Using difference in intersectional research with im/migrant and racialized sex workers

In my own research, this has often involved a strong expectation that the experiences of im/migrant and racialized sex workers should (1) primarily be understood through the lens of race and ethnicity and (2) that the experiences that ‘matter’ are those that stand in stark con- trast to White sex workers. [...] In this study, assumptions about linguistic difference as a vulnerability contrasted with workers’ understanding of language or linguistic difference as an element that shapes power in any given interaction or relation (between the client and the worker, between workers, between the worker and the workplace). [...] The association between limited or accented language and diminished power is present in discourses around the ‘im/ migrant sex worker’, which may often result in locating vulnerability and risk in the bodies and voices of racialized, immigrant and migrant women. [...] This is perhaps most noticeable in the greater scrutiny of Asian workers and Asian establishments in the Canadian and Australian sex industry under the guise of anti-trafficking (Ham, 2017). [...] That is, starting from the voices and experiences of im/migrant and racialized women in the sex industry (an ‘intra-categorical’ methodology) reveals detailed discussion of how difference is employed to shape power in the sex industry (an ‘inter-categorical’ analysis).