Living the law: An ecological analysis of NGO responses to sex work governance

This article analyses the criminalisation of sex work as an ecological system of governance, sustained not only through statutory law but also through institutional mandates, funding logics, and cultural ideologies. Drawing on interviews with NGO practitioners in the United Kingdom and United States, and using ecological systems theory, we show how criminalisation operates through networked institutional relations. NGOs, as meso-level actors, mediate between sex-working clients and carceral systems, navigating data-sharing mandates, safeguarding protocols, and exclusionary eligibility rules. We introduce the concept of ‘cascading vulnerability’ to capture how these interactions can compound risk across ecological levels. Addressing structural exclusion requires engaging the broader architecture of governance, not statutory law alone.