the Department of Gender Studies and the European Institute
Conveners: Dr. Sharmila Parmanand (ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Department of Gender Studies) and Dr. Niina Vuolajärvi (ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ European Institute)
Keynote Panel -
, Professor in Social Research, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol
, Professor of Law and Social Justice, King’s College London
Niki Adams and Charlotte Lee, Chaired by , Professor of Anthropology, University of Dayton and Fellow, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University
Panel 1: Care, control, and carcerality -
: Carceral Care Creep and Trauma-(Mis)informed Entanglements
: Choice, care, and coercion: Insights from fictive kin relations between madams and sex workers in India
: Why does rescue make anti-trafficking worse? Situating stories of mutual care and resistance against raids in G.B. Road, Delhi (the late 1990s-2019)
Chaired by, PhD research student at the University of Roehampton, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Centre for Equality, Justice and Social Change.
Panel 2: Sex work activism, organising, and practices of care -
: “If You’re Going to Be Beautiful, You Better Be Dangerous”: Sex Worker Self Defense as Community Care
: ‘Fragmented sisterhood – have the debates around sex work and trafficking hindered sex worker solidarity? [not featured on the recording]
: The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on inter-sectoral relationships between sex workers [not featured on the recording]
Chaired by , a feminist activist and researcher.
Panel 3: Alternative readings of care, coercion, pleasure, and labour -
Dr. Niina Vuolajärvi: Looking for a different kind of abolitionism: sex work, migration and the politics of care
: We Distribute Pleasure: Sex Workers’ (De)construction of Popular understanding of Sex Work in a Sex-positive/ Care-giving Framework.
: Thinking Sex Work and Domestic Work Together
: Attention policies in initiatives against trafficking and sex work.
Chaired by , Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Modern Slavery and Human Rights, University of Oxford; Lecturer in Law, Kent Law School.
Panel 4: Ethics of care in sex work research -
: Controlling the narrative: Sex work, research ethics and data sovereignty
: From FECkless to “care-full” – a Feminist Ethic of Care in sex work research.
: Ethnographic Reflections on Male Sex Work Research in the Philippines
Chaired by Dr Sharmila Parmanand, ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Gender Studies, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳.
Panel 5: Sex work and the world of work -
and : Sex Work Through the Lens of ‘Care’: A South Asian Perspective
: Sex Workers as Epistemic Agents: A Care Ethics Perspective on sex work
Dr. Sharmila Parmanand: "Would you rather our kids starve?": Sex workers, motherhood, and the politics of "virtuous" labour.
Chaired by Dr Niina Vuolajärvi, Assistant Professor of Migration, European Institute, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳.