Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Sex workers globally continue to face severe health inequities including violence, disproportionate burdens of HIV/STIs and barriers to health services, due to criminalization and related policing and stigma. The proposed doctoral research will examine the effects of such criminalization among Canadian sex workers, including the ability to organize for improved health and safety. In particular, this research will explore the ways that digital spaces, including advertising websites, and sex worker-run blogs, function as tools for sex workers to enhance their occupational health and safety (sexual and mental health, physical safety and access to health services), and mobilize for structural change, including law reform. Sex work criminalization, internet censorship, and limited digital access continue to hinder sex workers' utilization of online spaces previously found to improve physical safety and sexual health outcomes. In addition, throughout the COVID-19 crisis, sex workers have experienced severe income losses, greater risk of violence, and barriers to critical services. The pandemic also sparked a greater reliance on digital spaces, for facilitating sex work as well as community mobilization and emergency supports. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis and more broadly, there is a need to understand how digital modes of community mobilization can be implemented and scaled up. This work will draw on a mixed-methods, community-based approach to determine the impact of digital use on sex worker health outcomes, and explore the ways that criminalization shapes sex workers' access to digital work environments and digital community mobilization. This work will address how digital community mobilization models can help support sex workers' occupational health and safety, with the hopes of informing infrastructure and public health policy, as well as law reform that will allow for greater uptake in digital access and collectivization among workers.