After Sex Work: Immobility and Bonds of Dependence

Abstract

This final chapter¹ continues to explore the ideas of personal growth and work by shifting the focus to the life experiences of former sex workers. I have shown so far that studying male prostitution as sex work better reflects the ways in which young men understand their experiences of commercial sexual exchange and interpret their occupation in terms of calculation, opportunities, and responsibilities. The accounts provided by former sex workers are narratives about the limits and contradictions of that form of entrepreneurship that is sex work and that originates in the context of migration, violence, and sex tourism of South Bali. They reveal second thoughts, discrepancies, discontinuities, and idiosyncrasies, and speak of the short- and long-term consequences of violence.