Prostitution and Deservingness in Times of Pandemic: State (Non) Protection of Sex Workers in Spain

During the COVID-19 health crisis, the Spanish Government launched a series of urgent measures to protect the population from its economic effects. At first, it seemed that sex workers would have access to this protection, given that, technically, their access to the star measure, the IMV (anagram i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSocial sciences (Basel) Vol. 11; no. 5; p. 199
Main Authors Acién González, Estefanía, Arjona Garrido, Ángeles
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.05.2022
Subjects
Access
Citizenship
Civil society
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
deservingness
Discourse analysis
Exploitation
Gender-based violence
Hypotheses
Ideology
NGOs
Nongovernmental organizations
Pandemics
Political power
Politicization
Politics
Poverty
Professionalization
Prostitution
Protection
Sex industry
sex work
Sex workers
Social classes
Social exclusion
Social policy
Society
Stigma
Workers
Spain
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Summary:During the COVID-19 health crisis, the Spanish Government launched a series of urgent measures to protect the population from its economic effects. At first, it seemed that sex workers would have access to this protection, given that, technically, their access to the star measure, the IMV (anagram in Spanish for Ingreso Mínimo Vital) (minimum living income), was explicitly expressed. However, in the end, this group was excluded as the final text specified that only those deemed to be victims of gender violence, sexual exploitation, or trafficking could access said measure. We propose to study the usefulness of the concept of deservingness of social benefits to explain this lack of protection in a framework that takes into account political power contexts, the empirical observations of sex workers on their level of access to the IMV, and an exploration of its association with the theoretical construct of deservingness. Through a revision of secondary sources, interviews with key informants, and applying discourse analysis, we found these connections and the evident exclusion of sex workers from the social benefit. Likewise, we found that social stigma and moral and ideological judgments are behind this undeservingness and confirm a process of “NGOization” of care for this group that implies the depoliticization and professionalization of civil society entities such as NGOs.
ISSN:2076-0760
2076-0760
DOI:10.3390/socsci11050199