When Work is Sex: Bodies, Choice and Capitalism is an opportunity for sex workers, activists and academics who are interested in the politics of work and sex to come together to take stock of the sex worker movement and to consolidate and to strengthen the multiple campaigns, plans and struggles that are already in motion. It will also be a space to debate and discuss some of the different politics and perspectives that have developed in the sex worker movement. We are interesting in asking questions and debating what the goals and orientation of the sex worker rights movement should be. What should a union for sex workers look like? How useful (or limited) is the language of rights? What demands are being made and which should be being made? How can we ‘scale up’ our activities? How can we develop a more robust anti-capitalist orientation? The conference is open to those who are interested in where the sex worker led movement has come from, where it is going and how we can develop a more radical politics of sex work.

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10am – welcome, conference registration and breakfast
OPENING SESSION: COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE / COLLECTIVE HISTORIES
Moderator: Kate Hardy
In this opening panel we invite conference participants to reflect and discuss powerful and historical texts that have been important in the development of the sex worker movement. Presentations will offer commentary and insights drawn from a selection of texts. The readings are provided below – pre-reading is highly recommended!
P.G Macioti: Gloabizing Sex Worker Rights by Kamala Kempadoo
Katie Cruz: Sex, Work and Capitalism (2014) by Nancy Holmstrom
Luca Stevenson: For Prostitutes Against Prostitution – Crossing the Divide Between Sex Workers and Other Women by English Collective of Prostitutes (1990)
Margaret Corvid: Migrants in the Mistress’s House: Other Voices in the “Trafficking” Debate (2005) by Laura Agustin
11.30am – 1pm – MORNING PANELS (choose one)
MORNING PANEL: WHAT DOES SEX PRODUCE?
Moderator: Xanthe Whittaker
The Traffic in Young Girls: Crisis, Criminality, and Moral Currencies in the Libidinal Economy
Maya Andrea Gonzalez, University of California, Santa Cruz & Cassandra Troyan, independent scholar
Sex work and ‘neo developmentist’ regimes of accumulation
Kate Hardy, University of Leeds & Feminist Fightback
If Sex Work is Work, What Kind of Work Is It?
Camille Barbagallo University of East London, x:talk project

MORNING PANEL: BEYOND THE WORK DEBATE: NEW QUESTIONS OF SEX WORK AS LABOUR
Moderator: Katie Cruz
Time & the Ageless Goddess: Performing Age in Femdom Fetish Porn
Itziar Bilbao Urrutia
Male Sex Workers: A comparative study of a fringe phenomenon in Italy and Sweden.
Marco Bacio – University of Milan & Lund University

MORNING PANEL: SELF-ORGANISATION AND SELF-REPRESENTATION
Moderator: Heidi Hoefinger
Radio Ava: an Internet radio show for and by sex workers
Ava Caradonna*
Winning the Culture Wars: Sex Worker Opera (TBC)
Ava Caradonna*

1pm – 2pm – lunch break

2pm – 3.30pm – AFTERNOON PANELS (choose one)
AFTERNOON PANEL: THE LIMITS OF CHOICE AND EMPOWERMENT
Moderator: Heidi Hoefinger
Rethinking the Specificity of Sex Work: The Limits of the Parameter of Free Choice
PG Macioti – Hydra e.V., Berlin; ICRSE; x:talk project
Understanding the Impact of Clients Criminalisation and Gentrification on Migrant and Non-migrant Sex Workers in France and the UK
Nicola Mai – University of Kingston

AFTERNOON PANEL: FIGHTING THE LAW, DEMANDING THE LAW
Moderator: Xanthe Whittaker
Sex workers organising to end criminalisation
Laura Watson, English Collective of Prostitutes
Sex as Work: The Limits of Civil and Labour Rights Strategies
Katie Cruz – University of Leeds

AFTERNOON PANEL: ORGANISING FROM THE STREET TO THE GLOBAL
Moderator: Camille Barbagallo
Sex Worker Breakfasts and Spaces of Vulnerability
Ava Caradonna*
Sex Worker Organising at a European level
Luca Stevenson, ICRSE coordinator

4pm – 5.30pm CLOSING SESSION: WE SPEAK. YOU DONT LISTEN
Moderator: Camille Barbagallo
Building counter-power in the sex industry and developing an anti-capitalist perspective with speakers from Genera (Barcelona), STRASS (France).

Who is Ava Caradonna?
Ava Caradonna is a migrant, a sex worker, a student, a mother, a citizen, a trans woman, a person of colour, a teacher, a lesbian and a militant. She allows us to speak from different positions as sex workers and as allies, without the stigma of using our ‘real’ names and allows us to speak to the different realities in the sex industry and beyond. We do not wish to participate in a politics that creates individual ‘celebrity’ activists. As a result, when required we use the collective identity of Ava Caradonna (which roughly translates to ‘Eve the Good Woman’).