ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the link between illegality, migration and ethnicity in indoor sex work, by exploring how immigrant, migrant and racialized women sex workers in the Greater Vancouver area define and manage ideas of illegality in sex work. It provides an overview of the legal environment for sex work in Canada. The chapter discusses the meanings and different interpretations of illegality in sex work. It describes how sex work renders citizenship suspect for non-White immigrant citizens in Canada. The preoccupation by government authorities with sex workers’ citizenship status contrasts sharply with how workers discussed the effect of sex work on their practice of citizenship. In the sex work sector, however, ethnicity continues to be viewed with suspicion by immigration and law enforcement, even as advertising and performing ethnicity remain a routine part of the sex work sector. Women’s narratives also challenge the public and government focus concerning foreign sex workers crossing Canadian borders for work.
