A Divided Sisterhood: Support Networks of Trans Sex Workers in Urban Turkey

• Date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716220919745
• Author: Ezgi Güler
• Published date: 01 May 2020

ANNALS, AAPSS, 689, May 2020 149

DOI: 10.1177/0002716220919745

A Divided

Sisterhood:

Support

Networks of

Trans Sex

Workers in

Urban Turkey

By

EZGI GÜLER

919745ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYSupport Networks of Trans Sex Workers in Turkey

research-article2020

This article examines how transgender individuals oper-

ating in the underground sex economy in urban Turkey

form supportive relationships and mobilize against vari-

ous forms of violence, given structural conditions that

encourage distrust and competition and undermine

collective efforts among the sex workers. I found that,

despite their conditions, workers heavily relied on each

other for matters ranging from small-scale interpersonal

exchanges of resources to community mobilization.

However, the violent and unpredictable circumstances

of their lives still generated repeated conflict, making

their ties precarious. The article considers the impor-

tance of fictive kinship ties in this community, and dis-

cusses the coexistence of solidarity and conflict in sex

workers’ relationships.

Keywords: sex work; transgender; support networks;

mobilization; ethnography

According to Amnesty International (Murphy

2015), sex workers face violence, stigma,

discrimination, and other rights violations all

over the world. In particular, transgender sex

workers disproportionately become the targets

of these violations (Lyons etal. 2017). In Turkey,

this population encounters a deep intolerance

for transgressing societal gender norms. The

gentrification and urban renewal projects in the

cities have resulted in the displacement and

spatial discrimination of transgender commu-

nities, like other marginalized groups

(Bayramog˘lu 2013). Despite their particularly

hostile circumstances, transgender (or trans) sex

workers’ experiences have been largely over-

looked in the scholarly literature (Lyons etal.

2017).

Ezgi Güler is a PhD researcher in the Department of

Political and Social Sciences at the European University

Institute in Italy. Her research focuses on survival and

resistance in sex worker communities.

NOTE: I am grateful to all those who welcomed me into

their lives.

Correspondence: ezgi.guler@eui.eu

150 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Several studies document the lived experiences of violence of trans communi-

ties in various social contexts (e.g., Lyons etal. 2017; Perkins 1996; Zengin 2014).

This line of research highlights that the intersecting vulnerabilities, which place

this population in a particularly risky position, are created by a complex interplay

of social structural factors (Lyons etal. 2017). Trans sex workers’ vulnerability is

an urgent issue in Turkey, where these individuals experience pervasive stigma

about their gender identity, lack of employment due to discrimination, the crimi-

nalized and precarious nature of the street-based sex work they depend on for

their livelihoods, and the policing practices sex work entails.

In this hostile context, where trans sex workers run high risks to their safety

and economic survival, it is important to create support networks and a climate

of solidarity; yet the violent and exclusionary structural forces that shape their

environments also complicate their relationships and produce conflicts with each

other. How do these networks operate? Using qualitative methods, this research

focuses on a network of trans sex workers in urban Turkey, exploring how they

form supportive relationships and mobilize against different forms of violence,

given structural conditions that encourage distrust and competition and under-

mine collective efforts for safety, security, and sustenance.

Traditionally, debates on sex work have either privileged the structural con-

straints that lead people to engage in sex work and that have shaped sex workers’

lives, or the agency of workers to choose such work (Choi and Holroyd 2007).

Depending on the conditions under which they operate, sex workers’ agency may

be highly constrained. For example, marginalization results in street-based sex

workers having diminishing control over the spaces in which they live and work

and over their actions within these spaces (Scorgie etal. 2013).

While this may be true, research in various social contexts has also revealed

that, within all the constraints, sex workers display considerable agency, thereby

enhancing their personal protection and economic advantage (see Choi and

Holroyd 2007; Morselli and Savoie-Gargiso 2014; Scorgie et al. 2013).

Collective efforts, such as support exchanges or mobilization in the face of vio-

lent and exclusionary pressures, display their agency. Indeed, social structure

not only shapes practice but is also reproduced or transformed by this practice

(Giddens 1984). The relationship between social structure and agency should

therefore be central to understanding sex workers’ experiences. This research

seeks to recognize the agency of transgender sex workers without dismissing

the severe constraints undermining their ability to control their lives and their

collective struggles.

The objectives of this case study are threefold. First, it aims to explore the

structural conditions that foster support exchanges between trans sex workers,

and the ways in which they mobilize against different forms of violence.

Furthermore, it sheds light on the conditions that constrain workers’ involvement

in collective coping by critically engaging with their social practices and narra-

tives, in both the presence and the absence of support. In doing so, the study

relies on two bodies of literature, which focus on material and immaterial chal-

lenges undermining solidarity in sex worker communities. It attempts to show

how these two sets of conditions simultaneously operate in limiting trans sex