Exploring or Floundering in the Sex Industry? Understanding Sex Work as Job Explorations for Emerging Adult Sex Workers.

Abstract

Based on in-depth interviews with 40 men involved in the Chinese sex industry, this study compared how engagement in sex work impacts, whether positively or negatively, the career development and transition to adulthood of middle-class and lower-class emerging adults. Most middle-class sex workers had concrete career goals outside of the sex industry and were on track to achieve those goals using their educational credentials and social and cultural capital. In contrast, most lower-class male sex workers relied on the lucrative nature of sex work to accumulate capital for their long-term goals, such as starting small businesses. Lower-class sex workers without career goals often spent their income on addictive habits, such as video games, and their engagement in sex work was not conducive to their long-term career development. Extending the literature on emerging adulthood to the context of sex work, I argue that for emerging adults who engage in sex work consciously with career goals, sex work could be viewed as a form of job exploration, while for those who engage in sex work without clear career goals, their engagement could be better described as floundering.