Early Assessment of Integrated Knowledge Translation Efforts to Mobilize Sex Workers in Their Communities

Abstract

Researchers have recently increased their efforts to find more effective strategies to reduce the gap between the production of academic knowledge and its uptake in policy and practice. We focus attention on sex workers in Canada who have limited access to societal resources and are hampered by punitive laws prohibiting their work. The initial aim of our study was to work with sex worker organizations and allied agencies to develop a training program for sex workers to help them understand Canada's most recent criminal justice approach to adult sex commerce. What has emerged from our integrated knowledge translation process during the first year of the study's operation has been a change to a broader focus on mobilizing sex workers around their occupational and social rights. In this paper, we first give an overview of recent changes in Canada's prostitution laws and then report qualitative findings from interviews with members of our partner organizations. Interviewees appreciated the change in research direction and the emergent collaborative process among themselves and the authors, but also noted challenges regarding shifting research timelines, balancing power between themselves and the academic researchers, and reaching consensus on research plans among community partners themselves. We discuss the findings in relation to successful knowledge translation strategies that aim to ensure the research questions we ask, and the empirical processes we engage in, are advantageous to those we aim to benefit.

COVID-19, Stigma, and the Ongoing Marginalization of Sex Workers and their Support Organizations

“…There is also a possibility of bias and subsequent error given the first author oversaw the study resources, enlisted the participating sex worker organizations, carried out the qualitative interviews, and co-analyzed the results with the second author. We hope our participatory research approach already established before the interviews were conducted for this article (Benoit & Unsworth, 2021 ) helped reduce researcher bias. In addition, only a small number of qualitative interviews were completed with staff from seven sex worker organizations, limiting the generalizability of the findings to other communities in Canada and beyond.…”

“…Qualitative data were collected from in-person interviews conducted in November 2020 with ten staff (henceforth referred to as "interviewees") from seven sex worker organizations located in different communities across Canada, ranging from large to small-sized cities. The sex worker organizations are community partners in the authors’ ongoing participatory research project focused on mobilizing sex workers around their occupational and social rights (Benoit & Unsworth, 2021 ).…”

Labouring in the Sex Industry: A Conversation with Sex Workers on Consent and Exploitation

“…As we will see later, the legal definition of consent is far from being well-defined. Moreover, when researchers compare their descriptions of exploitation and consent with their respondent's definitions, the philosophical or academic meanings often clash with people's reality (Benoit and Unsworth 2020).…”

“…Although I have never examined these two concepts in-depth, I agree with Stebbins that these notions include "elements worth discovering" (Stebbins 2001, p. 6). Hence, this exploratory article concentrates on how sex workers define these terms and how their voices must inform labour rights, as well as the health and safety regulations regarding their work (Benoit and Unsworth 2020). The ensuing investigation offers an overview of the notion of exploitation within and outside the sex industry; it explores, what constitutes consent and, finally, what occupational health in the sex industry entails.…”

Introduction to the Special Section on Innovative Knowledge Translation in Sex Research

“…Card et al (2020) developed an online dashboard called OurStats to promote access to results from Canada's largest community-based surveillance study of gay and bisexual men through the use of dynamic visualizations of the data findings. Finally, Benoit and Unsworth (2020) utilized an integrated KT approach that was inclusive of sex workers and their support organizations and describe how their research goals shifted and emerged out of the KT process in order to better meet the needs of their community partners.…”