'The Community Workers Don't Need to Know': The Impact of Criminalisation and the Humanitarian Approach in an Association That Supports Sex Workers in Paris

This article presents an ethnographic study of an association in Paris that supports sex workers. Drawing on literature on Marxist feminism of social reproduction and humanitarianism, this paper analyses how the association became economically dependent on government institutions after 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic and shows how this led the association to adopt sexual humanitarianism over community-led approaches. The author explores how the association’s relationship with sex workers operates in a top-down manner, as this relationship is framed not as one between workers, but rather as one between rescuers and those vulnerable individuals in need of rescue, whose precarity is understood as a product of their personal life circumstances. As a result, the association’s actions do not promote collective solidarity or mobilisation, nor do they address the structural dimensions of vulnerability. Moreover, the pathways proposed by the association may push sex workers towards low-paying jobs that reinforce traditional and racialised gender roles. As community-led and community-based approaches are increasingly recognised as the most effective at supporting marginalised groups, this paper denounces the impact of patronising humanitarianism and highlights the need for support services to be community-led and class informed in order to avoid the reinstating of oppressive practices.