“Very little but a lot.” Solidarity within the sex workers' community in Poland during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

This article is an account of the struggle of the sex workers' community in Poland during the COVID-19 pandemic. It unfolds as a dialog between three members of Sex Work Polska, a sex worker-led activist and advocacy collective in Poland. While positioned as researchers, activists, and/or sex workers, we transgress the boundaries between academia and activism, permitting a grassroots insight into the crisis situation of the sex workers' community. This method enables us to present the embodied experience of community solidarity in crisis. We recall our thoughts and emotions from the moment of lockdown and our response to the pandemic by organizing an Emergency Fund to support sex workers. We reflect on how the pandemic evoked solidarity, the conditionality of institutionalized support, and our resistance to it. In capturing our experiences, we also show how the pandemic exposed the preexisting vulnerabilities of sex workers, their invisibility as a community in crisis, and their overvisibility as subjects of punitive measures. Our collective work and discussion allowed for engagement in feminist knowledge production, but also constituted a community care process.

A realidade das profissionais do sexo no contexto da pandemia do COVID-19: Uma revisão sistemática

“…Os dados sintetizados na presente revisão trazem evidências muito relevantes sobre o impacto negativo da pandemia do COVID-19 na vida das profissionais do sexo, ressaltando a situação de vulnerabilidade enfrentada por essa parte da população. (Rogers et al, 2021;Brouwers & Herrmann, 2020;Jacobson et al, 2020;Kawala et al, 2020;Câmara & Silva, 2020;Janyam et al, 2020;Dziuban et al, 2021;Jozaghi & Bird, 2020;Reza-Paul et al, 2020;Slater, 2020;Howard, 2020).…”

“…Em contrapartida aos textos citados acima, o estudo de Rogers et al (2021) Kawala et al, 2020;Buse et al, 2020;Passos & Almeida-Santos, 2020;Câmara & Silva, 2020;Rana, 2020;Jangir & RajNat, 2020;Singer et al, 2020;Tripathi & Das, 2020;Janyam et al, 2020;Dziuban et al, 2021;Jozaghi & Bird, 2020;Tan et al, 2021;Reza-Paul et al, 2020;Howard, 2020). Nesse contexto, Almeida et al (2017) ressaltam a insegurança alimentar como fator crítico para qualidade de vida da população, demonstrando ainda que as mulheres são mais prejudicadas, principalmente aquelas que possuem filhos.…”

Risk, Resilience and Reward: Impacts of Shifting to Digital Sex Work

“…In some countries, funding for organisations working with sex workers was redirected to general coronavirus crisis needs [81]. As a result, sex workers relied on support from mutual aid (peer monetary support, food banks, PPE drives) and sex work organizations [45,108,116,43] or pivoting to online-only sex work as was the case for our participants.…”

Association between interrupted access to sex work community services during the COVID-19 pandemic and changes in sex workers’ occupational conditions: findings from a community-based cohort study in Vancouver, Canada

“…The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in abrupt, severe income losses among informal workers globally and these losses were exacerbated among sex workers due to criminalisation. 1–3 While many countries implemented social and economic measures to mitigate the worst impacts of COVID-19, emerging evidence from Thailand, 4 Hong Kong, 5 Poland, 6 Kenya, 7 Nigeria, Uganda and Botswana, 8 the USA 9 and Canada 10 shows that sex workers were largely excluded from or unable to access government supports extended to other workers. Facing existing criminalisation which was intensified by the pandemic crisis, sex workers’ labour became even more precarious.…”