Trajectories of Migrant Male Sex Workers in Paris: He are too often presented as street-based seller of sexual services whereas many of them actually perform intimacy and companionship

Selling Sex and Intimacy in Paris: Trajectories of Migrant Male Sex Workers. Kostia Lennes. 5th European Geographies of Sexualities Conference, Prague Sep 2019. Ed. Michal Pitoňák, Lukáš Pitoňák. https://www.academia.edu/40732506

ABSTRACT: Although further attention has been paid to male sex workers in the past two decades, most scholars who discussed this issue in relation to migration did so through the lens of sex tourism (Allen 2007; Mitchell 2015). In this perspective, male sex workers, who are mostly locals, are therefore excluded from the focus on mobilities. On the other hand, research on migrant sex workers in global cities have focused almost exclusively on women (Chin 2014), with a few notable exceptions (Mai 2018). This proposal aims to fill this gap by presenting the first insights of an ongoing doctoral research project on non-trafficked male sex workers who migrated to Paris in order to perform sexual labour. Coming from different regions of the world, these men have various backgrounds and are often on the move between several cities, in Europe and beyond. Drawing on anthropological accounts on globalisation and cosmopolitanism, the main objective of this research project is to grasp the trajectories of these men who have come to sell sex and intimacy in the French global city. Furthermore, particular attention will be paid to other ways of commodifying intimacy (Constable 2009) than sexual contacts strictly speaking, which is still an overlooked issue as Sanders (2008) and Weitzer (2009) noted. Indeed, the figure of the migrant sex worker is too often presented as a streetbased seller of sexual services whereas many of them actually perform intimacy and companionship, thus redefining contemporary forms of sex work among migrants.

Keywords: male sex workers; cosmopolitanism; commodification of intimacy; sexual labour