Reflecting on researching sex work and race

Dr Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor is a Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London. Dr Sanchez Taylor primary research interests are in the sociology of gender, race and sexuality with a special focus on commercial sexual exchanges and cosmetic surgery tourism. Within these areas she explores the intersections between race gender and sexuality and enjoys working on interdisciplinary projects.

Dr Sanchez Taylor recently worked on a British Academy funded project in titled 'Revisiting Child Sex Tourism: Rethinking Business Responses'. This project brought together law and sociology to consider questions about child sexual exploitation in relation to tourism in order to critically interrogate mainstream responses to trafficking. As such it revisited research conducted on sex tourism in the 1990s to ask what has changed and what impact current policy initiatives to combat child sex tourism have had.

Previous research explore tensions in medical discourses used to market cosmetic surgery tourism through an ESRC project entitled 'Sun, Sea, Sand and Silicon: Aesthetic surgery tourism in the UK and Australia' (Award Number ES\ 1004513\1).

This paper draws on research from child sex tourism in the early 1990s, female sex tourism in 2000 and anti-trafficking in 2020 to reflect on changes in how race is theorised in current debates on sex work. Debates on sex work and anti-trafficking both work with conceptual binaries that largely failed to engage with race or acknowledge the histories of colonialism and slavery that shape the global sex industry. By examining early campaigns on commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), female sex tourism and current anti-trafficking policy it critiques the colour blind binaries that underpin stereotypes of victim and client or perpetrator. As highly racialised fields of research, the paper will also reflect on the processes of doing research as well as theorising research data.

This webinar is part of an open webinar series, hosted by CISC. To discover more please visit the Centre for Intimate and Sexual Citizenship and follow the Centre on Twitter.