Tackling the dangers of ethnographic research on migrant sex workers in Spain

What is it about?

Recent calls have been made to investigate the lived experience of migrant sex workers. Our ethnographic study explored the lived perspectives of an under-researched occupational group: migrant women working as irregular streetwalkers in a European city. Nineteen Nigerian Edo women working as prostitutes and Madams in Spain participated in an ethnographic, longitudinal study spanning five years of data collection. In this article, we focus on some of the key challenges, including ethical considerations, of undertaking ethnographic work in a hazardous fieldwork setting that presents psychological and physical dangers to both participants and researchers, including threats of violence, and researcher burnout.

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Photo by Lina Sproge on Unsplash

Photo by Lina Sproge on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Only rarely have the voices of irregular migrants - especially sex workers - been included in anti-trafficking discourses and strategies. In this paper, we consider some of the ethical challenges and dangers of engaging directly with trafficked women sex workers from Nigeria, making their living in Spain.