From Radical Advocacy to (Professional) Radical Service Provision: The Transformation of a Sex Worker Rights Organization

Background & Purpose:The formalization of human service organizations (HSOs) has considerable implications for the field of social work and human services.  Many scholars bemoan the formalization of these organizations, claiming that it leads to a considerable dampening of radical political participation.  Additionally, an excessive focus on organizational formalization may result in advocacy practices that fail to address policies that can benefit clients, instead leading to an undue focus on organizational maintenance concerns.

I challenge the idea that formalization always leads to de-politicization of HSOs, and claim that it may instead enhance political participation and civic engagement, particularly for radical peer-based HSOs.  In this paper, I examine the formalization of a radical HSO that also advocates on behalf of sex workers and promotes the decriminalization of sex work.  Recently, this organization has formalized from a peer-based organization that met in members’ homes, to a formalized service-providing nonprofit with 501c3 nonprofit status.  

Methods: Over a nine-month period, I conducted participant observation with a sex worker rights (SWR) organization in Chicago.  I attended biweekly organizational meetings of the SWR organization, volunteered with their outreach service provision, and participated in fundraising and protest events. I also attended conferences and events relating to sex work and sex trafficking, totaling an average of eight hours a week in the field.

Additionally, I conducted fifty hour-long in-depth qualitative interviews: forty-one with HSOs across Chicago, and nine with board members of the SWR organization.  Interviews focused on collaborations between HSOs and the SWR organization; the process of formalization came out through analysis of these interviews.  All interviews were professionally transcribed and coded in NVIVO qualitative software, using a constructed grounded theory approach.

Findings: Data analysis shows that the transition of the SWR organization from a radical peer-based provider to a formalized nonprofit was largely a consequence of the organization gaining attention from professional social workers desiring training and expertise on appropriate ways to serve sex workers.  Thus, the SWR organization’s transition to a formalized 501c3 service-providing nonprofit has resulted to increased visibility and legitimacy among HSOs.  Instead of reducing their political participation, formalization has allowed them to leverage their organizational and substantive expertise on sex work into creating a network of service providers that support their political efforts at decriminalization, something that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. As an added benefit, HSOs, many of which have difficulty reaching sex workers, view the organization as a crucial ally in helping this population obtain needed services.  

Conclusion & Implications:  Findings show that formalization of the SWR organization has not changed their long-term radical goal of decriminalizing sex work.  Formalization has not dampened their political participation, but has instead enhanced it through the ability to connect their organization to a network of HSOs that have expressed interest in taking up the larger goals of sex work decriminalization.  By understanding how formalization may benefit radical organizations, social workers can help to encourage these benefits by supporting peer-based organizations in their work decrying injustices made against their population.