After the Crackdown: Trust between China's Sex Workers and their Clients

• In Event: 594 - Regular Session. Sociology of Sexuality: Sexualities, Social Movements, and the Law

Abstract

The emphasis of this article is on how large-scale crackdowns on China’s sex industry affected relations between female sex workers and their male clients on the ground. I have read hundreds of detailed accounts of client experiences in China’s sex industry and analyzed the ‘friction’ (Tsing 2005) that is created as the tank treads of law enforcement drive through an illicit but yet large and bustling economic market: I show that rather than just removing sex workers from the streets and scaring clients away, and leaving everything else unchanged, the crackdowns produced movement, action, and effect, as clients and workers found new ways and rediscovered old ones to meet and connect, and thus also kept the market going. First, I explain that the crackdowns increased the importance of social capital, and second, that this transformed client-worker relations.

Author

• Isak Ladegaard, Boston College