Prostitution, variegated homes, and the practice of unhomely life in China

Abstract

This paper studies a group of female sex workers and their ambivalent experiences of home in Dongguan, China’s so-called sin city, before the local government technically cracked down on the city’s sex industry in 2014. It has two objectives. First, we explore these workers’ life journey: spatially from their rural hometown to Dongguan, socially from domestic migrants to sex workers, and subjectively from poor persons to extravagant spenders. Through this journey-based perspective, we show that the departure from one home opens a door to another home, but the door to the sex industry engulfs our respondents into a perpetual condition of unhomely life. Second, we analyze sex workers’ practices of (un)homely life in various spaces of working (sauna), dwelling (rented apartment), and consumption (shopping center) in Dongguan and their imagination of a new home. We argue that home is a liminal space of ambivalent experiences that revolve around dichotomous distinctions between privacy and publicity, friendship and segregation, marginalization and belonging. This paper contributes to the critical geographies of home by incorporating these ambivalent experiences of home into sex workers’ life journey of leaving and making home in the context of China.