Who and what does the UK sex worker movement represent?

Existing research on the relationship between UK sex workers and the state has so far failed to address a conflict at the heart of sex worker activism. In order to live viable lives, sex worker activists might be seen as being forced to appeal to governmentally-sanctioned channels for rights - in a form that could be labeled 'carceral' (Bernstein, 2012; Puar, 2007). Yet the movement's longstanding campaign for the full legal decriminalisation of consensual sex work may also be read as - at heart - an anti-state position. This project proposes a critical material investigation into the sex worker movement, exploring whether it might be situated in opposition to, and as a critique of, carceral activism.
This intervention will begin by describing sex worker activism, looking at who sex worker activists are, and who their activism serves. I will also look at the broader relevance of this activism - exploring its wider social impact. I assert that the necropolitical framework formulated by Achille Mbembe, and applied by Jasbir Puar, Paul B. Preciado and others, is a key way to understand this undertheorized tension concerning sex work activism and how it relates to the state, enabling an engagement with regulatory legal models while setting up an anti-neoliberal, anti-nationalist standpoint.
I have one preliminary research question: What and who does the contemporary UK sex workers' rights movement represent?

Methodologically, this project will combine discourse analysis with social movement analysis. I will use an intersectional, queer and feminist methodology, drawing on the feminist epistomological work of Donna Haraway on 'situated knowledges', which challenges the idea of objective access to knowledge, and also looking to Kimberle Crenshaw, Sandra Harding and Aristea Fotopolou on intersectional methods. I will conduct around 25 semi-structured qualitative interviews with current or former sex worker rights activists, and use journalism and blogs, videos, leaflets, copy from activist webpages and policy papers as additional, complementary sources of data. With participants' informed consent, I will attend and observe group meetings, demos and more informal meet ups.
In order to find interview participants, I am in the process of reaching out to five London-based organisations: the English Collective of Prostitutes, Sex Worker Open University (SWOU) the X-talk collective who run weekly sex worker breakfasts, East London Strippers' Collective (ELSC) and Sex Workers' Opera (SWO). I will also contact the Sex Workers' Alliance in Ireland and SCOT-PEP and the Global Network of Sex Worker Projects (GNSWP), both of which are based in Scotland. I aim to develop a closer collaboration with a small number of these groups - depending on need or overlap of research aims.

Doing research with stigmatised groups raises a host of ethical issues, including exploitation or harm. (Phipps, 2015; Bhopal, 2015). As a sex worker I can to some extent speak from a position of situated or embodied knowledge of the issues raised by this project, though as a white and middle class journalist my experience is also one of privilege, which I will engage with reflexively. My involvement in sex working and queer and trans activist communities (between which there is overlap due to marginalisation) means that I already have friends and other contacts within sex worker groups - which will make it far more feasible for me to reach out to potential interviewees than for more outsider academics. My intention is to gain approval for the project before beginning it by opening it up to what the needs and desires of the movement currently are in terms of policy and public understanding.