Racialized and Indigenous sex workers and the Canadian Sex Workers' Rights Movement

East Tower 

In this paper, we delve into the experiences of racialized and Indigenous sex workers within the Canadian Sex Workers Rights Movement. Our research, based on qualitative interviews with 40 racialized and Indigenous women in the indoor sectors of the Canadian sex industry, sheds light on their interactions with various sex workers' rights organizations. We particularly focus on their perceptions of the movement, drawing on Crenshaw's (1991) concept of structural, political, and representational intersectionality. These interviews, which were conducted in 2014/2015 are then supplemented with focus group interviews with racialized members of the Canadian SWRM, conducted in 2024/25. Combining these data, we explore how racialized and Indigenous sex workers' reflect upon and negotiate their positionality as "sex workers" in relation to the Canadian SWRM and how racialized members of the Canadian SWRM respond to racialized and Indigenous sex workers' perceptions. Our efforts to make sense of racialized and Indigenous women's voices as they reflexively negotiate their positionality include drawing attention to their race and class consciousness and their strategic cost-benefit calculation of political actions. Here, drawing from Scott (1985), our research suggests that while many of the participants in this study may not actively engage in organized events or collective actions, their everyday resistance within minority communities and the SWRM is nonetheless political and powerful. This subtle resistance has the potential to raise awareness, generate new knowledge, and influence attitudes. In this way, the individual political actions of racialized and Indigenous women can have a similar impact as the collective and coordinated actions of the Canadian SWRM.