Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 12-16-2015 12:00 AM Sexual-Economic Entanglement: A Feminist Ethnography of Migrant Sex Work Spaces in Kenya Megan Lowthers The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Regna Darnell The University of Western Ontario Joint Supervisor Randa Farah The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Anthropology A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Megan Lowthers 2015 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Lowthers, Megan, "Sexual-Economic Entanglement: A Feminist Ethnography of Migrant Sex Work Spaces in Kenya" (2015). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 3423. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/3423 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SEXUAL-ECONOMIC ENTANGLEMENT: A FEMINIST ETHNOGRAPHY OF MIGRANT SEX WORK SPACES IN KENYA (Thesis format: Monograph) by Megan Lowthers Graduate Program in Anthropology Collaborative Graduate Program in Migration and Ethnic Relations A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Megan Lowthers 2015 Abstract The recent anti-trafficking fervour as well as the moral panic surrounding prostitution has given rise to large gaps within migrant sex work research, especially in Africa. Despite this, sexual commerce remains a viable economic activity for many women in East Africa, a region where variable migration patterns are central to everyday social, cultural, and economic life. Framed by anthropology, feminist geography, and postcolonial theory, this research examines migrant female sex workers’ everyday experiences across time, space, place, and scale from one ethnographic location in Naivasha, Kenya. In order to explore how different migration patterns and types of sexual-economic exchange are entangled, qualitative research was conducted among 110 migrant female sex workers and 15 community representatives. Emphasizing the public relevance of both sexual commerce and everyday migration, African literary tools also frame the migration stories of female sex workers originating from, arriving to, or transiting through Naivasha. This research reveals how street level sex work is reproduced amidst the current global political economy at migrant spaces including an IDP camp, flower farms, along East African highways, and through mobile phone technology. This research also contributes to a better understanding of the often excluded female sex worker – the displaced, migrant, or sex worker in transit – as a complete, engendered person by recognizing her complex lived realities, relationships, and risks. And while migration is predominantly associated with increased vulnerabilities, this research further demonstrates how different types of sexual-economic exchange through different migration patterns variously entangle victimhood and empowerment in complex ways. These findings are especially significant for interdisciplinary academic studies as well as policy and programming addressing sex worker migration in Africa. Keywords Feminist anthropology, Sex work, Migration, Kenya, East Africa, Internal displacement, Cut flower industry, Mobile phones, HIV/AIDS, Globalization ii Acknowledgments I am grateful to the many migrant female sex workers who invited me into their everyday experiences, taking the time to share with me intimate details of their life histories, working practices, and personal projects. I am especially thankful to my key informants who spent countless nights with me in nightclubs and along little K-Street recruiting participants and travelled with me from place to place collecting migration stories. I am most thankful to both Regna Darnell and Randa Farah, under whose co-supervision I have been supported, encouraged, and challenged; whose guidance has inspired and engaged me throughout my program of work; and, whose comments and discussions have contributed to this project in such invaluable ways. I am also grateful to my advisor, Belinda Dodson, for her thoughtful and substantial feedback that has also been both significant and valued through the completion of this research. I owe a great deal of thanks to the entire research team of the Lake Naivasha Sustainability Project at the University of Western Ontario and Egerton University and its funders, the International Development Research Centre in Nairobi. I am especially thankful to its Principal Investigators, Charlie Trick and Pamela Tsimbiri, for their extensive field support in Naivasha and I am grateful to have been a part of such an important, interdisciplinary research initiative and learning experience. I am truly indebted to Susan Jepkemoi, Vincent Kinyua, and Dorcas Njoroge who all substantially facilitated my research networks and contributed, on a daily basis, to the success of my research as colleagues, community members, and friends on this project. I am also thankful to a number of NGO workers in Naivasha who were critical to providing research networks and establishing rapport within the migrant sex worker community, especially Wanjiru Ngigi and Caroline Ngendo of Life Bloom Services International and Ruth Kamau of the AIDS, Population and Health Integrated Assistance Program. This project could not have been possible without funding from the Department of Anthropology, the Migration and Ethnic Relations Program, and the Africa Institute at the University of Western Ontario, as well as the Ontario Graduate Scholarship and the Social Sciences and Humanities Doctoral Fellowship, all of which I am thankful to for such iii generous support to document the migrant lives of the women sex workers that follow. Finally, I cannot acknowledge enough my family, friends, and loved ones who have endlessly listened, sat quietly in comfort, edited over and over, and travelled thousands of miles to so selflessly and equally share in both my struggles and achievements. For such unconditional encouragement, support, and understanding, especially to my parents James and Helen-Louise Lowthers and my sisters Erin McDonnell and Erica Lowthers: thank you. iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ v List of Maps ..................................................................................................................... viii List of Appendices ............................................................................................................. ix Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................. 1 1 Rescaling Street Level Sex Work and Intra-African Migrations from Kenya ............... 1 1.1 Ethnography, Fiction, and Mobility ........................................................................ 1 1.2 The Sex Worker Migrant ........................................................................................ 5 1.3 Sex Work, Feminist Debates, and the “Third World Prostitute” ............................ 6 1.4 Transnational Sexual Commerce; or, Sexscapes .................................................... 9 1.5 HIV/AIDS, Stigma, and Everyday Hazards ......................................................... 13 1.6 Geographies of Gender, Power, and Affect in Sex Work ..................................... 17 1.7 Street Level Sex Work and Sexual-Economic Entanglement in the Postcolony .. 20 1.8 Methodology ......................................................................................................... 24 1.8.1 Feminist Ethnography and Sex Work Research ....................................... 24 1.8.2 Migrant Sex Worker Subjects, Mobility, and Methods ............................ 26 1.8.3 Migrant Female Sex Worker Subjects and Ethics .................................... 28 1.8.4 The Migrant Female Sex Worker Participant Profile ............................... 29 1.9 Chapter Organization ............................................................................................ 30 Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................... 32 2 The Street ..................................................................................................................... 32 2.1 Histories of Street Level Prostitution in Africa .................................................... 33 2.2 Migration and Street Prostitution in Colonial East Africa .................................... 35 2.3 Forms of Street Level Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi ........................................ 37 2.4 Urban Geographies and Kenya’s Red Light District ............................................ 39 2.4.1 Interlude: “The Street is Kenya” ..............................................................