Performing for the camera: queer migration, sex work, and objecthood

Abstract

This article explores cultural production on queer migrant sex work. More specifically, I critically analyse a photography series by Bradley Secker titled Sexugees and a short documentary film by Manuel Abramovich titled Blue Boy. Despite sex work featuring in many narratives on queer migration, this is often treated as one marginal aspect of broader experiences. Sexugees and Blue Boy take an alternative approach by centring sex work. Instead of relying on tropes of vulnerability, I argue these forms of cultural production rely on objecthood as a sign of political agency to highlight queer migrant subjectivity. Objecthood thus becomes means of not only refusing the necessity of performing as worthy subjects of sexual humanitarianism, but to complicate the relationship between queer migrants and those gazing upon their presence within cultural production.