Occupational health, safety and labour rights among street and indoor sex workers in the context of evolving laws and policing: Ethnographic and qualitative participatory-action research

Prohibitive sex work legislation and restrictive policing strategies have consistently been shown to endanger the health and safety of sex workers both in Canada and globally. Despite this, in December 2014 the former Canadian government implemented new legislation to regulate sex work, termed the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA). The PCEPA criminalizes the purchase of sex and anyone who commercially profits from the proceeds of sex work (e.g., receptionists, security personnel, drivers etc.). Emerging research from Canada now suggests that end-demand approaches such as the PCEPA may recreate the harms of previous punitive approaches, while introducing new restrictions that put sex workers and sex industry actors such third parties (e.g. receptionists, security personnel etc.) in precarious legal positions. The proposed 5-year participatory-action research project aims to evaluate how evolving laws and policies regulating sex work (PCEPA, municipal licensing, policing appoarches, venue-based regulations) shape occupational health (e.g. experiences of physical and sexual violence, negotiation of safer sex practices) and safety (e.g. working conditions, access to workplace protections and labour rights) in the sex industry in Metro Vancouver. This new longitudinal research project will be well positioned to inform sex work law reform efforts, strategic litigation and the development, evaluation and implementation of sex work environment interventions at the municipal-level (e.g. enforcement policies, safe workplace standards for the sex industry, licensing regimes) and community-level (e.g. sex worker tools for safer workplace standards, potential for labour organization, collectivization of workers).