Their state integration still relies on victim narratives which justify police intervention and removes the power from the informal laborer to set their own terms and build communities to push out toxic clients

Our study findings suggest that end-demand rhetoric depicting im/migrant sex workers as vulnerable and victimized women acts not to protect them, but to justify targeted repressive policing that severely undermines sex workers' occupational safety. Despite prevailing trafficking victim stereotypes, all 20 participants reported autonomously choosing to support themselves through sex work. Under end-demand laws, participants faced institutionalized racism in law enforcement and substantial barriers to accessing police assistance which contributed to a high rate of workplace robberies. Further, in instances when police were called - in opposition to the rescue and prostitution abolitionist narratives that frame end-demand models - criminalization, stigma, and racism prevailed and restricted im/migrant sex workers from actualizing their right to police protection. Participants' experiences of end-demand policing strategies highlight the inherent opposition between legislative aims to protect those who sell their own sexual services and to abolish the sex industry, and raise critical questions regarding who, or what type of “victims” are recognized as deserving of protection or support under end-demand laws(Bruckert, 2014). Finally, our results illustrate how authorities’ exclusive focus on the spectacular violence of trafficking and exploitation among im/migrant sex workers contributed to routinized slow violence through ongoing punitive and racist policing, and acted to obscure and invisibilize the everyday oppression of sex work criminalization and lack of labour protections.

Participants experienced frequent, invasive police visits to their workplaces, highlighting the ongoing surveillance of sex work venues under end-demand legislation – particularly those managed/staffed by im/migrant women. These findings are consistent with community reports of increased policing, raids and charges in sex work venues operated by Asian im/migrants in Toronto since end-demand law reforms(Lam, 2018a; Malla, Lam, van der Meulen, & Peng, 2019). Our results build on intersectional scholarship on how racialized policing in Canada intersects with class, gender, and other axes of oppression, among Black communities including Black sex workers(Maynard, 2017) and diverse racial minority groups(Chan & Chunn, 2014). This reflects both the historical over-policing of racialized sex workers and new law enforcement efforts focused on addressing sex trafficking. As law enforcement is a highly discretionary process shaped by institutionalized biases, racialized stereotypes of both criminality and vulnerability contribute to the over-surveillance of people of colour(Chan & Chunn, 2014). End-demand ideologies mark a shift from conceptualizations of sex workers as ‘risky’ (i.e., as vectors for HIV/STIs/amoral behavior) toward women ‘at risk’ of exploitation(Brock et al., 2000; Bruckert, 2014; Ham, 2016; Krüsi et al., 2016), and this lens is represented as less punitive of women in sex work. However, our findings show that im/migrant sex workers continued to face discriminatory and racialized policing under end-demand laws, highlighting how intersecting stigmas based on sex work involvement, racialization, gender and immigration status continue to be amplified through processes of enforcing sex work criminalization. In this context, police surveillance represented not a source of protection, but rather an additional form of oppression that marginalized im/migrant women were forced to contend with.

Many participants experienced repeated instances of questioning from authorities as to whether they were under someone else's control, and these experiences were most pronounced among racialized sex workers. This was despite the fact that no participant self-identified as a victim of exploitation. The police questioning they faced was shaped by public discourses and legislative tenets that conflate sex work with sex trafficking(Department of Justice, 2014a) in a dangerous disregard of individuals' bodily autonomy and the principle of consent which is central to sex work. Further, immigration policy prohibits temporary residents and open work permit holders from sex industry involvement under the guise of protecting them(Government of Canada, 2018). Both policies represent im/migrant sex workers as too vulnerable to make independent labour decisions, and thereby as meriting constant police surveillance and repeated questioning about whether they're being coerced or exploited. Amid continued sex work criminalization, participants experienced this surveillance not as supportive, but as a patronizing and stigmatizing form of harassment. Participants described clear instances of racial profiling with police checking IDs for immigration status and questioning only racialized sex workers about trafficking, and having their sex work documented in official records which impacted their experiences in crossing Canadian borders – a “a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space”(Nixon, 2013) - with clear potential implications for their mobility and mental wellbeing. These interactions reflect the findings of a recent global systematic review which highlighted how the criminalization of sex work inherently complicates the relationship between police and sex workers and creates opportunities for police abuses(Platt et al., 2018). Our findings suggest that legislative aims to “protect those who sell their own sexual services” and “encourage women to leave prostitution”(Department of Justice, 2014a) create a disturbing distinction between worthy and unworthy victims: women who are forced into sexual labour and identify as being victimized are recognized by the state as worthy of protection, while those who reject victim status and have no need or desire to exit sex work are denied their social and civic rights(Bruckert & Hannem, 2013). While no participant reported experiencing coercion in sex work, most had faced punitive and even retaliatory law enforcement - as in the gross violation of privacy wherein police exposed a massage parlour worker in front of her friend - which directly undermined their psychological and physical workplace safety. Despite legislative and immigration policy pretexts of protecting im/migrant women from exploitation, our findings highlight how these policies are leveraged by authorities as a legitimizing framework to harass, stigmatize, and further marginalize this group of precarious workers(Ham, 2016; Lam, 2018a).

Participants' narratives highlight how punitive policing and stigma shaped im/migrant sex workers' avoidance of police, which in turn shaped their vulnerability to experiencing robbery or assault. Five participants had directly experienced a workplace robbery or attempted robbery, yet few had ever contacted police for help. This finding is aligned with recent quantitative research from our team which found that only 12.7% of im/migrant sex workers who experienced workplace violence between 2010 and 2017 reported the incident(s) to police (McBride, Shannon, Bingham, et al., 2020). In particular, the systemic vulnerability of precarious im/migrant participants in our study can be understood as a form of slow violence that is enshrined in end-demand laws and immigration policy. Participants' narratives on precarious im/migrant women's heightened vulnerability to assault are consistent with recent research showing that precarious im/migrant sex workers faced a 2.5-fold increased odds of experiencing client condom refusal (client forcing condomless sex or breaking/removing the condom on purpose) relative to Canadian-born sex workers, highlighting the targeting of marginalized im/migrant women by aggressors who violate consent (McBride, Shannon, Braschel, et al., 2020). Participants' experiences reflect robust global evidence that sex work criminalization emboldens violent perpetrators who target vulnerable sex workers with limited access to legal recourse and enables police abuses against sex workers(Deering et al., 2014; Krüsi et al., 2014; Lim et al., 2015; NSWP, 2017; Oppal, 2012). Our findings highlight how this systemic vulnerability falls along intersectional lines of im/migration background (particularly for precarious im/migrants) and race, and is exacerbated by cultural work stigma and fear of being outed by authorities. Critically, our results show that the documented harms of criminalization are not mitigated by policies aimed at protecting ‘vulnerable’ populations. Rather, both rhetorics of protection and punishment shape antagonistic policing and surveillance which actively undermines occupational safety among im/migrant sex workers.