Abstract
This thesis is based on a mixed methods exploratory study on sex work during the Covid-19 pandemic. It explored the ways in which governments’ and societies’ approaches to sex work, influenced how sex workers experienced the public health crisis. The research was conducted in South Africa (where sex work is criminalised), and Aotearoa New Zealand, (the first country to decriminalise sex work, over 20 years ago) in partnership with sex worker organisations, including SWEAT and Sisonke (in South Africa) and NZPC (in Aotearoa New Zealand). Data were gathered between May 2022 and June 2023 and the findings are drawn from 116 quantitative surveys completed by sex workers, and 46 qualitative interviews with sex workers (N=32) and support workers (N=14) from the organisations. The collaborative approach taken in this thesis shifted analytical focus away from dominant portrayals of sex workers as either posing ‘danger to society’ or ‘helpless victims in need of rescue,’ and toward participants’ own accounts. These accounts highlight the ways sex workers navigated the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic in different legislative environments, including practices of autonomy, mutual support, and organisational responses. However, participants’ experiences differed depending on the legislative environment in which they worked. The research found that the countries’ legal environments and social welfare provisions, were fundamental in how well participants could mediate their risk and protect themselves from harms exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. As sex work is criminalised in South Africa (SA), sex workers are not considered part of the labour force. Together with the stigmatisation of sex work, the impacts of criminalisation were opposite to the stated intent of current sex work laws, that is, to protect ‘vulnerable’ sex workers. The Covid-19 pandemic thus deepened the experience of harms, exploitation and discrimination that SA participants routinely faced. In contrast, sex work is ostensibly seen as work as any other in Aotearoa New Zealand (ANZ) and, given this rare approach, sex workers were included in labour and state based protections during the global pandemic. This even-handed approach to sex workers enabled participants in ANZ to have more options for protection and greater autonomy in their risk decision-making during the pandemic. There was, however, more complexity to the sex work policy dichotomy. Despite availability, not all ANZ participants felt that they could maximise the labour related benefits that decriminalisation affords. This is because they preferred to not disclose details around their sex work income, either because of their status as social welfare beneficiaries or because of stigma, which remains a barrier for sex workers in a decriminalised sex work context. Participants were thus subject to both overt and visible, as well as hidden and indirect, consequences of socio-political laws, policies and social contexts, which offered varying degrees of protection from harm. The central themes of this thesis therefore coalesced around sex workers experiences of their work as a form of labour, how they navigated Covid-19 and other intersecting risk exposures during the pandemic and how stigma, which shapes their place in society, influenced both their decisions and how they were treated during the public health crisis. These themes were considered using social harm theory as the theoretical framework to expand understandings of the types of harm that participants faced. The research findings confirm how during times of crises, decriminalised sex work legislation can contribute to harm reduction and work towards safeguarding public health. They also reveal how punitive sex work laws engender harms for sex workers that ultimately work against a public health imperative. What people do for work and how the conditions of their work impact their safety, are important to consider in future pandemic planning. We need to resource people and provide support instead of punishing or excluding them. As social harm theory has illustrated, the latter approach works to foster blame at the individual level for those participants who were unable to adhere to the Covid-19 public health mandates and measures, while absolving the structural drivers that are implicit in whether and how they could achieve safety. The advocacy of this research therefore speaks to the need for overlapping legal, labour, social and public health responses that proactively meet the needs of all people. The ANZ experience shows us that we can begin working towards this goal for sex workers by decriminalising sex work and strengthening our efforts to normalise sex work as a legitimate occupation.