Paulo Longo Research Initiative

Welcome to the Paulo Longo Research Initiative (PLRI) blog. The paragraphs that follow explain who we are, what we hope to achieve and some of our plans. In other sections there are photos, slideshows, bibliographies, links and other resources on the political economies of sex work that we have either produced or found interesting. It is early days for the PLRI so these sections will grow in the coming months and soon a website will appear. If you are interested in working with us to shape new directions in sex work research and policy, or have a comment, we look forward to hearing from you. 

Partners

• The Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK (Jerker Edstrom, Kate Hawkins, Susie Jolly & Andrea Cornwall)

• The Centre for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation (CASAM), India (Meena Seshu)

• The Department of Epidemiology and Preventative Medicine of Monash University Medical School, Australia (Bebe Loff, Cheryl Overs)

• The Global Network of Sex Work Projects, UK (Ruth Morgan Thomas, Gulnara Kurmanova, Melissa Ditmore)

About Us

The PLRI is a collaboration of scholars, policy analysts and sex workers. Our aims are to develop and consolidate ethical, interdisciplinary scholarship on sex work to encourage policy that helps improve the lives of men, women and transgenders who sell or buy sex.

Established in 2008 the PLRI brings together institutions and people that are committed to human rights and social justice and who have made significant contributions to the study of public health, gender, sexuality, development economics, migration, ethics and human rights in the context of sex work. Although the founding partners are mainly concerned with developing countries the PLRI will have a global focus that also recognises important issues and debates around sex work in North America and Europe.

The PLRI will expand to include partners from academic institutions, NGOs and community based groups. Partners will be invited to participate in PLRI events and communications and to collaborate on research and policy analysis projects. Because a key aim is to provide opportunities for sex workers and advocates in developing countries to produce knowledge, sex workers groups and institutions in the Global South are particularly encouraged to contact us to explore possibilities for collaboration.

Sex work policy and research – room for improvement

The idea for the PLRI arose among activists, policy advocates and academics who were frustrated by the quality of information on sex work available. Although there are many excellent books, essays and studies about sex work – including several by sex workers – a great deal of scholarship on sex work is misguided and stigmatizing. Sex workers frequently complain that much of what is written about them reflects prejudices and myths rather than the reality of their lives. Advocates of rights based policy and programs also complain frequently about the lack of quality research to provide evidence to guide their work. 

The study of sex work has a complex history that reflects shifting understandings of links between prostitution and public health, law, gender, economics and human rights. Research on sex work is made difficult by a lack of agreed standards and methodologies. Indeed generally accepted definitions of prostitution, sex work and sex workers do not exist. Ethical aspects of collecting information and producing knowledge about sex work have also been problematic with many claiming that the accepted ethical framework does not protect sex workers as individual research subjects or as an occupational or social group.  

The body of work dealing with commercial sex is perhaps best described as uneven. For example, the role of female sex workers in HIV epidemics has been studied extensively while male and transgender sex workers haven’t despite serious sub-epidemics in these communities. The economics of sex work, income redistribution and labor issues have received comparatively little attention despite the important roles they play in the lives of sex workers, their clients, families and the broader community. Most recently discussion about sex work has been reframed as a dialogue about human trafficking and sexual exploitation. As a result consideration of sex work has become linked to concerns over ‘criminal’ immigration, terrorism, drugs, HIV, poverty and gender inequality – whilst other areas key to the dynamics of commercial sex continue to be broadly overlooked. 

The links between research and policy is a persistent concern. Sex workers rights advocates say that while poor and stigmatizing research is frequently successfully promoted, higher quality research frequently remains scattered across academic journals and internet sites where it is not easily accessed by policy makers, advocates and programme implementers.  Opportunities to advance human rights and dignity through sound policy and law making are lost where ill-informed ideas replace rigorous research.

How the PLRI works

The PLRI aims to address these issues by gathering together institutions and people to review existing research and policy on sex work, conduct rigorous multi-disciplinary research and strategically communicate findings.   Sex worker involvement will be central with all work grounded in their perspectives of the issues they face at global and local levels.

PLRI activities will be arranged around five themes – human rights and law; health; gender and sexuality; mobility and migration and economics and development. These frameworks will provide the lenses through which we view sex work and increase the effectiveness of community-based research.

A sixth stream of our work will be the development of research methodologies and new systems of ethics for studying of sex workers and sex work.  We aim to both incorporate and improve upon traditional qualitative and quantitative research methodologies moving toward    innovative, interdisciplinary and participatory frameworks that reflect sex workers priorities and perspectives.

The PLRI will strive to develop and embed ways of involving sex workers in the production of knowledge that are ethical and which have greater socio-cultural relevance to sex workers.  We plan to make spaces and opportunities for transformative capacity building, collective thinking, research, strategic knowledge translation and thoughtful advocacy by:   

• Developing innovative and ethical ways of researching sex work

• Conducting research that is ethical, methodologically sound and theory-driven
• Publishing and innovatively communicating research findings and analysis of sex work issues
• Supporting training to increase capacity for high priority, community-based research and its uptake
• Hosting seminars, conferences and web-based discussion spaces for productive dialogue between scholars, sex workers, policy analysts/makers and advocates

Although most of us have worked primarily on sex work in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where most of the world’s sex workers are located, we recognise the universality of many of the issues and will also concerned with issues and debates in North America and Europe.

Join us

If you are interested in the PLRI you can join our listserve by contacting us at plri@ids.ac.uk. You can also contribute to the PLRI blog.  Later we will call for formal expressions of interest from potential collaborating partners including universities, sex workers’ and civil society organisations as well as individual and institutional researchers. Organisations based in the Global South will be particularly encouraged to join the group and to develop new partnerships and projects within it.

If you have any further questions please contact Kate Hawkins on plri@ids.ac.uk.

Paulo Henrique Longo was a Brazilian psychologist, gay rights activist and sex worker. In 1990 Paulo established Programma Pegacao to provide services to male sex workers in Rio de Janeiro and advocate on issues that affect them. In 1992 he co-founded the International Network of Sex Work Projects which he later led for three years. Paulo was passionate about research and he was well known in international forums for his eloquent critiques of sex work research and policy. He was an editor of Research for Sex Work and Horizons’ Principal Investigator for a community based research project on community development among sex workers in Rio. Paulo died in 2004.