Book Review: Lars Meier, Working Class Experiences of Social Inequalities in (Post-) Industrial Landscapes: Feelings of Class

Abstract

processes at work in the British sex industry, most notably colourism (Chapter 4). Bowen identifies the ideal sex worker as being thin, white, blonde, cisgender – against whom all other sex workers are evaluated. This valuation determines the financial resources available to different placements within the hierarchy, putting white (-passing) sex workers at the top. Moreover, Bowen highlights the hierarchization of whiteness the Brexit referendum revealed, showing how ‘dark’ Europeans from Eastern Europe are the least desirable among buyers. Bowen’s engagement with the recognition of sex work as work shines through the two concluding chapters of the book. By following her interlocutors’ frustrations and disillusionment with work itself, the author returns on Marx’s thesis of alienation. Through this gesture, the book shows how sex workers’ exploitation is not inherent in the selling of sex itself; rather, it stems from the working conditions established by policies as socioeconomic interactions. These specific and precarious working conditions are shared between sex work and non-sex work, inducing workers to engage in duality to fill in the gaps left open by processes of precarization. Bowen engages directly with this phenomenon through an extensive commentary of current policies around sex work. She concludes by demystifying the rhetoric of victimhood surrounding sex workers by showing how they are neither treated as victims nor as real workers. Throughout this book, Bowen puts forward a thorough demystification of the stigma surrounding sex work from both policy-makers as well as (some) feminist scholarship. The book combines this demystification with a detailed analysis of duality as both a cultural and a socio-economic process, shedding light on the intricate strategies put forward by dual workers. Finally, duality emerges not as a rigid process, but as a fluid work arrangement with multiple and varied end-goals, from short-term project to stable duality towards class mobility. The book has the merit to be accessible to a wide audience, from policy-makers to academics, interested in informal market relations and sex work. Work, Money and Duality does a great job in highlighting the lived experiences of sex workers as they negotiate dual lives within a precarized political economy.