Sex professionals in Latin America: Observing stakeholder participation through the form of legal/illegal/non-legal differentiation

Abstract

We researched political and legal communications about the sex profession through the Inclusion/Exclusion Form. The theoretical content is based on Niklas Luhmann's theory of society as a social communication system and Luis Antônio Marcuschi's theory of language as a social work. In this research we explored dates of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. The corpora were made up of data catalogued on institutional websites, documents obtained from directors of associations and unions of sex workers, in addition to e-mail exchanges and online conversations with directors and sex professionals via virtual meetings. In the area of political communications, we observe inclusions and exclusions at the same time, as regulation has promoted several exclusions. The participation of workers in the discussions, when that had happened, was not reflected a posteriori either in public policies or in the implementation of regulations. As for legal communications, we observe that those who practice the profession experience inclusions and exclusions at the same time, since the profession is criminalized at the same time that it is recognized as a profession. The conclusion is that the inclusion/exclusion form broadens the spectrum of observation by allowing inclusion to be observed at the same time as exclusion.