Chinese Female Sex Workers in Paris: Fighting Precarity through Negotiated Interdependence

Abstract

In this article, we explore the life experiences of Chinese female sex workers in Paris. In 2016, the French government enacted a law criminalising sex workers’ clients as part of its efforts to combat prostitution and human trafficking. However, this abolitionist law has intensified the very violence it aimed to eradicate and reinforced the notion that in sex work, everything is rooted in violence and exploitation. As a result, people involved in the sex work sector, especially migrant women, are often not seen as capable of understanding and making decisions about their own lives. In this context, alongside the broader criminalisation of borders, we highlight how Chinese women engaged in sex work navigate and resist increased precarity in their daily lives in the French capital. Our research indicates that they mitigate precarity through what we describe as ‘negotiated interdependence’ within their networks. Although this interdependence may restrict their autonomy in the workplace, it serves as a crucial strategy to combat the increased challenges they face under prostitution abolitionism, such as financial instability and social isolation. We conceptualise negotiated interdependence as an affective and socio-economic bond that encompasses three key, often competing, processes in these migrant sex workers’ decision-making: (1) maintaining independence, which pertains to self-preservation, safeguarding personal autonomy, and retaining control over one’s life through sexual-economic exchanges and migration projects; (2) developing reciprocal reliance, which underscores the necessity for both collective and individual support; and (3) negotiation, the dynamic force that underlies the bonds these migrant women forge with each other and with third parties.

Keywords: sex work, Chinese sex workers, negotiated interdependence, migration, precarity.