A Sex Work Research Symposium: Examining Positionality in Documenting Sex Work and Sex Workers’ Rights

Abstract

Historically, academic literature on sex work has documented the changing debates, policies, and cultural discourse surrounding the sex industry, and their impact on the rights of sex workers worldwide. As sex work scholars look to the future of sex workers' rights, however, we are also in a critical moment of self-reflection on how sex work scholarship engages with sex worker communities, produces knowledge surrounding sex work, and represents the lived experiences of sex workers' rights, organizing, and activism. In this short Communication, proceedings from a recent sex work research symposium entitled, Sexual Economies, Politics, and Positionality in Sex Work Research are presented. Held at the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University, this symposium is a response to the need for sex work researchers, sex workers, and sex worker-led organizations to come together and critically examine the future of research on sex work and the politics of documenting sex workers' rights.

Early Assessment of Integrated Knowledge Translation Efforts to Mobilize Sex Workers in Their Communities

“…The goal of this article has been to document and evaluate the IKT research process (Bowen & Graham, 2013 ; CIHR, 2015 ; Gagliardi et al, 2015 ) we have been engaged in during the first year of operation of a PR project focused on gaining knowledge about one marginalized and stigmatized group at the bottom of vulnerability hierarchies—adults who sell sexual services (Arnott & Crago, 2009 ; Benoit et al, 2019 ; Cargo & Mercer, 2008 ). Sex workers and the community groups representing them have been calling for research that is truly collaborative (Wagenaar et al, 2017 ), where researchers and those representing sex workers come together as equal partners participating in consensus-oriented decisions across the entire research process (Lowthers et al, 2017 ; Masuda et al, 2008 ). This call resonates with the aim of the KTA framework (Graham et al, 2006 ) that envisions an iterative process between academic researchers and their partners actively engaged in creating knowledge and interpreting results for real-world application (Field et al, 2014 ).…”

“…This involves a “move away from expert-driven policy-making models towards processes that facilitate two-way information flow, and in doing so, transfer some decision-making power to citizens” (Masuda, McGee, & Garvin, 2008 , p. 360). Academic researchers need to capture “the lived experiences of sex workers’ rights, organizing, and activism” (Lowthers, Sabat, Durisin, & Kempadoo, 2017 , p. 1). By doing so, we ask more meaningful questions, get more accurate answers, and likely become more successful in swaying public policies.…”