On the (b)orders of Sexual Citizenship

Abstract

In this chapter I propose to review the idea of freedom that underlies progressive sexual politics and the development of that which, in the context of sexual democratization, has been known as sexual citizenship. By reviewing the most prominent public debates over the legal status of sex work at international levels, with a particular focus on Latin America, as well as the emergence of new forms of sexual racialization, I analyze the imaginary borders of citizenship and democracy, when they are characterized in sexual terms. How have these new sexual citizenships constituted themselves and how have they operated within the field of struggles for sexual freedom? Focusing on the psychosocial formation of the subject and society, which both involve fundamental exclusions and an original void, my conclusions ultimately question the limits that the model of sexual citizenship might impose on the ways in which we can think of sexual freedom and justice, with the aim of opening the possibility of reconsidering them from a radical conception of democracy.