Diasporic Capital: Canadian Sex Workers of Color Hacking Sexual Racism

Abstract

The cultural economy of the contemporary Canadian sex industry, particularly the upscale sectors, requires workers to conform to white aesthetics and gestures in conscious attempts to generate desire among white consumers. This article, drawing on a qualitative study, posits Canadian sex workers of color as a critical point of inquiry to understand how they negotiate market expectations against the backdrop of popular representation of, for example, the “Jezebel,” “Sapphire,” the Dragon lady, and the Bollywood Queen. Sex workers of color in my sample are mostly immigrant women and Canadian women with full or partial ancestry in a foreign country. Drawing attention to research participants’ immaterial and intimate labor practices, which include emotional and aesthetic labor processes, I examine how these sex workers of color utilize diasporic capital to juxtapose dominant gender-, class-, and citizenship-based negative controlling images against sexual racism. Such labor practices involve negotiating their multiple, fluid, and overlapping identities as the workers unapologetically celebrate and revalorize their diasporic identities and cultures. Strategically mobilizing economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital facilitates the transformation of their body capital to establish a minority niche within the contemporary sex markets.