Sex Work Practices Research Articles

Bodies, Borders, and Sex Tourism in a Globalized World: A Tale of Two Cities— Amsterdam and Havana

Globalization has stimulated an increase in the movement of bodies across borders as the poor migrate in search of work or safety, and the rich travel the globe as tourists in ever-larger numbers. This article explores how these global forces shape the production and consumption of sex tourism in two very different cities, Amsterdam and Havana. By combining political-economic, feminist, and postmodern theoretical perspectives with global ethnographic methods and data, we examine how abstract global forces find concrete expression within the practice of sex tourism in very different cities. We analyze four institutions that mediate between the global and the local in these sites: the tourism industry, labor markets, the sex industry, and law and policy. We argue that patterns of sex tourism in each locale are increasingly over-determined by global economic forces, connecting the practice of sex work in both cities with the broader phenomenon of globalized sex tourism.

Difficult Relations: Sex Work, Love and Intimacy

Female sex workers in Western societies report high rates of condom use with clients. However, their continuing low rates of condom use with private partners place some sex workers at increased risk of STDs and HIV. While researchers have focused on the health risks for female sex workers in their private relationships, from the point of view of the women involved, these relationships are a site of more complex struggles. This paper reports findings from a qualitative study of female sex workers and examines the difficulties associated with sustaining a private relationship while engaging in sex work. Sex work practices, in so far as they parody the features of love‐making, can profoundly disrupt the special characteristics of intimate sexual relationships. Any intervention designed to promote condom use in the private relationships of female sex workers must engage with the complexity of meanings that are attached to sex work, love and intimacy by these women.