Ecologies of security: On the everyday security tactics of female sex workers in Nairobi, Kenya

Robert Lorway,Lisa Lazarus,Claudyne Chevrier,Shamshad Khan,Helgar K Musyoki,John Mathenge,Peninah Mwangi,Pascal Macharia,Parinita Bhattacharjee,Shajy Isac,Joshua Kimani,Gloria Gaaki,Marissa Becker,Stephen Moses,James Blanchard

doi:10.1080/17441692.2018.1442487

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper highlights important environmental dimensions of HIV vulnerability by describing how the sex trade operates in Nairobi, Kenya. Although sex workers there encounter various forms of violence and harassment, as do sex workers globally, we highlight how they do not merely fall victim to a set of environmental risks but also act upon their social environment, thereby remaking it, as they strive to protect their health and financial interests. In so doing, we illustrate the mutual constitution of ‘agency’ and ‘structure’ in social network formations that take shape in everyday lived spaces. Our findings point to the need to expand the focus of interventions to consider local ecologies of security in order to place the local knowledges, tactics, and capacities that communities might already possess on centre stage in interventions. Planning, implementing, and monitoring interventions with a consideration of these ecologies would tie interventions not only to the risk reduction goals of global public health policy, but also to the very real and grounded financial priorities of what it means to try to safely earn a living through sex work.

Highlights

Moving beyond individual behavioural risk reduction, contemporary sex work interventions attend to the broader structural-environmental conditions that underpin vulnerabilities to HIV infection (Jana, Basu, Rotheram-Borus, & Newman, 2004; Kerrigan et al, 2015; Moore et al, 2014; RezaPaul et al, 2012)
We demonstrate how ecologies of security take shape in the lived spaces where agentive tactics contend with a changeable and unpredictable environment
We have tried to portray how particular ecologies of security emerge from ever-moving affective geographies, in response to the various emotional, financial, and physical vulnerabilities and abundant opportunities that face groupings of social actors that animate the sex trade in Nairobi nightlife. These ecologies of security hinge on the formation of interdependent networks that often follow the logic of ‘the gift’ more than commodification or commercialisation

Summary

Introduction

Moving beyond individual behavioural risk reduction, contemporary sex work interventions attend to the broader structural-environmental conditions that underpin vulnerabilities to HIV infection (Jana, Basu, Rotheram-Borus, & Newman, 2004; Kerrigan et al, 2015; Moore et al, 2014; RezaPaul et al, 2012). Greater attention is placed on the broader contextual realities that shape the micro-politics of condom negotiations between sex workers (SWs) and clients. These realities include gender inequality, poverty, discrimination and violence, and prohibitive government policies (Shannon et al, 2009). Within the context of Nairobi, Kenya, which holds a vibrant sex trade industry (Okal et al, 2013), there is a striking neglect of studies that explore the environmental or structural factors that shape contexts in which SWs become susceptible to infection, with some notable exceptions A preponderance of immunological and bio-behavioural studies dominate the research landscape that pertains to female SWs over the past three decades in Kenya (e.g. see: Chege et al, 2012; Kaul et al, 2004; Priddy et al, 2011), owing to the longer and embedded history of ‘bioexperimental’ HIV research programmes in the country (Lorway, 2016)

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