Sex Workers’ Professional Experiences in the Interplay of Structure and Agency in Croatia

Ivana Radačić, Marija Antić and Mirjana Adamović are the authors of the paper “Sex Workers’ Professional Experiences in the Interplay of Structure and Agency in Croatia”. The paper was published in the journal “Politička misao”, 60 (4), which is indexed in Q1 in Scopus (2022) for History.

Abstract: There are still relatively few studies on job satisfaction and the quality of work ‎among sex workers, partly due to the ideologies surrounding sex work. In this ‎paper we move away from dichotomous thinking and investigate the professional experiences of indoor independent sex workers in Croatia against the ‎background of criminalised context and gendered socio-economic realities. ‎We look into sex workers’ motivations, perceptions and experiences, their ‎control and safety strategies.‎ The study shows that despite many structural constraints on the sex workers’ agency, all participants exercise some degree of autonomy and control ‎over their working lives. The factors that seem to be the most relevant in terms ‎of their ability to set up their own conditions, which in turn influences their experiences, are their economic situation, motivation and self-perception. Negative experiences mostly stem from criminalisation and stigmatisation of sex ‎work, which affects women primarily, and creates more risks to their health ‎and safety. The results of the study call for integrative policy approaches, ‎which presuppose full decriminalisation of adult voluntary sex work.

The paper is available at the link.