Red Light Labour

Book excerpt: In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Canada v. Bedford that key prostitution laws were unconstitutional. The decision provoked wide interest but little new insight into sex work. Red Light Labour addresses Canada’s new legal regime regulating sex work through the analysis of past and present policy approaches and consideration of how laws and those who uphold them have constructed, controlled, and criminalized sex workers, their clients, and their workspaces. This groundbreaking collection also offers nuanced interpretations of commercial sexual labour that foreground the personal perspectives of workers and activists. The contributors highlight the struggle for civic and social inclusion by considering sex workers’ advocacy tactics, successes, and challenges. Red Light Labour promotes social and economic justice within a sex-work-as-labour framework. This book is a timely intervention that showcases up-to-date legal, policy, and social analysis of sex work in Canada.