| Abstrakt: |
Debates on sex work in Canada have focused on its criminal aspects, its harms, and the 'nuisance' it posits for communities. Not much attention has been devoted to more subtle forms of regulation that take place in other juridical spaces, such as the legal apparatus of municipalities. A growing number of cities are restricting sex work and using micro-regulation to police, constrain and control the activities and lives sex workers.1 Municipal bylaws are used by local governments to suppress sex work and prosecute sex workers. By 'micro-regulation' I mean the devious introduction of a myriad of rules that strictly constrain the range of activities that can take place in massage parlours, effectively creating barriers to sex work, even though municipalities do not have the power to prohibit the offering of sexual services. This paper aims to alleviate a lacuna in the research and literature on sex work in the juridical space of the municipality. I wish to bring attention specifically to the plight of Asian sex workers employed in massage parlours in the city of Toronto, whose voices and struggles are ignored and go unnoticed.2 My data was collected during a practice-based research study conducted in Toronto in 2014. My findings will show that municipal bylaws create barriers to the practice of sex work in the context of holistic centres, barriers that push sex work underground, endangering sex workers and exacerbating their stigmatization and exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
