Interview by Edie Musker
Portrait by Marie Hald

EM What led you to your research?

SP  Sex work is a prism for many things: migration, bodies, feminism, capitalism and the commodification of sex. The discussion of women’s roles and labour rights has also always been a part of my family, and I’ve always been interested in women’s stories. All these things shaped Global Sex.

EM Your book addresses the complex relationship between the anthropologist and the subjects of their study. How do you negotiate that relationship, especially when your subjects inhabit such a vulnerable position on the global stage?

SP I have been following migrant women crossing the Mediterranean to Italy for several years, particularly from Nigeria. One of the things that has become clear in much of my work is the agency of these women. They understand themselves not as victims but as people who are fighting against domestic violence or the structural situation that they were in at home. One of these women, Vivian, came to Sicily and had to apply for asylum. A lawyer asked me to testify as an expert that she had been forced to sell sex, because only if she was trafficked would she be considered a real victim and offered the protection that Italy could give her. I was discussing this with Vivian, and she said, “But I don’t see myself as a victim.” I emphasise that you can be a victim whilst having a lot of agency. I struggle to testify that a woman is purely a victim, so that she may be given state protection. In the instance with Vivian, I had to be honest: it was a testimony to the court. I describe all these conflicting situations where the state puts women in a specific category to protect them. What do we do if women resist that category? I’ve known some of these women for 20 years. I have four children; they have met these women, and I have met their children. So it’s also a story about moving from being the anthropologist to becoming a friend and ally, whilst always remaining professional and knowing I’m from a privileged position within the Danish welfare state.

EM You discuss anthropology as a colonial project. I was interested in the ways that this connected to your own family’s history of economic migration and complicity in colonialism. Could you say more about that history and how it relates to the discipline?

SP I have a complicated relationship with anthropology. I love that I can spend time with people whose stories we hear less often. But anthropology is also a colonial project that has been used by imperial states to conquer the world. I don’t think this dilemma has ever been resolved. I am a white woman writing about sex workers with migrant backgrounds from different countries. Recently, there has been a tendency to offer a disclaimer. You state your biases: I’m white, or I’m middle class, which shapes my way of seeing the world. I don’t think offering that disclaimer is critical enough. I wanted to go deeper and examine the different ways in which many families, including my own, are connected to colonialism. My own family migrated to Zambia, part of what was then called Rhodesia, after the Second World War to work in the copper mines. They were working class and unemployed, and were offered the opportunity to come to southern Africa to work. So I wrote about what that meant. They made some money – not a lot, but enough to buy a small house on the outskirts of Copenhagen in the 1960s. They didn’t kill anyone; they didn’t own any slaves, but it remains shameful, something we don’t want to share. In Europe, if we examine our family photo albums, many of us will have been involved with colonialism in various, mundane ways.

EM The footnotes are used exclusively to convert global currencies into GBP for the reader. This really underscores how every relationship is financially mediated. Was this a conscious decision?

SP The conversions make it legible for the UK reader, but the conversion process is also such a huge part of the women’s lives. If you really want to know about capitalism and money, you should ask sex workers. The conversions between international currencies are daily calculations that inform them how to get the most out of their clients. Throughout the text, I show the flow of money going directly through their lives. It’s also one of the ways that I compare how you can make money: £2 is the price a client pays in Lagos, Nigeria, around £15 for sex in Sicily, and then around £75 for a blow job in Copenhagen. It’s a kind of follow-the-money point of departure.

EM How are the increasingly strict borders of the EU affecting the lives of these women?

SP Fortress Europe has tightened over the years. In 1997, Sommai was invited into Denmark with nothing more than a love letter from her then-boyfriend, now husband. The letter read, “I have invited Sommai to come to Denmark for three months as a tourist and as my girlfriend.” Today, it’s hard to imagine entering Europe with a love letter. For the past year, I’ve been spending time with Doctors Without Borders’s ships on the Mediterranean. Women are rescued by those ships so that they don’t drown, or they borrow money from criminal networks to get to Europe. Even as we tighten the borders, people still want to come, whether we like it or not.

EM How does the taboo that surrounds sex workers impact media and academic discussions about sex work?

SP What the women in the book have taught me, and what we know from much research on sex work, is that the stigma is still one of the most painful issues for many people who sell sex. These women are proud to be in the book. I could have used aliases. But they didn’t do anything criminal; they took care of their families, so why shouldn’t they be named? They are doing work that needs acknowledging. The money they send home takes care of their families’ health, education and retirement. I’ve come to see the figure of the sex worker as a micro welfare state, doing the work that the state should be doing. Sommai lifted 11 people out of poverty into the lower middle class and built a house for them. Sex work is work and it can be a gift of love sent back home to your family..