Formally Informal? Sex Work, Stigma, and Institutions

This paper explores how differences in the regulatory models governing sex work affect the rights of sex workers and analyzes the strategies sex workers develop for institutionalizing their own protection and livelihood in two cases: Nevada (where brothel-based sex work is regulated through a licensing model), and New South Wales (where it is quasi-decriminalized). I analyze the limits of extant legal frameworks governing sex work in both settings. Despite the formal legal recognition of some types of sex work, sex workers are often excluded from accessing institutions that exist to protect social and economic rights, including their labor rights. The underlying assumption is that once sex work is legal, the rights fulfillment of sex workers will follow. Yet these cases reveal that legal recognition, while important, is only part of the story in the quest for sex workers' rights. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and archival materials, I demonstrate how the stigmatization of sex work(ers) creates significant barriers for access to and protections of their social and economic rights in both settings, even after some sex work is legally permitted.  I then develop an agent-based theory of institutional creation to explain the innovative ways that sex workers navigate exclusion from existing institutions. Using concepts from the economic rights literature and New Institutionalism, I analyze how sex workers collectively organize to create their own institutions to support their rights. My work demonstrates that decriminalization is a necessary, but insufficient, condition for the full realization of sex workers' human rights. The theoretical contribution of this paper is significant both for scholarship on sex work and sex workers' rights, and for the broader literature on a variety of workers who operate in the liminal spaces between informal and formal sectors.