Authors

Discussion

Because of the pervasiveness of anti-sex work stigma in the region, Baltic sex workers’ experiences are still underrepresented in both scholarly and activist literature. Produced in collaboration with two sex workers’ rights organisations (Latvia's Sex Workers’ Alliance and Lithuania's Sex Workers’ Rights Lietuva) this paper focuses on Baltic sex workers’ everyday realities, the issues they face, and their collective struggle for safer working conditions and for the destigmatisation of their work. Drawing on the transcript of a panel discussion between the researcher and members of the two organisations, our work explores the complexity of sex workers’ experiences within the unique intersection of stigma, flawed legal frameworks, and economic precarity in the Baltics. By situating sex workers’ experiences within the broader historical, geopolitical and socio-economic context of the region, the paper contributes to wider debates on gender, sexuality, labour and justice and it highlights the importance of knowledge co-creation. 

Our work is inspired by the shared desire to amplify sex workers’ lived experience and is grounded in epistemic justice theory and community-driven approaches to knowledge creation. As such, it does more than enriching the scholarly debate on sex work. It is a revolutionary attempt to disrupt the hierarchies of knowledge production that have historically kept Baltic sex workers’ voices at the margin of the debates about their lives and a first step towards the creation of a network of international solidarity between academic institutions and stigmatised communities to document injustice and - most importantly - work against it.