Sex Worker or Prostitution Victim?: Collaborations Between Social Service Organizations and Advocacy Organizations That Work with Individuals in the Sex Industry

Background: Collaboration has been proposed as a solution to resource shortages plaguing human service nonprofits (HSNP).  Yet research on HSNP collaboration primarily focuses on improving service provision, and neglects to discuss the important role of collaboration with advocacy organizations in expanding advocacy efforts. Collaborations between HSNPs and advocacy organizations have the potential to improve political representation for marginalized populations yet little is known about the processes behind these relationships.

This study fills this gap by looking at HSNPs in Chicago that collaborate with advocacy organizations that represent sex workers.  These collaborations are complicated by the fact that the advocacy organizations in question frame the problem in oppositional ways: one proposes to abolish the sex industry (abolitionist organization) while the other advocates decriminalization of sex work as a policy alternative (sex worker rights organization). This study looks at the reasons that lead HSNPs and advocacy organizations to collaborate, qualitatively describing ground-level processes.

Methods: Participant observation was conducted at meetings of the advocacy organizations over eight months. In addition, I also attended conferences, events, and panels relating to sex work and/or sex trafficking.  I conducted semi-structured informal interviews with ten key informants, including directors of the abolitionist organization, and the decriminalization organization, and seven employees of HSNP collaborators.  Interviews asked about the role of advocacy collaboration in their work and how advocacy organizations could inform social services.  Participants were recruited through pre-existing relationships with the author.  Field notes were taken during both events and interviews. They were coded thematically using NVIVO qualitative software using both inductive and deductive approaches to qualitative analysis. 

 Findings: Analysis reveals that collaborations between HSNPs and the sex worker rights organization are consistently of higher quality, as they meet more frequently and with more intensity.  The decriminalization organization, due to its lack of access to power and fewer resources, spends more time and energy cultivating relationships with HSNPs than does the abolitionist organization.  This appears to be because the decriminalization organization, in attempt to foster legitimacy to aspects of their external environment, sees HSNPs as a way to further their mission of promoting sex worker rights, instead of “arrest and rescue” methods promoted by the abolitionist organization.  The abolitionist organization, has chosen to eschew an emphasis on pursuing relationships with HSNPs, and has cultivated relationships with law enforcement and government, which many HSNPs have found to be distasteful in comparison to an the sex workers rights organization, which focuses more on grassroots volunteerism and development.

Conclusion:The findings of this study go beyond rehashed arguments of sex work as empowering or victimizing, and looks at the manifestations of collaborations in this field and the implications for representation of individuals involved in the sex trade.   Social workers often encounter individuals who have at some point traded sex for tangible goods—whether it is through coercion, circumstance, or choice. The study investigates these inter-organizational collaborations to examine how they are strategically used by activists to advance community goals and by service organizations to build services that the community needs.