Nonrecognition as violence: The stakes of abolitionist agendas and the invisibilization of sexual labor in Chile

Abstract

Sexual labor in Chile remains criminalized despite organized sex workers’ demands for recognition. Drawing on interviews with autonomous sex workers, advocacy groups, and feminist debates on sex work, this article argues that the Chilean state’s abolitionist agenda is the primary cause of the material and symbolic precarity experienced by sex workers. While sex workers view their labor as a means of economic empowerment and as offering better conditions than other informal jobs, its invisibilization systematically exposes them to different forms of violence. Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews with the sex workers’ union, the article examines how nonrecognition operates as violence, tracing the links between the absence of a regulatory framework and the multiple forms of violence that sex workers experience in their everyday lives. Uncovering the material and symbolic consequences of the state’s abolitionist approach illustrates that recognition is not merely a labor rights issue but a crucial intervention against cultural and structural violence. By demonstrating how legal and symbolic nonrecognition operates as a mechanism of marginalization and oppression, the article underscores the need for regulation and shifts responsibility onto the state. Grounding the concept in the lived experiences of sex workers, the article illustrates the inseparability of recognition from economic redistribution, showing how its absence leads to material precarity. It contends that legal and social recognition would fundamentally enhance the lives of sex workers by ensuring safer working conditions, securing better earnings, and challenging stigma to foster cultural transformation toward building a more inclusive society.