Citizenship, sex work and taxes: perspective from three European contexts

This article explores the overlooked nexus between taxation and sex work, approaching it as a vehicle for examining the conditions under which sex workers are legible to themselves, the state, and others as full citizens. Bringing together sex work, taxation, and citizenship studies, this is the first study to consider sex workers' perspectives on the fiscal regimes in which they operate and how they negotiate and make sense of the challenges they face in relation to paying taxes. We draw on rich qualitative data collected through interviews with sex workers based in three European contexts with different legal and fiscal approaches to sex work: Italy, Portugal, and the Swiss canton Geneva. The article reveals that taxes play various roles in the lives, experiences, and imaginations of our participants, reflecting different positions and dispositions toward the state and different aspirations and visions of full citizenship. We show that the ability or inability to pay taxes as a sex worker cannot be separated from the wider legal contexts that grant (or not) rights to sex workers and the stigma of sex work that remains pervasive, especially for minoritised groups. Taxation plays an important role in sex workers' lives and in the relationship between sex workers and the state, but it can only be one element of many when considering what full citizenship for sex workers might look like.