Computing and the Stigmatized: Trust, Surveillance, and Spatial Politics with the Sex Workers in Bangladesh

Document Title

Computing and the Stigmatized: Trust, Surveillance, and Spatial Politics with the Sex Workers in Bangladesh

Document Information

• Subject Area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), sex work and technology, social marginalization and digitization
• Keywords: HCI4D, ICTD, sex work, social exclusion, digitization, surveillance, women, gender, marginalization, technology misuse, feminism, Global South

Research Background and Issues

• Issues or Challenges:

  • The digital transformation of sex work is triggering new spatial politics globally, yet research on the digital lives of sex workers in the Global South (e.g., the Indian subcontinent) is severely lacking.
  • Despite the extreme stigmatization of sex work in most regions, there is insufficient exploration of how South Asian sex workers utilize technology and develop survival strategies within cultural, social, and religious norms.
  • While the development of digital technologies offers potential benefits, low digital literacy and online security risks pose significant challenges for sex workers.

• Significance:

  • Sex work is not only a complex phenomenon within global economic, cultural, and religious contexts but also serves as a lens to understand modern digital society's inequalities, surveillance, and distribution of digital power.
  • The privacy, safety, and innovative uses of digital technology by sex workers can provide valuable insights for design and policy reforms, particularly in resource-constrained regions like the Global South.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • This study addresses the gap in existing HCI research regarding South Asian sex workers and their experiences with technology use.
  • It connects with existing literature on online sex work risks, data privacy, and safety strategies while supplementing information on how sex workers navigate social stigma, surveillance, and the digital economy.

Solutions

• Research Methods:

  • This study employed a three-month ethnographic fieldwork approach, investigating 25 female sex workers in the legal brothel of Daulatdia, Bangladesh.
  • Data was collected through in-depth interviews, field observations, and informal discussions, focusing on how sex workers use technology to build trust, navigate surveillance, mitigate stigmatization, and develop strategies to address spatial politics.

• Innovations:

  • Provides a unique perspective on how sex workers in the specific cultural and historical context of the Global South establish trust and mitigate risks in digital spaces.
  • Introduces an analysis of "spatial politics," showcasing how sex workers navigate and balance between digital and non-digital spaces.
  • Reveals how digitization influences sex workers' societal positioning and their interactions with power structures like "pseudo-husbands."

• Key Steps or Techniques:

  • Collecting data through in-depth interviews and field observations to analyze the dependency of sex workers' technology use on their social, cultural, and spatial contexts.
  • Utilizing open coding and thematic analysis to extract key themes from descriptive data, including trust, surveillance, social stigma, and moral tensions.
  • Interpreting overall findings through theoretical frameworks of South Asian feminism, postcolonial computing, and critical urban studies.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Findings:

  • Sex workers utilize a combination of online and offline methods to build trust networks, but they are simultaneously exposed to surveillance and digital security risks.
  • Their use of digital technology reflects complex trade-offs, such as digitally reshaping private and public spaces while contending with traditional spatial constraints.
  • The study documents how sex workers balance dual identities (personal and professional) in the digital context and effectively respond to social stigmatization and religious moral scrutiny.

• Advantages Over Existing Solutions:

  • This study moves beyond the predominantly Western-centric frameworks of sex work and technology research, expanding the scope to the Global South, particularly the Indian subcontinent.
  • Data collection is deeply embedded in the local cultural context of a large legal brothel, offering a more nuanced and authentic depiction of the realities faced by sex workers.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  • The digital technology use of sex workers is intricately tied to their trust-building efforts, which are sometimes facilitated by technological assistance (e.g., creating social media accounts, enhancing digital literacy) but also lead to online illicit activities (e.g., cryptocurrency transactions).
  • Although sex workers actively adopt safety measures (e.g., deleting chat histories, using pseudonyms), the surveillance and restrictions imposed by "pseudo-husbands" significantly impact their technology adoption.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • The study is limited by the cultural background of participants and the outsider perspective of the research team, potentially overlooking deeper interaction details.
  • Future research could expand to:
    • Investigate how the global digital sex work market transforms local red-light district economies.
    • Design supportive systems to help sex workers flexibly navigate multiple identities.
    • Explore the evolving roles of pseudo-husbands and their profound impact on women's technology use.

Output Format

• This study is tightly structured and provides robust research guidance for designers, policymakers, and others, advocating for more inclusive technology design and policy reforms.