In the last decades a series of sexual services that offer company, talk, and more generally, what is understood as a ‘girlfriend experience’, are increasingly offered to a middle and upper-middle class clientele. These services involve a change in the boundaries of intimacy. We argue that they can be interpreted as part of the general process by which late capitalism has subsumed the 1968 critique that demanded liberation and authenticity. Based on an analysis of in-depth interviews with escorts and street walkers, we explore the discourse of authenticity in escort work in Spain and how the line is drawn between an ‘authentic intimacy’ that is sold, and a ‘private intimacy’, which involves the non-commodified affective life of the sex worker. We argue that escorts and street walkers draw these borders differently, the former emphasising authenticity in their service. Both, however, deploy a form of emotional labour.

In Spain, most jobs available for Latin American immigrant women are in intimate labour (caregiving and domestic work). This work is usually performed under informal employment conditions. The objective of this study was to explain how the colonial logic mediates the experiences of Latin American women working in intimate labour in Spain, and the effects of such occupation on their health and wellbeing, using a decolonial theoretical framework. A multi-site secondary data analysis of qualitative data from four previous studies was performed utilizing 101 interviews with Latin American immigrant women working as caregivers in Spain. Three interwoven categories show how the dominant colonial logic in Spain creates low social status and precarious jobs, and naturalizes intimate labour as their métier while producing detrimental physical and psychosocial health consequences for these immigrant caregivers. The caregivers displayed several strategies to resist and navigate intimate labour and manage its negative impact on health. Respect and integration into the family for whom they work had a buffering effect, mediating the effects of working conditions on health and wellbeing. Based on our analysis, we suggest that employment, social, and health protection laws and strategies are needed to promote a positive working environment, and to reduce the impact of caregiving work for Latin American caregivers.