IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/gender/v28y2021is2p366-377.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

“Very little but a lot.” Solidarity within the sex workers' community in Poland during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Agata Dziuban
  • Martyna Możdrzeń
  • Anna Ratecka

Abstract

This article is an account of the struggle of the sex workers' community in Poland during the COVID‐19 pandemic. It unfolds as a dialog between three members of Sex Work Polska, a sex worker‐led activist and advocacy collective in Poland. While positioned as researchers, activists, and/or sex workers, we transgress the boundaries between academia and activism, permitting a grassroots insight into the crisis situation of the sex workers' community. This method enables us to present the embodied experience of community solidarity in crisis. We recall our thoughts and emotions from the moment of lockdown and our response to the pandemic by organizing an Emergency Fund to support sex workers. We reflect on how the pandemic evoked solidarity, the conditionality of institutionalized support, and our resistance to it. In capturing our experiences, we also show how the pandemic exposed the pre‐existing vulnerabilities of sex workers, their invisibility as a community in crisis, and their overvisibility as subjects of punitive measures. Our collective work and discussion allowed for engagement in feminist knowledge production, but also constituted a community care process.

Suggested Citation

  • Agata Dziuban & Martyna Możdrzeń & Anna Ratecka, 2021. "“Very little but a lot.” Solidarity within the sex workers' community in Poland during the COVID‐19 pandemic," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(S2), pages 366-377, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:28:y:2021:i:s2:p:366-377
    DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12677
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12677
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/gwao.12677?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:28:y:2021:i:s2:p:366-377. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0968-6673 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.