Sexual Humanitarianism and Sex Work

This article focuses on the work of an organization supporting sex workers in Paris. Combining literature on Marxist feminist social reproduction and humanitarianism, this paper examines how the association has, through a process of indebtedness that emerged in the pandemic, integrated a discourse of sexual humanitarianism. This concept highlights the roles played by race and gender in the processes of victimization and in the adoption of anti-migration rhetoric. The paper explores the transition in the association's history from an initial phase of collective mobilization promoted by sex workers for their rights and opposition to existing legislation, to a current phase marked by a reduction of conflict with institutions due to the fear of losing funding. Through an analysis of the organization's current activities, the paper examines how the association's objectives have shifted from struggles for social justice to demands for the integration and recognition of sex workers in the capitalist, patriarchal, and racialized labor market. A key element illustrating this shift is the organization's transition from peer-to-peer management to a leadership that excludes members of the sex worker community. The author discusses how the rhetoric utilized to maintain funding connections with institutions frames the organization's initiatives as aimed at "rescuing migrant sex workers". Indeed, the organization’s relationship with sex workers proves to be top-down, as it is not framed as a relationship with colleagues but rather with vulnerable individuals whose precarity is seen as a result of their personal life circumstances. As a result, the organization’s actions do not promote collective solidarity and mobilization, nor do they address the structural dimensions of vulnerability. Moreover, the pathways proposed by the association may push sex workers toward low-paying jobs that reinforce traditional and racialized gender roles. The relationship between debt, sex workers' collective action and sexual humanitarianism will be therefore investigated.