Grant: CIHR Fellowship

In Canada, sex workers face significant occupational health and safety (OHS) inequities (e.g., access to condoms and other health preventative services, and high rates of workplace violence). Evidence has shown the usefulness of digital technologies (e.g., social media, Internet, mobile phone apps) for sex workers to manage occupational health and safety (OHS) risks, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, increasingly stringent digital surveillance, compounded by continued criminalization, often impedes sex workers' access to (and utilization of) digital tools. Racialized migrant sex workers (RMSWs) can face even more and intersecting challenges, such as criminalization, racialized digital surveillance, linguistic marginalization, in accessing digital technologies for OHS. Despite the growing concern over sex workers' digital (in)accessibility and adverse OHS outcomes, far less scholarly attention is paid to the digital experiences of racialized im/migrant sex workers (RMSWs). This study aims to explore how intersecting inequitable structural conditions impact RMSWs' access to and outcomes of digital technologies for OHS. This fellowship will be nested in a CIHR and US NIH-funded project, An Evaluation of Sex Workers Health Access (AESHA), which is the longest-standing community-based cohort of sex workers in North America, housed at the Center for Gender & Sexual Health Equity (CGSHE). I will use statistical analyses of survey data and qualitative interviews to show the complex connections between digital inequity and health inequities among RMSWs. I will actively disseminate the findings to RMSW community members, health researchers, policymakers, and service providers in BC, Canada, and globally, and engage with these key stakeholders in proactively promoting evidence-based solutions toward digital and health equities among RMSWs.