Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the aims and strategies of formally politically organised groups of sex workers in Mexico, and the ‘informal politics’ of sex workers who do possess specific political identities, but rather understand themselves as self-entrepreneurs in an ‘economy of makeshifts’.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1990s we have seen a wave of sex worker organising across Latin America, with the formation of RedTraSex (La Red de Trabajadoras Sexuales de Latinoamérica y El Caribe) in 1997, uniting sex worker organisations from fifteen Central and South American States in the joint struggle for respect and sex worker rights. While some sex worker self-organisations in Latin America have gained public visibility and been able to create social and political networks through integration with existing trade unions, other groups of sex workers have resorted to 'informal politics' (Day 2008), informal political activities of resistance that draw on everyday practices of mutual care, support, and cooperation that are much less visible to the public and often not recognised as 'politics'. This paper will draw on examples of sex workers from the Tijuana and Mexico City, exploring the aims and strategies of formally politically organised groups of sex workers, and the 'informal politics' of sex workers who do not understand their activities as political, nor possess specific political identities, but rather understand themselves as self-entrepreneurs in an 'economy of makeshifts' (Brace 2002). I will contrast sex worker activism with other movements, in relation to which sex worker collectives face greater obstacles to mobilising material and human resources due to a lack of moral capital. I will explore how the stigmatisation of sex work acts as a barrier to organisation and to finding resonance with the wider public, significantly shaping sex workers' strategies of struggle.