Treading water: Street sex workers negotiating frantic presents and speculative futures in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

• Published in: Time & Society Vol. 28; no. 2; pp. 804 - 827
• Main Author: Lainez, Nicolas
• Format: Book Review Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.05.2019; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Capitalism; Catching; Everyday life; Future; Gambling; Lifestyles; Prioritizing; Sex industry; Sex workers; Time; Water; Water supply; Women; Workers; Working women; Vietnam; present-ness; Vietnam; precarity; sex work; gambling; capitalism; Time; temporality; debt; care
• ISSN: 0961-463X; 1461-7463
• DOI: 10.1177/0961463X18778473

Structural conditions shape the temporalities that govern the lives of street sex workers operating in Châu Đốc, a small town in Southern Vietnam. These women live each day as they come and make decisions based on quick returns and the management of daily needs, prioritizing short-term solutions over planning for the future. The ethnographic study of the multiple temporalities that govern street sex work, family care, gambling and debt-juggling practices shows that these women live in a frantic present-oriented temporality that is filled with pressing tasks and routines. This leads to an uncertain future that engenders various forms of hopeful and speculative behaviour, but precludes systematic planning. As a result, these women are treading water: putting effort into keep themselves afloat but never furthering their status and lives or catching up with the currents of development and progress. Overall, this article argues that this day-to-day lifestyle goes hand in hand with the linear and future-oriented time of capitalism and wage-labour that has infiltrated everyday life in post-reform Vietnam.