Negotiating Care and Control in Social Work with Sex Workers
Finnish Sex Work Research Network Conference, Helsinki, Finlandiya, 22 - 23 Ekim 2026, (Yayınlanmadı)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Yayınlanmadı
- Basıldığı Şehir: Helsinki
- Basıldığı Ülke: Finlandiya
- Hacettepe Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Negotiating Care and Control in Social Work with Sex Workers
Sex workers’ encounters with social work are often framed through competing narratives of support and regulation. Social work is associated with care, advocacy, welfare provision, and protection from violence, yet it may also involve surveillance, risk assessment, and interventions shaped by legal, organisational, and moral expectations. Existing debates frequently position care and control as opposing forces. This paper argues that such a binary framework is insufficient for understanding the relationship between sex workers and social work.
Drawing on theories of governmentality, feminist critiques of welfare institutions, and anti-oppressive social work, this theoretical paper conceptualises social work as a space where care and control are continuously negotiated rather than clearly separated. Social workers operate within institutional frameworks that simultaneously encourage support and require forms of regulation. Likewise, sex workers engage with welfare institutions in ways shaped by stigma, social exclusion, legal ambiguity, and unequal access to resources and rights.
The paper examines how categories such as vulnerability, risk, protection, empowerment, and self-determination shape professional interventions and influence how sex workers are recognised by welfare systems. It argues that social work occupies a distinctive position within the governance of sex work. Unlike criminal justice institutions, social work derives legitimacy from commitments to care and social justice. However, these commitments may coexist with practices that regulate behaviour, reinforce normative assumptions about gender and sexuality, or privilege particular pathways such as exit from sex work.
Rather than asking whether social work represents care or control, the paper explores how both dimensions are intertwined in everyday encounters between sex workers and welfare institutions. By bringing governance studies into dialogue with anti-oppressive social work, the paper contributes to contemporary debates on sex work by offering a more nuanced understanding of welfare interventions. It argues that recognising the tensions between care and control is essential for developing forms of social work that promote rights, participation, and self-determination while remaining attentive to the power relations embedded in welfare practice.