Examining Professionalisation as a Strategy for Sex Worker Empowerment and Mobilisation

Abstract

In this article, I examine the concept of professionalisation in sex work as a strategy shaped by political activism that aims to empower and mobilise sex workers to fight for labour rights. Using a participant-based action research approach, I investigated one sex worker professionalisation programme in Germany to better understand how the design, training and goals of the programme reflected ideas and priorities from the Association for Erotic and Sexual Service Providers, a nationwide sex worker rights organisation in Germany. Through my analysis, I found that the programme for professionalisation was mainly oriented around criticism against the new German Prostitute Protection Act (2017), framing data protection as a sex worker rights issue, and encouraging critical resistance to authorities enforcing the Act. Based on these themes, I offer two new perspectives on the aims of the programme in relation to empowering and destigmatising sex workers. First, the tools of resistance offered through the programme as a way of empowering sex workers were confounded by sex workers’ individual situations that limited their ability to practice resistance. Second, the politics of funding for the programme, guided by the goal of ensuring sex workers are less of a public health risk, may interfere with the broader goal of destigmatising sex work.