Nicola Mai and Liaam Winslet
Suggested citation: N Mai and L Winslet, ‘CAER: Co-creating a Collaborative Documentary about the Lives and Rights of Trans Latinx People Working in the Sex Industry in Queens, NYC’, Anti-Trafficking Review, issue 19, 2022, pp. 130-133, https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.2012221910
Image 1: Still from CAER: Lorena Borjas and Liaam Winslet watching the first version of the film during a co-creative editing feedback session.
Between October 2016 and December 2020, the SEXHUM (Sexual Humanitarianism: Migration, Sex Work and Trafficking) research project studied the relationship between migration, sex work, and human trafficking in the global sex industry, analysing migrants’ own understanding and experiences of agency and exploitation. The project was characterised by collaboration with (migrant) sex workers’ rights associations directly affected by the social phenomena studied in order to amplify their understandings and experiences. In this sense, the project challenged outsider views on the complex interplay between migration, sex work, exploitation, agency, and trafficking by focusing on the perspectives of migrant sex workers about how anti-trafficking and other humanitarian policies and interventions impact their lives and rights. SEXHUM builds on the concept of ‘sexual humanitarianism’,[1] referring to the ways in which humanitarian concerns, policies, and interventions about migrant groups and individuals constructed and targeted as vulnerable in relation to their sexual behaviour often legitimise harmful anti-sex work and immigration initiatives. SEXHUM studied the impact of sexual humanitarianism in eight strategic urban settings in Australia (Melbourne and Sydney), France (Marseille and Paris), Aotearoa New Zealand (Auckland and Wellington), and the United States (New York and Los Angeles) that are characterised by different policies on migration, sex work (criminalisation, regulation, decriminalisation), and human trafficking.
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