Between “prostitution” and “dignified work”: An analysis of the political practices of travesti associations in Buenos Aires

Argentinean travestis (male to female transgenders) have been historically deprived of the access to many citizenship rights, due to their non-normative sexualities and gender identities. Like other Latin American travestis, they have always found in prostitution their main source of incomes, being exposed to violence and exclusion.

 As a response to this situation, several organizations emerged in the country in the last two decades. Some of them rejected the idea that prostitution could be considered as work, claiming then for a dignified work for these people. The construction of this demand was framed, on the one hand, by local feminist debates; and on the other, by the so-called productivist turn of the Argentinean State, which since 2003 has been promoting the formation of labor cooperatives -as one of the privileged ways to manage the (un)employment issue.

My hypothesis is that after two decades of resistance and organization, groups of travestis are beginning to generate their claims in specific languages - such as dignified work - so that they can be heard. However, the concept of dignified work as the "common discursive framework" -between the public policies and the claims of the travesti associations- is contested, questioned and resignified on the everyday lives of the people involved, on the basis of their previous experiences, and according to the fact that prostitution is always an alternative and a source of metaphors for thinking about themselves.

This paper is part of my current Ph.D. research, in which I study the organizational and political practices carried out by travesti associations in Buenos Aires. With an ethnographical and political perspective, my research methods are based on qualitative techniques such as participant observation and in depth interviews, developed on the fieldwork done between 2008-2010, as well as the analysis of secondary written sources.