Understanding Pimps’ Relationships with Others: Career Contingencies

• In Event: Relationships in the Context of Sex Work

Abstract

Relatively little research has been conducted on pimps or facilitators of sex work. The research to date has been largely descriptive, generating typologies largely based on their methods of recruitment and control of their workers/prostitutes. Ignored in this research are the inter-relationships that pimps form with others in the context of sex work. Modeling Prus and Irini’s (1980) study of hotel communities, which is based in the perspectives of crime as work (Letkemann, 1973) and the sociology of deviance (Becker, 1963), the concept of career contingencies is used as a framework to examine the inter-relatedness of pimps to other key players in the sex industry. The concept of career contingencies posits that there are four sets of careers that are intertwined [role participation (manager, driver, recruiter, drug supplier], identity (self image over time), activity (negotiations undertaken), and relationships (emergence and intensification of relationships)]. Qualitative interviews with pimps and other key players who assist in sex work in Chicago and Atlanta (N = 82) will be coded to examine the four sets of careers and their inter-relatedness (initial involvements, continuities, and dis-involvements in roles over time). Preliminary findings suggest that pimps and other key players perform a plurality of roles concurrently and over time, their initial involvements, continuity, and dis-involvement in roles were quite varied.

Authors

• Mary A. Finn, Georgia State University

• Loretta J. Stalans, Loyola University, Chicago