Ecological Contexts of Resilience in Sex Work: Managing a Precarious, Stigmatised, and Criminalised Occupation in One Canadian City

Abstract

This paper explores the ways that sex workers in one Canadian city cultivate resilience in their workplaces. In 2017–2019, a period following the enactment of Canada’s revised prostitution law, a cross-section of active sex workers (N = 59) from Victoria, Canada, were interviewed about what they do to keep safe in their sex work jobs, including what they do before or during dates, how their strategies for safety have changed over time, how they draw on their larger networks, and what resources they wish they could access to improve their abilities to remain safe. Using an ecological framework of resilience, our findings show that, despite job precarity, stigma, and criminalisation, participants were actively involved in developing strategies to keep safe at work. Their resilience is a combination of factors unique to each worker’s social location and their access to workplace safety measures, including screening techniques and tools, diverse social networks, and safe working locations. We call for a public health approach to sex work that builds on workers’ strengths and enacts policies that aim to dismantle the structural environments of risk in their occupation.

1. Introduction

When it comes to staying safe at work, job precarity, stigma, and criminalisation are three major structural barriers the majority of sex workers face across the globe [1,2,3,4,5]. Precarious work has been on the rise in Western economies since the late 1970s. This is reflected in the ongoing deregulation of labour markets and the promotion of a ‘gig economy’ where workers operate independently at the cost of employment protections [6,7].

A key difference between other precarious service jobs and sex work is that the latter remains highly stigmatised and largely criminalised [8,9,10,11,12,13]. Structural stigma, “when stigmatic assumptions become embedded in social policies and practices” [14] (p. 5), is one reason why sex workers have been excluded from occupational discourses and have been denied the right to workplace health and safety measures through formalised protections [15,16,17]. The laws, regulations, and policies surrounding sex work are often justified by mainstream and moral discourses centred on risk and vulnerability, sex trafficking, and gender oppression [18,19,20,21]. In Canada, the location of this study, the prostitution law currently criminalising sex work is Bill C-36—the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA), enacted in 2014. The PCEPA can be characterised as an ‘end-demand’ approach to sex work, otherwise known as the Nordic model, reflective of the approach that criminalises the purchase of services but not the selling of services [22,23]. Prior to the enactment of the PCEPA, Canada’s criminal code was ‘quasi-criminalised’, similar to that of England and Wales, where selling and buying sex was legal, but most activities surrounding sex work (e.g., soliciting, kerb crawling, brothel keeping, procuring prostitution) were illegal [24,25].

Although supporters of the PCEPA claim that the legislation protects sex workers by criminalising buyers and targeting third parties (e.g., managers, drivers, bodyguards), post-PCEPA studies show that the sanctions have made it more challenging to screen clients, to communicate with co-workers about safety, to avoid police, and forces workers to into unsafe/hidden work locations [26,27,28]. Evidence shows that the end-demand approach has contributed to sex workers conducting their work in more isolated locations, pushing clients into hiding, increasing police harassment, disrupting sex worker support networks, and increasing violence against sex workers [29,30,31]. Many sex worker organisations (SWOs) in Canada advocate for decriminalisation, a framework where sex work-related activities are removed from the criminal code and sex work is regulated alongside other occupations [32].

While numerous studies examine the challenges sex workers face as a result of work precarity, stigma, and criminalisation, a smaller scholarship examines how sex workers respond to these challenges. The literature that focuses on sex worker resilience from a psychological lens, highlighting ways that sex workers draw on personal strengths and individual attributes to cope with poor working conditions, is sizable [33,34,35,36]. There is also scholarship discussing resilience from a structural lens, notably SWO advocacy for broader rights and protections and sex work law reform [9,37,38,39]. Importantly, a substantial group of scholars advocate for the adoption of an intersectional approach when examining sex work, ensuring that understanding the “broader political, economic, and social structures” [40] (p. 47) that shape the complex realities of sex worker’s lives is integrated into public health interventions [41,42,43]. For instance, the ‘Matrix of agency and vulnerability’ presented by Majic and Showden [40] demonstrates the interconnected way that concurrent environmental factors can shape the experiences of individuals engaged in sex work. Yet, while wholistic models exist, few studies examine resilience specifically as a combination of personal assets that interact with and build on resources extrinsic to sex workers [41,42,43].

In this paper, we contribute to this gap in scholarship by examining the interaction of multi-level resilience factors using an ‘ecological framework of resilience’ [44]. We do so by exploring sex worker resilience as a function of their ability to enact safety strategies in an environment influenced by their personal characteristics (e.g., social locations, psychosocial factors), interpersonal relationships, environmental resources, social networks, including SWOs, and how resilience is mediated by structural factors including work precarity, stigma, and criminalisation. In so doing, we shift from the perspective that resilience is chiefly an individual or innate characteristic [45] to contextualising resilience as a quality imbued with ‘meaning’ that exists in relation to an individual’s or group’s social and physical ecology in a broader societal context. Before doing so, we describe our conceptual framework.

An Ecological Framework of Sex Worker Resilience

Using an ecological framework of resilience [44] to assess sex worker resilience, we turn our attention to four key principals of resilience central to this perspective: decentrality, complexity, atypicality, and cultural relativity. Decentrality, the de-centreing of the individual, allows us to remove the responsibility ‘to be resilient’ away from the individual (i.e., the sex worker) to focus instead on the ecological context within which sex work operates. Complexity recognises the spatial and temporal nature of one’s environment and that resilience is similarly dynamic, changing across space and time. Atypicality upholds the contextual nature of living and lived experiences, where what may be perceived to be a non-normative coping strategy for some may make contextual sense for others. This is especially important for historically marginalised and pathologised groups whose ways of living may fall outside of dominant social norms and conventions. Finally, cultural relativity is important for resilience, where culture—collectively shared values, beliefs, language, and customs—shapes what holds meaning for individuals and/or groups. In other words, the qualities that cultivate resilience for one group may not have relevance for another.

We consider Ungar’s [44] model that describes how resilient behaviour is a function of personal challenges and strengths, structural environments of risk and safety, and opportunities that are available and accessible to individuals and hold meaning for a specific group. We adapt this model to sex worker resilience by suggesting resilience occurs when sex workers can access resources available to them in their environment(s) and feel safe at work. Resilience, therefore, may be influenced by an individual’s personal challenges and strengths, but their ability to express or embody resilient behaviours is moderated by their environments. In a sex worker’s structural environment, this may include work precarity, stigma, criminalisation, and access to education or health care. These factors may also be influenced by macro-level factors (e.g., racism, sexism, and ableism). More proximal to sex workers is their physical ecology, including their workplace location(s) and their housing situation. A sex worker’s social ecology might include connection with and access to family, friends, co-workers, or SWOs. Lastly, sex workers’ digital ecologies, such as online classified websites or social media, can shape their environments of safety (e.g., enhancing client screening capabilities) or environments of risk (e.g., criminalisation of advertising sexual services). Based on the ecological framework of resilience, we theorise that sex worker resilience is moderated by the availability of and access to material and immaterial resources in sex workers’ communities/environments (e.g., access to colleagues, safety tools provided by SWOs, non-judgmental services [police, healthcare, social work, etc.]).

An ecological framework of resilience positions sex workers as actors in relation to their environment. Hence, the word ‘ecology’ is used to emphasise that sex workers are a part of the physical, social, and digital environments that surround them. As stated by Platt et al. [46], “the ability of sex workers to protect themselves depends on their ‘work environment, the availability of community support, access to health and social services, and broader aspects of the legal and economic environment” (p. 9). Studies focused on the safety of workplaces (i.e., physical ecologies) continue to show that workers who have greater control over their workplaces (e.g., managed workplaces, work-from-home, street-based) have access to more safety strategies than those who have less control [47,48,49]. Research shows that sex workers who are marginalised and stigmatised on multiple fronts (e.g., racialised, disabled, substance users, impoverished, transgender) tend to work in higher-risk environments and have access to fewer safety strategies [47,50,51]. In Canada, we have witnessed the tragic outcome when sex workers lack access to safety strategies. In several high-profile cases where their only choice was to work in unsafe and stigmatised work environments (e.g., impoverished, substance-using, street-based), they were trapped and murdered, and the crimes of the perpetrator(s) left uninvestigated by police for extensive periods of time [52,53,54,55]. Using our conceptual framework of ecological resilience, we would say that, despite the personal strengths and attributes of these sex workers, in these risky environments, they are less resilient.

Reflecting the social ecologies of sex work and access to safety supports, sex workers draw on their social networks to stay safe while working by mobilising workplace knowledge through peer-to-peer interventions [56], sharing expenses and resources with colleagues [26], developing community-based systems of care [57,58], and cultivating friendships and solidarity [35,43,59]. Other research has shown sex workers’ romantic partnerships can also contribute to safety [29,60], reflecting the complexity and atypicality of sex work ecologies, as does their ability to strategically respond to sex work stigma, such as deciding when and when not to disclose their occupation [61]. Within our use of the ecological framework of resilience, we consider access to and availability of supportive social networks to be a moderator of environmental risks and, therefore, a factor with the potential to enhance sex workers’ resilience. Sex workers’ social networks are not homogenous—the actors comprising sex workers’ social networks are as diverse as the workers themselves. These networks are likewise shaped by their unique interpersonal relationships, personal stories, and social locations.

Additionally, taking advantage of one’s ‘digital ecology’—defined here as online/internet spaces where sex workers can advertise their services, screen their clients, and provide sexual services—is a way for sex workers to enact safety strategies [62,63,64,65,66]. For instance, a recent study found that “soliciting sex work online was associated with reduced odds of physical or sexual violence from aggressors posing as clients and reduced work stress” [65] (p. 9). The Beyond the Gaze study, the largest study of the online UK sex work market to date, found that the internet helped sex workers monitor service inquiries, allowed them to retrieve more information about clients (e.g., background checks, networking with other workers, accessing safety alerts), and helped them to learn about their rights as sex workers [66]. Importantly, using the internet has proved to be an important safety strategy for trans-, non-binary, and other gender minority sex workers by mitigating in-person trans and homophobic violence in advance by conducting on-line screening [65,67]. Similar to social ecologies, access to and availability of digital resources may provide opportunities to enhance sex worker resiliency. However, access and availability alone to these technologies do not guarantee that a ‘digital ecology’ will be protective. According to the ecological framework of resilience, personal strengths/challenges—including one’s digital literacy or one’s understanding of criminal laws related to online sex work—will dictate the value of digital resources to any one worker.

Other environmental risks may arise that are linked to sex workers’ digital ecology, including being identified by friends or family, having increased competition, and clients not differentiating between experienced and inexperienced workers when using the internet [25,66]. Moreover, legislation banning online adult service advertising, sex worker content, and service delivery, such as the PCEPA (Canada) and the USA’s FOSTA (Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) and SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex traffickers Act) creates added structural risks by discouraging access to a valuable safety strategy [63].

In the community, SWOs or collectives act as centralised hubs that gather, manage, and disseminate safety data, including distributing bad date and aggressor reports, vetting the quality of care provided by local/regional health and social services, and co-creating safety handbooks or safe work guides [32,35,43]. Examples include the UK-based Red Project: Safety Tips for Sex Workers [68] and the National Ugly Mugs [69] charity in the UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands aimed at ending violence against sex workers. In France, ‘Jasmine’, a program run by Medecins du Monde, supports sex workers by issuing alerts about potentially dangerous people, verifying client information (phone numbers, license plates, email addresses, etc.), providing rights-based education and health advice (e.g., how to talk to doctors, how to report assaults) and a variety of violence prevention techniques [70]. In Canada, the peer-led, community-research collaboration BC BDAR (British Columbia Bad Date & Aggressor Reporting Project) has created a province-wide bad date reporting system for sex workers across BC [71]. Increasing the availability and accessibility of safety tools may help to reduce some of the environmental and structural risks associated with sex work.

At a broader level, many SWOs take on the work of redressing environmental/structural risks by advocating for occupational and citizen rights for sex workers. In New Zealand, for instance, a 2003 private members bill, co-drafted by the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective, led to the decriminalisation of sex worker and the development of the Prostitution Reform Act, entrenching occupational health and safety guidelines for employers, managers, and workers into the legislation [72]. Alternatively, during the COVID-19 pandemic, sex workers in jurisdictions around the world were excluded from economic relief benefits [32,73,74,75,76]. These impacts were acutely felt by lower-resourced and more marginalised workers (e.g., migrant, racialised, street-based), some of whom continued to work in person—placing them at higher health risk for contracting the corona virus [32,46,74]. In response, SWOs across the globe set up emergency and mutual aid funds to support workers in their communities, develop safe work guides, and advocate for the inclusion of workers in pandemic relief support [32,74,75,77]. These actions take direct action on the structural determinants of sex workers’ health and well-being.

In summary, using an ecological framework of resilience to understand how sex workers draw on individual, interpersonal, and organizational resources in their environments highlights ways they adapt to structural conditions that compromise workplace safety. This article presents the safety strategies enacted by sex workers in one Canadian city and considers how pathways to resilience are helped or hindered by a range of factors present in their environments.

2. Methods

2.1. Project Description

The study was a follow-up to a larger study conducted by the second author in 2012–2013 that involved interviews with sex workers (N = 218) from six Canadian census metropolitan areas (Victoria, BC; Montreal, Que.; St John’s, Nfld.; Kitchener–Waterloo–Cambridge, Ont.; and Calgary and Fort McMurray, Alta). More than 30 community organisations in five provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland) were involved in the study design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation of the findings. This included people with sex work experience, representatives from SWOs, outreach agencies, and public health or human rights groups, in addition to academics. This community participatory approach [78,79,80] was indispensable to attaining diverse samples about gender, Indigeneity, sexuality, age, etc., and gaining sex workers’ trust to participate in these studies [73].

The sex workers participating in the cross-city study conducted before the 2014 PCEPA and the post-PCEPA Victoria sequel study are similar along key dimensions of structural disadvantage that persisted despite changing prostitution laws, lending legitimacy to our qualitative results. While the PCEPA created a new regime organising sex work (i.e., an end demand/Nordic model), advocacy/action to rescind the legislation on the grounds that it creates more unsafe working conditions for sex workers remains stalled [81]. While sex workers continue to mobilise around their rights [73], conditions in 2025 remain relatively unchanged from 2017, when the data were collected, and participant responses to our study questions remain valid.

2.2. Data Collection

This study (2017–2019) involved a close-ended questionnaire and open-ended interview guide. To take part in the study, research participants had to be age 19 and over (i.e., legal adults within the province of BC), legally able to work in Canada, and the recipient of money in exchange for in-person sexual services on at least 15 different occasions in the 12 months preceding the interview. Data were collected from a diverse non-random sample of sex workers (N = 60) in Victoria, BC. With the relatively ‘hidden’ population of sex workers and the highly heterogenous nature of sex work, a random or representative participant sample group is difficult to achieve [8,82,83]. To address this challenge, and aim for the greatest diversity possible, our study recruited participants in the following ways: via their online presence, newspaper and online advertisements, by placing posters in social and health agencies, by presenting at collaborator programs, and by participant peer recruitment. The final cross-section of participants ranged by age, sex, gender, Indigeneity, ethnicity, and workplace service location. The Human Research Ethics Board at the University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada.

The interviews ranged in length from 1 h 15 min to 1 h 45 min and included a questionnaire component and a small number of open-ended questions asked to better understand the impacts of sex work on participants’ work and private lives. Demographic data collected from participants are consistent with questions from Canada’s census to compare participant characteristics to those of the general Canadian population. Participants were asked a series of questions about where they have delivered services to clients in the past, with the majority of participants reporting trying our different work locations concurrently and over time. Therefore, we avoid using binary categories such as outdoor/indoor or on-street/off-street as they fail to capture the wide range of locations (ranging from home, hotels, motels, studios, bars, vehicles, and parks) where participants negotiated and delivered sex work services.

The second author conducted the majority of interviews. The interviews took place in a variety of locations, including participant’s homes, coffee shops, and other public spaces. Verbal informed consent was obtained from all participants, and permission was given to use audio-recording equipment during the interview. Participants were assured of their ability to end the interview at any time and of the confidentiality of the data shared with researchers. Audio recordings were transcribed, and all identifying information was redacted following interviews in 2017. Transcripts were imported into NVivo 12 software and organised by research question. Although interviews were completed with 60 participants, 1 participant did not answer the open-ended safety-related questions. Therefore, the qualitative analysis is based on 59 responses.

2.3. Qualitative Data Analysis

The qualitative data presented in this paper were analysed in 2024 and focused on participants’ safety strategies while working. The analysis focused on participant responses to the open-ended question: You told me that you do a variety of things to keep safe at work__________. How have these strategies changed in recent years? Why did you change these strategies?

In alignment with the ecological framework of resilience, we conducted an experiential thematic analysis to “explore the truths of participant’s contextually situated experiences, perspectives, and behaviors” [84] (p. 8). This approach acknowledges that the ability of individuals to adapt to their surroundings and circumstances is not homogeneous—that it involves multi-level considerations and can take a range of forms depending on a person’s social location [85,86]. We examined participant responses from the perspective that sex workers will draw on the resources available to them to maintain their safety while working and that this occurs in the context of a precarious structural environment that is highly stigmatised and restricted by criminal laws and regulations.

Coding of participants’ responses was completed using NVivo 12 software. Following Braun and Clarke’s [87] six-step approach to thematic analysis, we took a ‘coding reliability’ approach, using specific procedures to ensure reliability and reduce research bias, including consensus coding and developing a codebook [84]. The first author began the coding process by reading through the transcripts in NVivo multiple times to become familiar with the data (Step 1). Ten transcripts were then randomly selected for the second and third authors to review and code independently. Each author completed their coding separately in NVivo, identifying initial codes related to interview probes and emergent codes (i.e., those not probed by the interviewer but revealed by the participants) (Step 2/3). The authors then met to compare and discuss their coding schemes until they achieved consensus on a final codebook. The first author then applied this codebook to the 59 transcripts in NVivo. Codes were subsequently grouped into overarching themes based on “patterns of meaning anchored by a shared idea or concept” (Step 4/5) [84] (p. 9). Themes were associated with resources participants said they draw upon to maintain safety while working. Step 6 of the general approach to thematic analysis, ‘producing the report’, is presented in the remaining sections below.

Consistent with the analytical method, the language used by participants is considered to be a reflection of their true reality. The use of quotes in the sections below attempts to convey participants’ contextual reality, including their work setting, type of work, and relationships with their peers and social networks. Pseudonyms were assigned by authors to participants when using their quotes to ensure confidentiality. Gender pronouns consistent with the participant’s identity are used for comparative purposes. Participant work locations (i.e., where they deliver services, not where they solicit services) have been added when introducing the quotes to provide additional context. To ensure participant anonymity in a medium size city, individual details, including age, ethnicity, and Indigeneity, are presented as characteristics of the sample in

Table 1. Sex workers’ characteristics compared to all citizens living in the Victoria CMA.

		Victoria Sample (N = 60)	Victoria CMA (N = 367,770) 1
Gender
	Cis Women	80%	52%
	Cis Men	13%	48%
	Gender Minority 2	7%	-
Age (mean)		39 years	45 years
Ethnicity/race
	Visible minority	7%	14%
	Indigenous	25%	6%
	Other 3	68%	80%
Education
	High school graduate	68%	93% 4
Married/common law		27%	56% 5
Own home		12%	63% 6
Annual personal income (median)		$31,500	$37,481 7

¹ Victoria population data based on the 2016 Canadian Census of Canada [88,89]. ² Gender minority was used to include participants who identified as “trans-man”, “trans-woman”, “transitioning”, “fluid gender”, “intersexed”, “gender queer”, “androgynous”, and “other”; 2016 census reports binary sex categories of “Male” and “Female”. ³ ‘Other’ refers to people identifying as Canadian or European background. ⁴ Aged 25 to 64 in private households with secondary (high) school diploma or postsecondary certificate, diploma, or degree. ⁵ Aged 15 and over. ⁶ All private households. ⁷ Income earners, aged 15 and over, in private households.

.

3. Results

3.1. Descriptive Findings

Participants’ reported economic and social inequities as a general condition of life. As shown in Table 1, participants were more likely to identify as women and Indigenous, have a lower income, and were younger than other people in Victoria. They were also less likely to have finished high school, to own their own home, and more likely to be single and to have unmet heath care needs compared to the general population in Victoria. The majority said they were currently or previously employed outside of sex work.

Participants in the study reported a diversity of locations where they advertised, negotiated, and delivered services. Most participants reported trying out different work locations/sex markets concurrently and over time. The average length of time working in the sex industry was 15 years, and the majority of participants (82%) in the study were involved in sex work prior to the implementation of the PCEPA, so they had worked under two criminal code regimes. Among those workers, they reported a persistence of structural disadvantage following the PCEPA despite changing prostitution laws.

The structural disadvantage of participants was also evident by participants’ high rates of reported violent victimisation compared to the general population. Of the 60 Victoria-based sex workers surveyed as part of this study, 90% had experienced victimisation in the last 12 months by someone in their lives (i.e., a partner, ex-partner, client, co-worker, manager, or another person). When participants were asked specifically about their experiences of victimisation while working, 30% had been verbally abused or harassed, 25% had been touched against their will in a sexual way, 20% had been forced into unwanted sexual activity, 18% had someone take or try to take something from them by force, 13% had been attacked while working, and 10% had been hit or attacked or threatened with a weapon.

3.2. Qualitative Findings

We asked participants to discuss the activities or strategies they employ to keep safe at work, including what they did before or during commercial sex encounters, how their strategies for safety have changed over time, how they drew on their larger networks, and what resources they wished they had access to, to improve their abilities to remain safe. As elaborated on below, participants said they availed of opportunities and resources in the context of their physical, social, and digital ecologies. We found that safety strategies were dependent on individual access to client screening tools and work environments and that strategies changed over time and across space (i.e., workplaces) and were influenced by workers’ interpersonal and community-based relationships. We identified four key themes: handling clientele, managing workplaces, drawing on social networks, and barriers to resilience. The first three themes were ways that participants in our study stayed safe while at work, while the fourth theme comprised factors that prevented sex workers from enacting safety strategies.

3.2.1. Handling Clientele

Using the ecological framework of resilience, we understand that being able to handle one’s clientele is a pathway to resilience for sex workers. Based on participants’ responses to the questions, there are a variety of methods and tools available to sex workers to ‘handle clientele’, but access to those resources varies from worker to worker and is dependent on their place of work.

Client Screening

Screening clients before dates is an important strategy to stay safe in sex work jobs [23,65,70,71] and reflects the use of personal safety strategies. Moreover, under the PCEPA, clients/buyers are punishable under the criminal code, complicating relationships with sex workers/sellers and their ability to communicate. Participants shared how they screened for client politeness/respectfulness and their frame of mind (e.g., sobriety) before agreeing to dates. Joanne, who worked out of hotels and her/clients’ homes, said that she would “not [deal] with a client that’s drunk and obnoxious and disrespectful on the phone right off the bat”. Melissa, who worked out of her home and hotels, talked about her specific protocols when communicating with her clientele:

I actually don’t take calls anymore cause … it doesn’t show very much about like their diction… or their patience. And also, people who call, they sometimes just like to waste your time or you know just they want to hear your voice.

Similarly, Jennifer, who worked out of a shared condo and client hotel rooms, said, “We don’t take blocked numbers. None of the girls out of the condo take blocked numbers or anything like that”. Kimberly, who worked out of hotels and her residence, said, “I used to make everybody call me and then I would text them my address and that was to make sure that they weren’t using some kind of payphone or something”.

Individual Client Identification Tools

To keep track of their clientele, some participants shared how they created personalised data logs that they may or may not use to consult with co-workers and/or other sex workers. In personalising client identification tools, Christina, who worked out of her home, said, “I have a code system in a different language, so no one can understand my client list. And, I can tell when they’ve been in, what service they’ve had”. Similarly, Lisa, who worked out of client homes and hotels, shared,

If I have a guy that calls that I’ve had an experience [with], I’ve got it saved in my phone, sometimes little acronyms like, BL for blacklist, WOT for waste of time. [S]o like, they’re going to dick me around or be a bit of a pain in the ass. [B]ut if I’m really broke and dead, then maybe I’ll spend the fifteen minutes and see if I can figure it out.

Melissa (home, hotels) said,

The references is a newer thing… [I]f I’m unsure about somebody or have a bad feeling, I’ll ask for a reference or two, which has helped a lot. Usually [if] they won’t give them [references] to me, you know, my gut was right.

Requiring references, having specific communication requirements/expectations, and refusing unidentified callers all demonstrate ways that sex workers draw on personal assets to control their work environment and manage their clientele.

Working with Select Clients

Some participants talked about how working with a regular clientele helped to plan their schedules and know what to expect. “I just got a couple of main customers now that are, clients that are, that I’ve been seeing for a while… They’re solid people, yah. They’re hard working people” (James, worked out of clients’ homes and hotels). Angela, who worked out of her home, said, “I’ve needed to have less [protection] because I’m seeing more safe people”. Similarly, Maria, who worked out of cars, hotels, and with an agency, shared,

My clients are regulars, some of them I’ve known for like seven or eight years. And, ah, some of them are like family—or we’re not family—but friends to me. That I can like, that I’m close with, and care a lot about. Um… So, I mean, like I said about 50% of clientele are, are regulars.

These findings show that participants’ ability to develop trusting relationships with their clients is a safety strategy. Given that both parties are stigmatised actors in society’s eyes, this strategy reflects the complexity and cultural relativity of sex work. Developing relationships counters the narrative that all buyers—assumed to be primarily men, “[demean] and [degrade] the human dignity of all women and girls” [90].

3.2.2. Managing Workplaces

As noted above, our participants work in a variety of workplaces across their careers and simultaneously. In these workplaces, they constantly adapt to changing clientele, co-workers, managers, law enforcement, and other dynamic factors. Based on an ecological framework of resilience, workplaces are part of sex workers’ physical and social ecologies and may provide opportunities to take advantage of personal and interpersonal resources that promote pathways to resilience or the reverse.

Personal Conduct Within the Workplace

While on dates, participants discussed adapting their personal behaviour and management strategies to remain safe. Michelle, who worked out of hotels and client’s residences and vehicles, discussed the importance of remaining sober and clear-headed during dates. “I don’t take, like, a drink, like an unopened drink. I would never do that anymore”. Jason, who worked out of hotels, residences (his and clients’), in hostels, vehicles, parks, and at the beach, shared that managing his work was not only about workplace settings but a combination of managing his clients and his behaviours on dates,

I was going in bars, meeting strangers on the street. Um… not, necessarily having a check-in person. Um… being intoxicated or whatever. And now I don’t use while I’m working and all those things. That’s a huge part of it too. Just having my wits about me.

Amanda, who worked out of cars, client hotels, and her apartment, demonstrated her awareness of the risks that can accompany street-based sex work and shared how she managed it:

I know it’s more violent out there in the street, etcetera, etcetera. So you know if you are going to survive, you got to psych yourself up to a certain level, to yah… That’s how it is in the dog eat dog.

Other participants, in adapting to potentially risky scenarios, said that they carried weapons for self-defense. James (home, hotels) said, “I just stick to myself… I always carry a knife and stuff like that”, Amanda (outdoors, car, hotel, home) said, “I’ve been carrying pepper spray and bear spray for probably at least ten years”, and Sam, a gender queer worker who provides services in hotels/air B&Bs, or in clients’ homes and vehicles, said, “two phones… dog attack deterrent… little legal um, keychain plastic knuckle thing. Like a brass knuckle but plastic with little spikey things”. James (home, hotels) saw his physical strength as a safety asset as a male sex worker,

Well, I know what I can do if I have- if I needed to. Like I know my strength. Um… and if you, females are just, they need the man to protect them in a sense. So. I would say they have it a lot worse.

These examples show how, in potentially risky situations, when participants are able to draw on personal resources like their physical and psychological capabilities, they can better manage their service interactions.

Work Location

In addition to managing their own actions by drawing on personal resources, many participants talked about how they managed their environments by deciding where they were comfortable working. Nigel, who worked out of his home or a hotel, said,

I keep things the way I like it. You know what I mean? … when it comes to being in my own surroundings, I feel more comfortable, more in control, um, that sort of thing and that’s if something happened.

While working from home felt safer for Nigel, Tracey, who worked with an escort agency and provided services in client homes, hotels, and previously, her own home, found the opposite: “I’m not taking any clients in my house anymore”. Alternatively, Lindsey, who worked at an agency, said she “love[s] the style of the in-office setting. It’s just a very comforting, safe place. Cause in a hotel room (laughs), anything can go on”.

These three examples show that a ‘safe workplace’ varies depending on an individual’s preference but having the ability to access the right workplace for them contributes to their ability to enact safety strategies.

Maria (car, hotel, agency) discussed how being part of a managed workplace added safety and security:

My strategies are mostly just, having the intercom system with the buzzer. Having the, um, it’s a button, it’s like a panic button that goes directly to the police. And a knock out system. And a check-in system that, when we first meet the client … she’ll [manager] ask, you know, “What do you think of the client? Do you feel safe?”

Other participants discussed the trade-offs that came from working in different workplace settings. Claire, who worked out of a shared condo or client homes, said,

Well at an agency you have a lot more… um, you have a larger community to draw on. Like, you know, there’s always other girls in the building, you know other clients, you know there’s always a phone girl at the front of the office no matter what. Like you are never ever alone. And with my independence, you know, I’m—I’m strictly independent—so, I guess I have that support system, and I have reasonable community to draw on, but at the end of the day, when I open the door, I’m all by myself.

These added interpersonal safety and security measures enhance workplace well-being for sex workers in managed settings.

Workplace Resources

Some participants shared how they drew on financial resources to help improve their safety via interpersonal resources, such as “having a driver or something like that” (Tanya, client’s hotel/home, cars, parks). Dawn, who worked out of clients’ or her own residence or hotels, said,

I have a driver, but I mean her job is just to get me there and back. She just, she’s just a young girl herself, so, I wouldn’t call her my safety net… I like her cause she knows how to tell time. And when I say, “Can you call me like in 15, like 15 minutes after you drop me off, can you give me a quick call or text?” She does that!

Similarly, Meghan, who worked for an escort agency and out of client homes, hotels, and her own home, said,

I have had drivers before. Yup. Um… and that was good because there was a guy, in the car, you know? And, sometimes you needed them, you know? You needed to leave because you weren’t comfortable or something.

Participants were also asked what types of support or resources they wished they had on hand. For many, they hoped for heightened surveillance in their workplaces, such as a “panic button … one of those alert bracelet kind of things that the old people have” (Sam, hotel, home, vehicle) or “you can get these little pen camera things, like it’s a pen and it will video tape everything… something discreet that you wouldn’t know was there. Just to keep my safety right?” (Ashley, private residence). Still, Jennifer (condo, hotel) reflected on the limitation of surveillance, “we talked about putting cameras in and stuff like that, but that doesn’t really provide you with anything but help after”.

Other participants spoke about improving their sense of safety using physical protection. Adrienne and Jessica said,

[I would] carry a weapon, I would like to carry a sidearm. It’s illegal—it would be nice if they would change that—just even an air gun, a pellet gun, you can still hurt somebody, or maim them, you know?

(Adrienne, vehicles, parks, client homes/hotels, her home)

I would have a bouncer. I would have a dog, number one—I would have a dog that was aggressive. You would have to ‘cause you know, you never know what you’re dealing with there. And if some guy’s got a knife or worse, a gun, you got to be safe, and you’ve got to have people.

(Jessica, in call agency, client homes, offices, hotels, and her own home)

The constraints to sex workers being able to operate in safe work environments are highlighted by these ‘wish list’ items. These show sex workers need to rely on informal and illegal support to feel safe and continue working. Yet, participants outline how having access to surveillance technology, weapons, or third-party supports has limitations, especially if adequate screening protocols cannot be put into place.

3.2.3. Drawing on Social Networks

According to an ecological framework of resilience, social networks are a crucial resource that supports the development and enactment of resilient behaviours [35,43] and, in the case of our study, are a key pathway enabling workplace safety. Our findings show how the availability and accessibility of social supports can buffer the environmental risks created by sex work job precarity, stigmatisation, and criminalisation.

Co-Workers and Knowledge Sharing

Participants discussed how working with other sex workers was an important safety strategy. Adrienne (parks, cars, homes, hotels) said, “You always had someone looking out for you. Not necessarily a spotter, but the other girls that are out there”. Brandy, who worked out of her home, clients’ homes, or hotels, shared, “even when I worked on the street I always worked with a girlfriend”, and Melissa (home, hotels) said, “meeting other girls has been one of the best safety tools”.

Amber, who worked at hotels; performed in calls at an escort agency, out of client homes, her home, vehicles, and parks, talked about the importance of knowledge sharing among work peers to maintain not only safety in the broader sex worker community but also to support worthwhile work experiences:

Interviewer: If you had a bad feeling for someone or something like that, you actually post it on BackPage?

Amber: Oh yah, yah. That’s not [for] my safety so much, as [it is for] any of the other girls… especially if it’s a really shitty experience, you know. But not where it warrants calling the cops by any means. But, just any shady, or you know it’s a time waster, and abusive language or, you know just… Many different reasons I’ll post, you know.

Backpage was an online classified advertising website where sex workers could advertise their services and communicate with other workers about clients, including providing references, sharing experiences, posting cautionary information, and listing identification details (e.g., license plates, phone numbers). The site was shuttered by the United States federal government in 2018, just prior to the passing of FOSTA-SESTA. While FOSTA-SESTA aimed to target sex traffickers who operate online, it also disrupted the ability of some sex workers to advertise, screen clients, and negotiate services online [91,92,93]. Shuttering the site impacted Canadian sex workers, many of whom transitioned to other online platforms to advertise services, despite the PCEPA criminalising advertising one’s services.

Alternatively, communal blacklists were discussed as a way for co-workers to share information about prospective clients. Melissa (home, hotels) said, “we have like, a collective where we send each other back and forth blacklist clients”. Sex worker organisations also provide support in coordinating these resources, as shared by Mike, who worked out of client residences and hotels:

At [community health organization] they do have a black, you know, a list of people that other sex workers have reported—if he’s a real time waster, or this person actually pretends to be client and then shows up and is violent. So they do have that kind of a list…. And, even when people don’t want to go to the police, they still report there.

Some participants discussed the advantages of having mentors and mentees. Amy, who worked out of her home, said that “I was really lucky in that I had a woman that’s been doing this for a while that really showed me a lot of stuff, so, I got a real head start”. As a mentor, Stacy, who did private in-call appointments from a rented space or met clients at hotels, said, “I brought them [new workers] into my safety strategies, so we all do the same thing”.

These examples of communal/organisational and interpersonal support demonstrate how co-workers provide workplace support to one another and improve workplace safety practices in the absence of more formalised occupational health and safety guidelines. Moreover, for the individual worker, these supports change and evolve over time, reflecting the temporal nature of resilience. Maria’s (car, hotel, agency in call) ability to enact resilient behaviour in the form of safety strategies was established over time in tandem with the development of a workplace support network:

[In the beginning] I wasn’t in a good place emotionally. I had a really troubled life, and … Ah, I also didn’t have the good…ah… community and system around me. I didn’t know about [community health organization] then. I didn’t um… have as many friends and family. I didn’t work at an agency where there are other girls, other experiences. I didn’t know about black-lists, bad-dates, all those things. And I really, wasn’t even very… that focused on safety. So. Yah (chuckles). It is a crazy thing to look back on. Totally different than now.

Friends and Family

In addition to workplace support, participants relied on their close friends, referring to them as families because of the safety and support they provided. As Adrienne (outdoors, home, hotel) stated, “it’s a different type of family for sure. But they’re there for support and protection at the same time”. Participants shared how they connected with friends on dates as a safety strategy. Liz, who worked out of hotels and client residences, said, “[if] I’m going somewhere weird, I’ll drop a PIN and send it to one of my girlfriends”, or, as Deanna, who worked out of client hotels/homes, her own home, with an escort agency, at a massage parlour, and out of vehicles, said:

I’m on my own in my apartment, like no other girl or anything. Like, so I call my girlfriend and say, “this person is here” or “I’m at this person’s house” or … “Yah, I got here!” Ah, cause she knows where I’m going and then, she’ll call me out at the end of an hour or whatever he paid for.

Participants also shared how they drew on the support of their romantic partners as part of their safety nets. Emily, who worked with an agency, out of a condo (hers and a shared space) and in hotels, shared,

When I first started I was very, um, kind of like overly safe I guess. I was like, every time I saw someone new I would give my boyfriend like a safety call and tell him like, “Ah, I’m seeing this person, and I’ll call you when I’m done.”

Based on stories shared by our participants, we know that sex workers’ social networks are expansive. In the context of their work, they draw on informal social supports and networks to minimise workplace risks and feel more comfortable in challenging work situations. Within the context of environmental risks, we can understand how sex workers’ ability to access interpersonal support from social networks to enact safety strategies helps to create pathways to resilience in the absence of regulated workplace safety measures.

3.2.4. Barriers to Resiliency

Based on an ecological framework of resilience, ‘barriers to resilience’ involve environmental and structural roadblocks that prevent sex workers from accessing safety strategies and resources that promote safety and, in turn, pathways to resilience.

Participants discussed situations where clients were reluctant to provide identifying information (e.g., references, full names, phone numbers) making it difficult to enact effective screening and maintaining protections in the context of their work. Kimberly and Abbi shared,

Now there’s all these throwaway phones from 7–11, and there’s all these texting apps that you can put on your own phone that are totally untraceable. So, I’ve had to just, I’ve had to just accept the fact that that’s not going to work, I just have to accept the fact that some people that I see, I honestly, if I needed to trace them, I wouldn’t be able to.

(Kimberly, hotels and her residence)

I really do wish that I had the information, like the tools to do screening properly so I know who I’m seeing. Because, about ninety percent of the clients, I don’t know who they are still, cause, you know, they always lie. Um, their phone numbers and emails, like they don’t turn things up, so I don’t really know very much about them.

(Abbi, their home, client homes, hotels, and cars)

Reflecting on why clients may choose not to disclose their information, Emily (agency, condo, hotel) reflected:

I wish it was normal to ask for a name because that would make me feel a lot better… especially because, there’s a lot of girls in the city that advertise and there’s a lot of fake pictures, a lot of girls who will steal—there’s a lot of like just sketchy people in general. So they’re [clients] always worried, you know? They don’t just want to just give out their personal information to someone they’ve never met.

These reflections show that due to the risky environments of stigmatisation and criminalisation, some clients are reluctant to share their personal information for fear of being outed in one manner or another. As a consequence, client data non-disclosure heightens workplace risks for sex workers by compromising their ability to enact individualised screening protocols. Kimberly (hotel, home) detailed the following pre-PCEPA hypothetical scenario with a client:

“Oh, I saw you on the buzzer camera and you’re taller than I thought you would be.” Just to let them know, “Hey, you’re on camera.” But since the law I decided that probably really freaks people out and they don’t wanna know that they’re on camera.

Similarly, related to the context of criminalisation, Tanya (hotel, home, car, park) shared how the law impacted the access sex workers have to workplace support,

Now, the thing is, my job as a receptionist is illegal because I’m—it’s like the avails of prostitution or whatever…so I’m like basically [illegal]… they [sex workers] don’t have drivers there anymore because they are not getting paid, like they [sex workers] can’t pay them enough… so that’s a massive safety issue. Like, they [sex workers] just go to out-calls by themselves… it’s making it so there’s only one way to do sex work legally, and that’s … be totally independent, or I guess, go out and sell your ass on the street.

Tanya highlights several ways that criminalisation has impacted the ability of sex workers to enact their safety strategies—eliminating a third-party screener, discouraging drivers from wanting to help workers, and consequently, creating working conditions where sex workers are limited to working independently, unsupported, and in riskier work locations. Melissa (home, hotels) also shared how operating in criminalised environments has impacted her ability to draw on co-worker support as a safety strategy,

It used to be a little bit different. Like every, every girl would be out on the street corner, right? And you would have all your—you’d have all your friends and you could be like, “Don’t get in the car with that guy,” but now it’s kind of like, a little different.

In summary, while sex workers demonstrate innovation and resourcefulness in managing their safety, in the context of their working environments, structural barriers continue to persist that risk putting them in harm’s way.

4. Discussion

Currently, the unregulated and precarious nature of sex work, combined with the laws criminalising sex work in Canada, creates unsafe working conditions at the micro (individual), meso (organizational), and macro (structural) level [23,31,92,94]. These challenges are related to and exacerbated by ‘prostitution stigma’ that argues sex work is exploitative of predominantly cisgendered women and girls [18,95,96,97] and by anti-prostitution perspectives that overlook the diversity within the sex industry [19,98,99]. Our study shows that client non-disclosure, lack of third-party support, and working in isolation are key challenges that can compromise sex workers’ feelings of safety. According to the ecological framework of resilience, these challenges constitute environmental risks related to sex work criminalisation and are consistent with numerous other studies examining the impacts of the PCEPA on sex worker safety [15,23,27,100].

In spite of these structural challenges, participants in our study highlighted ways that they are resourceful and adaptive in navigating their safety in the workplace and that they employ numerous strategies simultaneously and across multiple levels (e.g., blacklists from SWOs, references from co-workers, and individual screening techniques). Moreover, despite stereotypes suggesting that sex workers are victims of other’s wrongdoings or are exploited, our study shows that sex workers have a large degree of control over which clients they see, where they deliver services, and the support they have access to. We highlight the diverse locations where workers provide services and learn that they identify some locations to be safer than others. These findings are consistent with other scholars who argue against reducing sex workers to being either ‘powerless’ or ‘empowered’ [8,101] but rather encourage highlighting how sex workers constantly negotiate environments of risk and safety by using the resources available to them. This aligns with our theory, grounded in the ecological framework of resilience, that the more resources/opportunities for safety that sex workers have available to them, the better they can overcome environmental risks and, ultimately, embody more resilience in their work lives.

Our study has also demonstrated that among the sample in Victoria, BC, sex workers are diverse across genders, sex, ethnicity/race, and socio-economic status. While we do not have sufficient data to conclude whether or not some genders, ethnicities, or age groups have access to more resources than others, we can highlight ways that safety is nuanced at individual levels and is influenced by multiple intersecting factors. It is worth exploring further the modifying effect of intersecting identities and social locations (e.g., race, gender, Indigeneity, age, substance user, (dis)ability) and the lived and living experiences of individuals (e.g., adverse childhood experiences, intergenerational trauma). For instance, while gender plays a significant role in violence experienced by sex workers [42] Rouhani et al’s [47] study comparing resilience between cis- and transgender women in street-based work found that gender had less of an effect on resilience than did having an education and having both housing and food security. While Orchard et al. [102] suggested that sex work can provide positive affirmation to transgender workers and enhance their personal competencies, strength, and entrepreneurship, Lyons et al. [50] highlighted the unique structural challenges faced by trans sex workers (e.g., transphobic violence, police harassment). This tension of protective factors and risk factors, according to our theory, will diminish the resilience of, in this example, trans sex workers.

While resilience varies between individual sex workers, certain structural factors place some sex workers at a greater disadvantage than others. Disproportionate racial profiling and violence experienced by Indigenous sex workers indicates the persistent, intersecting structural reality of colonialism and racism [27,50,54]. Workers who are disadvantaged along other minority statuses experience more harassment and prejudice compared to non-racialised, non-Indigenous, and non-im/migrant counterparts [29,94,103]. Moreover, sex workers have more challenges accessing determinants of health compared to the general population, including the healthcare system [1,8,15,104,105,106,107] and the justice system [104,108,109]. Such challenges limit their capability to realise their citizenship rights to be safe and well. In alignment with these studies, our findings show that the main risks to sex worker safety are rooted in intersecting stigmas that are operationalised through social, economic, and political tools.

The multi-faceted ways that sex worker resiliency is constituted within the current Canadian environment of criminalisation, stigmatisation, and work precarity supports the use of a perspective like the ecological framework of resilience [44]. Such a perspective takes into consideration multi-level risk and protective factors and responds to the diverse nature of the sex worker community within and across communities [110]. Moreover, this approach highlights how structural disadvantage on multiple fronts challenges sex workers’ abilities to stay safe at work. Our findings support the argument for the decriminalisation of sex work as a means to address the challenges in staying safe at work that are linked to criminalising the purchase of sexual services [111]. Our findings also show how the law impacts the capabilities of sex workers to be resilient and how this is compounded by sex workers’ general disadvantage compared to the general population. Adopting a public health approach to sex work, one that is grounded in equity and social justice, necessarily requires the decriminalisation of sex work [112].

The generalisability of our findings is limited by our study’s methodology, in that the participants interviewed are a purposive sample of workers in one city and, therefore, not representative of the diversity of sex worker residents nationwide. Additionally, the data were self-reported by participants, which can introduce recall and reporting biases. The study may be biased by non-participation, including by those who did not wish to discuss their experiences related to safety or who were concerned about the confidentiality of their responses. Despite these limitations, this study expands our empirical understanding of the multi-faceted pathways to resilience in one group of sex workers in one Canadian community.

5. Conclusions

In this paper, we have demonstrated the utility of using the ecological framework of resilience to shed light on the multi-faceted ways that sex worker resiliency is shaped by the current environment of criminalisation, stigmatisation, and work precarity in one Canadian city. We have shown that resiliency is an outcome of multi-level risk and protective factors influenced by the heterogeneity of sex work. We support the findings of other scholars that show, despite the structural constraints of the sex industry, sex workers have and exercise agency, though it is nuanced, complex, and contextual. We demonstrate sex worker resilience is similarly nuanced and can be enhanced by improving access to safety strategies across individual, interpersonal, and organisational levels.

We recommend further use of this framework in sex work research to continue to explore ways that environmental risks compromise sex worker resiliency, how moderating factors like social networks, access to health and social services, and individual social locations can influence resiliency, and how shared values and beliefs among sex workers influence their health and wellbeing [59]. Moreover, we recommend that scholars continue to draw attention to the highly heterogeneous nature of sex worker populations in order to advocate for public health interventions that take action on the range of social and structural determinants that influence sex workers’ individual capabilities to optimise their health and well-being.

While other strength-based and resilience-focused research represents an important turn away from pathological perspectives on sex work, we show that focusing on coping skills alone positions sex workers’ resilience as the only resource available to them in the face of adversity. We align with scholars who examine resilience as part of an active process where sex workers make use of a combination of personal strengths and external resources in their environments to overcome adversity as best they can. We add to this scholarship by introducing the dimensions of ‘meaning’ and ‘relativity’ to the resilience model, which recognise that sex workers actively and creatively negotiate and resist cultural norms to stay safe while working. This reflects their participation as actors who make (constrained) choices in society, not simply as individuals who are ‘acted upon’. By using the four principles of the ecological framework of resilience—decentrality, complexity, atypicality, and cultural relativity—we present an alternate construction of resilience beyond social and structural locations. We argue this expanded position strengthens the argument for (1) decriminalising sex work to improve the occupational health and safety of workers in both the short and long term and (2) promoting public health interventions that attend to intersecting barriers that prevent sex workers from optimising their health and wellness.