Coronavirus, Sex Work, and Mutual Aid in Latin America [Funder: Carleton University COVID-19 Rapid Research Response Grants]

Sex workers in Latin America are some of the most precarious and vulnerable workers in a region already defined by high levels of informal labour. This project explores how they are experiencing and responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Paying attention to the ways that sex workers in Latin America have practiced mutual aid, and how their efforts to practice collective care have shifted during the current crisis, will provide a useful example of how marginalized groups respond to complex social problems. Centring the perspectives and knowledges of those most discounted, oppressed, and disempowered within current social relations, this research explores the ways Latin American sex workers' mutual aid strategies have shifted during the coronavirus crisis, and aims to record and disseminate their practices because they hold key lessons that are useful to other marginalized groups in the global south and beyond.