Against Inclusion : Sex Work Research, Racial Capitalism, and the Knowledge Industrial Complex

Research on sex work has historically been characterized by racialized and binary narratives of either trafficking victims (representing the colonial racialization of women) or empowered sex workers (representing the autonomy of white women). Calls for the decriminalization of sex work play a central role in sex worker law reform projects but can be contrary to revolutionary or anticolonial agendas – in some cases even expressly excluding migrant workers. In this interview, Nada DeCat shares her personal experiences as an Asian sex worker, student, artist, undocumented migrant, research subject, and burgeoning philosopher. DeCat argues that the racial contract is inherent in sex worker research and regulation, manifesting through the use of migrant sex workers for racial capitalism, including for institutional profit, diversity and inclusion signaling, and in the funding of white researchers to make knowledge about racialized people, predominantly for white audiences and institutions. Where they negotiate with the neoliberal state and the corporate academy, the increasingly NGO structures of sex worker organizations can in effect work to prevent radical theory and action. As a result, DeCat argues that both sex worker research and organizing can perpetuate epistemicide and prevent opportunities for racialized migrant sex workers to organize. Drawing from critical philosophies of race, DeCat proposes a politics of negativity, refusal, and disengagement to navigate this, suggesting that we should instead be researching academic institutions and researchers themselves. This interview offers a counternarrative and counterhistory to the dominant view of sex worker activism and research and proposes new frameworks for engaging and relating