Abstract
This article examines the construction and maintenance of fictive kinships within a street-level sex work community. The analysis is supported by interviews of 14 street-level sex workers regarding everyday language use within their community. Utilizing community of practice theory to demonstrate how peripheral participants of the sex work community are socialized to understand and participate in fictive kinships, a primary finding is that language use within this community operates as a discursive framework which creates a metaphorical family where kin terms are used as an identity-making strategy. The implications of this research suggest that familial structures impact sex workers' sense of agency in relation to other members of the community. Finally, this article discusses the implications for understanding the discourse of a street-level sex worker community in the context of relationship formation and maintenance.
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