Reflections on the use of FPAR as a research methodology for sex worker (and key populations) research

Abstract

In this paper, we share some personal reflections of straddling different research roles in a doctoral study entitled Queering Sex Work and Mobility in South Africa. We highlight the importance of using a Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) methodology when conducting studies with migrant and mobile sex workers as it offers participants an opportunity to express their lived realities and embodied knowledge(s) beyond linguistic barriers. Through our reflections, we demonstrate that marginalised communities can become co-creators in knowledge production processes, not just the givers of stories (aka ‘poverty porn’) but integral members of the research team who actively contribute towards the conceptualisation, data collection, analysis, publishing and distribution of scholarship.

KEYWORDS:

• Research
• FPAR
• queer
• sex work
• mobility
• feminist

Introduction

Academic work often excludes meaningful participation of the people that inform research questions, a concern that was once articulated through a Facebook post by the late Leigh Davids, a South African transgender sex worker rights’ activist:

What freaks me about researchers are the fact that you’re gud (sic) when they acquire the research to write up their documents but when there’s opportunity of employment within the same research, those that partake ain’t afforded the opportunity to apply or even be notified. As much as research is needed I really think that not in all but so many cases that researched (sic) is fucked up … (Davids, 15 May 2018).

A comment on the post urged researchers to deploy participatory research strategies to help address some of the power imbalances and exploitation inherent in much academic work. Indeed, African scholar-activist Amina Mama (2007) has also criticised the global inequalities reproduced in traditional research methods where the researcher is the one positioned as the expert and producer of knowledge. In an attempt to correct such researcher/subject inequalities, the third author of this paper adopted a Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) methodology in her doctoral research entitled Queering Sex Work and Mobility in South Africa, which sought to explore whether or not mobility, including migration and other forms of human movement, can influence gendered sexualities in sex work, and if so, in what ways and with what socio-political implications. Ntokozo Yingwana is a PhD candidate at the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS), University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.¹

Rather than simply inviting participants to share their knowledge(s), Ntokozo hired two sex worker co-researchers to both take part in her study as well as help with the research process: Nosipho Vidima (first author), a self-identified sex worker, Black consciousness feminist and human rights activist who is the founding member of the Black Feminist Sex Work Collective, and Ruvimbo Tenga (second author), who passed away at the late stages of writing this paper. Ruvimbo was a Zimbabwean born nomad, an activist and a research consultant who worked with organisations focusing on sex worker rights, migration, feminism and LGBTI issues.² Ntokozo has worked closely with sex workers’ rights movement in South Africa and beyond for more than a decade. Her decision to hire rather than simply invite sex workers to participate in her research was motivated by a desire to both push beyond the usual tokenistic inclusion of participants in research while at the same time positioning sex workers as intellectual partners in the meaning-making process.

In this paper, we share some personal reflections about our experiences of being co-researchers in the aforementioned doctoral study. Although each of us had specific roles and responsibilities, and to a large extent, varying interests and motivations for taking part in academic work, what the three of us do/did share was an unwavering personal and political commitment to engaging in work that seeks to advance positive social change, particularly in the areas of health, sexuality, gender and sex workers’ rights activism on the African continent. Through our reflections as Black African sex worker feminists working in collaboration, we demonstrate how the adoption of the FPAR methodology can offer an opportunity for data to be collected in less extractive (and exploitative) ways. We describe how by flattening normative distinctions of scholar/subject relationships, deep conversations around power dynamics in research and the use of language were able to emerge. As Elsa Oliveira and Jo Vearey (2020) explain, recognising those who help answer our research questions as the owners of their knowledge is critical in any study seeking to dismantle oppression. We also show how a FPAR approach offers an important theoretical and practical lens for conducting ethical research with criminalised and vulnerable communities, including those one is also intrinsically a part of.

FPAR in sex work research

Even though there are competing definitions of Participatory Action Research (PAR), most advocates of this approach stress collaborative inquiry and experimentation grounded in experience and the social history of the communities in question. In PAR, the emphasis is placed on the belief that research and action must be done with not on or for people and that research participants are not merely sources of data but key partners in the inquiry process. Such engagement is fostered through a cyclical process of action-reflection that is led by members of the affected community (Gatenby & Humphries, 2000). In other words, as Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury (2008) state, ‘communities of inquiry and action evolve and address questions and issues that are significant for those who participate as co-researchers’ (p. 1), whilst collectively working towards fulfilling either a developmental or social justice goal.

Although it is often hailed as the key to unlocking public engagement in research, there are also critiques of the PAR methodology, one of which is the romanticisation of ‘community’ or ‘the people’ (Jackson & van Vlaenderen, 1994, p. 16). As Mamphela Ramphele (1990) explains, participatory research strategies tend to assume,

the notion of "common purpose and common good". The mere fact that people are thrown together by common calamity into a particular situation is assumed to create a bond that transcends all other considerations of personal interest (p. 7).

Such assumptions can be counter-productive when organising for social change because they run the risk of participant’s diluting other equally important aspects of their lives in order to conform to a communal goal. Adopting a feminist research lens to PAR can help expand the political and intellectual spaces for more authentic knowledge co-production (Jackson & van Vlaenderen, 1994). While PAR offers an important framework for thinking critically about the politics of knowledge production, the addition of a feminist lens in our work not only deepened our acknowledgement of the importance of subjective experiences; it also allowed us to highlight the political nature of the research. As Emily Van der Meulen (2011) explains, a FPAR approach can help, ‘build bridges, dismantle barriers, and establish new relationships of trust and support between feminists and sex workers’ (p. 371).

According to Shulamit Reinharz and Lynn Davidman (1992), ‘[f]eminism is a perspective, not a research method’ (p. 240). Although post-colonial, Black and African feminists have long since debunked the notion of a single monolithic or universal concept of feminism (Mohanty, 1984; hooks, 1981; Oyewùmi, 2003) there are a few main principles that feminists tend to orient their thinking around. As bell hooks (2000) explains, feminism is a ‘movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression’ (p. 1). And according to Jane Bennett (2008), feminist scholarship is 'concerned with the relationship between research and activism’ (emphasis in the original text) (p. 2).

Feminist research seeks to improve laws, institutions and create new relationships (Reinharz & Davidman, 1992). Designing a feminist research methodology, then, can also be considered a politics in itself. As Amina Mama (2007) notes, African feminist scholarship was initially informed by activism, but the development of ‘Western-style separation between thought and action’ (p. 154) has compromised the connection between intellectual work and political action. Because the doctoral study upon which this paper is based sought to take up Bennett’s challenge to bridge this ‘Western-style’ imposition between thought and action that Mama describes, it can also be understood as a decolonial feminist project. The term 'decolonial' assumes the continued existence of coloniality, and actively works to deconstruct it. And in working towards a ‘decolonial feminism’ María Lugones (2010) proposes learning,

about each other as resisters to the coloniality of gender at the colonial difference, without necessarily being an insider to the worlds of meaning from which resistance to the coloniality arises. That is, the decolonial feminist’s task begins by her seeing the colonial difference, [and] emphatically resisting her epistemological habit of erasing (p. 753).

For the above-mentioned doctoral study, this entailed the student researcher relinquishing some of their power as the principal investigator (PI) and rather engaged participants as co-creators in the knowledge production process, which was accomplished through the hiring of two research assistants (RAs) who also formed part of the study group. We argue that it is important for researchers to position marginalised communities, such as migrant and mobile sex workers as the experts of their own lives who can indeed theorise their own existences. Furthermore, to enable the participants to creatively tap into their journeys and embodied lived experiences beyond linguistic barriers digital storytelling and the instant messenger WhatsApp were used as research tools/platforms. For instance, using WhatsApp we were able to get visuals and audio documenting the participants' daily activities; showing their home lives and journeys to-and-from their places of work.

Prioritising the voices and concerns of sex workers is one of the principal reasons sex worker rights organisations around the globe, such as the European Sex Workers Rights Alliance (ESWA) have begun to put out grant calls for FPAR-based studies as a way to ensure that research projects are sex worker-led and informed by their members’ lived realities. For example, in a recent call for a study into the experiences of justice for sex workers living in Europe and Central Asia, ESWA explained that employing a FPAR methodology helps to ensure that ‘[s]ex workers will be at the forefront of every stage of this research; from its inception, execution and analysis to its publication, translation and dissemination’ (ESWA, 2022). Unfortunately, there has been scant FPAR research in sex work studies conducted in the Global South, particularly in Africa. Hence the importance of conducting an FPAR study with sex workers on the continent, and the reflections that the co-researchers and authors present from that experience.

Queering sex work and sex work as queer

The term ‘queer’ is used in this paper not as a specific sexual identity marker, but instead as a verb – queering – to evoke a way of thinking that exposes, interrogates and disrupts heteronormative gender and sexual logics that too often script policy and academic debates about commercial sex (Laing et al., 2015). Heteronormativity is the belief that heterosexuality is the only (biologically) natural expression of sexuality in society (Warner, 1993). It assumes that sexual and romantic relationships should only be between people of the opposite sex; thus conforming to the gender binary. According to Corina McKay (1999) ‘Queer Theory can liberate sex workers from such dominant social/sexual ideologies, helping them to create alternative discourses which challenge the power of heteronormativity allowing them to enjoy sexual and social citizenship on their own terms’ (p. 48). While this may be the case, the study that informs this paper illustrates, through the participants’ responses, that the inverse is also true – that sex workers’ alternative discourses about their enjoyment of sexual and social citizenship based on their own terms can help liberate Queer Theory from heteronormative social/sexual ideologies. Therefore, in ‘queering sex work’ (Laing et al., 2015, p. 2) the doctoral study also sought to put a queer lens on normative ideas of migration/mobility. Although all the participants either self-identified as migrant or mobile sex workers most did not explicitly self-identify as queer per se. So the recruitment of the participants was not primarily based on whether they identified as LGBTQI+, even though scholars often essentialise such gendered sexualities in queer research. Instead, cisgender heterosexuals were also invited to participate. By opening the participant recruitment call to all self-identifying migrant/mobile sex workers in South Africa, the study allowed us to queer sex work and mobility without falling into the cisgender heterosexual versus queer binary that identity politics tend to confine us in. Adopting the FPAR approach allowed us to examine the ways in which sex work and normative ideas of migration/mobility are ‘queered’ by those who engage in it. It also enabled us to unpack the socio-political implications of this queering as it relates to sexual citizenship, a term used to denote all forms of belonging, recognition and participation linked to the nation-state that is informed by ones sexual behaviour (Cossman, 2007).

Data collection and participants

There were two phases in the data collection process. The first was a week-long digital-storytelling workshop with eight participants in Cape Town. The second phase consisted of a 7-week WhatsApp group with 12 participants, including the two research assistants (RAs) co-authoring this paper. Two participants and one of the RAs (Ruvimbo) were part of both the digital-storytelling workshop and the WhatsApp research group. Therefore, the total number of participants was 17: 12 South Africans, four Zimbabweans, and one Burundian. Participants ranged from 19 to 42 years of age. Five self-identified as gay men, four were cis-hetero³ women, three lesbians, two transgender women, two pansexuals, and one bisexual participant. Most were Black, and three were Coloured. The majority were outdoor sex workers; meaning that they generally solicit clients on the street. However, for two participants, the streets are also their home.

The Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) and Sisonke helped with the recruitment of participants. SWEAT is a non-profit organisation (NPO) that advocates for the rights of adult consenting sex workers and the decriminalisation of sex work in South Africa. Sisonke (meaning ‘we are together’ in Zulu) is South Africa’s national sex worker movement. The parameters of the study required that participants be above 18 years of age⁴ and have either sold sex on the move (e.g. mobile/transient sex workers) or moved to sell sex (e.g. migrant sex workers). As part of the recruitment process for the WhatsApp research group, an online (Google Form) survey was administered, which helped with identifying appropriate participants. In addition, a total of 20 interviews and four focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with the participants. Three of the FGDs were with the WhatsApp research group, and one was with the digital-storytelling workshop participants.

Digital-storytelling for FPAR

The third author of this paper (Ntokozo) facilitated the digital-storytelling research workshop, held at the Scalabrini Centre in Cape Town from 1 to 7 December 2019. Scalabrini is a non-profit organisation (NGO) that provides psycho-social services, skills development training and legal advice to refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers in South Africa. Out of the invited 10 people, eight attended the digital-storytelling workshop from areas surrounding Cape Town, namely Observatory, Mfuleni, Paarl, Wellington and Villiersdorp. During the workshop, participants were taken through the basics of developing digital stories using Microsoft PowerPoint. The ‘gendered sexuality over the life course (GSLC) model’ (Carpenter, 2010, p. 157) was used to guide participants through the process of writing their narratives. They spent the workshop week storyboarding, scripting, recording, sourcing images and compiling their digital stories.

A digital story is a multimedia package that is made up of a participant’s personal photographs and/or internet sourced images depicting their story, with their voice heard narrating over it, sometimes with background music and sound effects (Rahim, 2012; Worcester, 2012). The medium plays with the notion of ‘who is in control of producing and interpreting reality’ (Gubrium & Turner, 2011, pg. 475), which shifts the power of representation from mainstream media producers to the individual storyteller. According to literature, digital storytelling can be employed as a visual-arts research method for social change as it has the potential to be transformative, both through its process and products (Rahim, 2012; Gubrium et al., 2014). This approach offered the participants diverse means of conceiving and portraying dissident sexual lives and bodies. As Aline Gubrium et al. (2014) writes, ‘[they] see digital-storytelling as a new modality for sensing sexuality research’ (p. 339).

Although participants’ were unable to complete their digital stories before the end of the workshop week due to an electricity outage in the area on the last day, their scripts (written and also captured in audio), along with the collated images offered great insights into how the participants understood the evolution of their gendered sexualities over the course of their lives. So while the unfinished digital stories may have initially come across as a hurdle in the study, their creation process still allowed for the generation of multimedia data relevant to the study question. By merging real photographs with images sourced online, and inserting audio effects such as singing into their audio narrations as part of the workshop, participants were able to (re)create their own understandings of the journeys of their gendered sexualities. A reflective focus group discussion was also held with the group on the last day, whereby the participants collectively reflected on the digital-storytelling workshop process, the content produced, and the issues raised in their stories.

WhatsApp research group

The second phase of the doctoral study was initially going to consist of a digital-storytelling workshop, but this time, in Johannesburg. The plan was to hold live focus group discussions, followed by individual interviews, and finally ‘go-along’ interviews that would have enabled the doctoral researcher to travel and speak with the participants whilst on their journey’s to-and-from their homes and workplaces (Kusenbach, 2003, p. 478). Unfortunately, this initial plan could not be executed because of the global Covid-19 pandemic restrictions on movement in South Africa. As a result, the doctoral study was moved to the online platform WhatsApp. This second phase of the research ran from 17 August to 2 October 2020. During this period weekly exercises were used as prompts to encourage participants to engage on issues pertaining to gender, sexuality and movement/migration/mobility within their daily experiences by sharing snippets of their lives using multimedia – such as text, voice notes, photographs and videos – either on the research WhatsApp group or privately to Ntokozo (if they felt uncomfortable doing so). A tip or some advice was also added at the end of each weekly exercise post as a way to give participants additional guidance should they need it for the given task.

WhatsApp research group weekly exercises

The first two weeks of the WhatsApp group were primarily about getting to know one another. In the first week, participants were asked to introduce themselves, either as a typed message, in the form of a voice note, or a short video (about 2-mins long). In the second week, participants were asked to share a photograph of themselves doing something they often do daily to help cope with being under movement restrictions during the Covid-19 lockdown. They were asked to include a short description of the image they chose and explain how this specific activity helped them deal with not being able to freely move around because of the pandemic. In the third week, participants were given tasks specifically related to the study and asked to describe what they understood to be the difference between sex, gender and sexuality. To help the participants with this exercise, the GenderBread Person infographic was shared with them. The GenderBread Person is a free online visual resource for understanding the difference between gender identity, gender expression, anatomical sex and sexual/romantic attraction (Killermann, 2018). However, it was emphasised that the illustration was only an example and that the interest was more on their personal understandings of the words sex, gender and sexuality. Participants were also informed that their responses could be submitted either as text, voice notes or short videos (about 2–5 minutes long).

The task given for the fourth week was to watch and reflect on a film documentary that was released by the Gay and Lesbian Queer Archive (GALA), titled Covid-19 and Cape Town’s Homeless Transgender Sex Workers (2020).⁵ GALA is ‘a catalyst for the production, preservation and dissemination of information about the history, culture and contemporary experiences of LGBTIQA+ people in South Africa’ (GALA website: nd). As a follow-up to the previous weeks exercise, participants were asked to specifically comment on parts of the film that spoke to issues relating to sex work, migration/mobility/movement, gender and/or sexuality.

In the fifth week, the participants were asked to pretend that they were either radio or online media journalists and to compile a 3–5 minute podcast or video that reported on the latest news in their respective communities. These inserts could be based on anything they deemed newsworthy, as long as it had something to do with one (or more) of the three main research themes (as mentioned above). Participants were allowed to include interviews with others who were not part of the study as long as they asked for consent first. Participants were also reminded that they did not have to show any faces, and that they were free to report in any language they were most comfortable (when needed, translations were provided for on the WhatsApp chat).

To help capture the migration/mobility dimension of participants’ lives, the sixth week focused on documenting their journeys to-and-from places of work using either voice notes, photographs, videos or any other form of multimedia to capture their travels. It was explained to the participants that this could be any form of work, not just sex work.

Finally, on the seventh week of the WhatsApp research group, participants were asked to produce short multimedia/digital stories based on the title of the doctoral thesis: Queering Sex Work and Mobility in South Africa: How does migration/movement/mobility influence gendered sexualities (or gender and sexuality) in sex work?. They had the freedom to compile these WhatsApp multimedia collections however they saw fit; for instance, a participant could pretend to be a talk-show host, a researcher, a journalist, or as themselves produce a personal documentary about their life.

Hiring of queer migrant/mobile sex worker research assistants

The slogan for the South African sex worker movement Sisonke is ‘Nothing about us, without us!’ Therefore, it would have been disingenuous to claim to be conducting FPAR, without engaging sex workers as co-creators in this queer, decolonial feminist project. Ruvimbo and Nosipho were hired on a consultancy basis at the onset of the second phase of the fieldwork, for a period of four months (1 July to 31 October 2020). Both acted as co-researchers as they helped significantly with the recruitment of the WhatsApp research group participants. They provided feedback on the draft participation (electronic) invite that was created using a Google poll survey, and also circulated the link of the final e-invite across their own social media networks. Ruvimbo and Nosipho not only formed part of the WhatsApp research group (engaging in the exercises and discussions), but also formed two-thirds of the research team. They assisted Ntokozo in co-managing/facilitating the online space and helped with transcribing and/or translating some of the interviews and WhatsApp messages. In addition to offering technical support, Ruvimbo and Nosipho were also asked to read literature relating to the research project, which were then discussed during weekly research team progress meetings via WhatsApp call. It was during these meetings that the following week’s WhatsApp research group exercise was jointly crafted, by the doctoral researcher and the RAs.

Both Ruvimbo and Nosipho received monthly stipends, and to aid them with fulfilling their duties, each also received a laptop allowance. At the end of the study, they were welcome to keep the devices by purchasing them back at 50% of the original price. Monthly data, airtime, and book budget allowances to buy any additional reading materials that could help support them in thinking through the study were also provided. Close to the end of their consultancy contracts, Ruvimbo and Nosipho assisted with some of the initial coding and analysis of the collated data; thus actively contributing to the meaning-making process. This level of inclusion is what Teela Sanders (2006) calls for: ‘collaborative research partnerships that work alongside informants, offering directorship and control to those who are normally subjected to the research process’ (p. 463). Which is why the FPAR approach was purposefully chosen to not only ensure sex workers’ direct involvement in the research process, but also to nurture the transferring of valuable research skills and material resources to those sex worker rights’ movements and activists who are interested in learning more about conducting research for advocacy purposes.

Reflections on queering sex work and mobility

According to Gatenby and Humphries (2000):

Doing participatory research inevitably changes the researcher, sometimes painfully, sometimes in exciting, sustaining ways. The self-reflexivity such changes engender is a feature of all feminist scholarship in some way (p. 90).

What follows are reflections of our engagement in the doctoral study that informs this article. In many ways, this paper is also a demonstration of how FPAR allows for the co-creation of knowledge between researchers and participants beyond the traditional researcher-researched dichotomy and into the realm of co-authorship.

Nosipho: 'the researchworld as a monster of extractivism'

When Ntokozo and Ruvimbo spoke about the proposed project seeking to better understand sexual citizenship and how sexual orientations are influenced by migration or by sex work, I was confused and frankly thought the ideas and methodologies they were explaining were too academic. Initially, I stayed away from the digital-storytelling workshop. And when I listened to feedback about the process, I became even more scared and sceptical because we as activists have always discussed the research world as a monster of extractivism. As Kate Derickson (2019) explains,

an ‘extractive’ approach, which centers questions that the researcher and their colleagues are interested in, unfolds according to university timelines, and seldom results in research findings or products that meet the needs of communities. When conducted in the name of equity and with or 'on' historically marginalized and under-resourced communities, this approach is especially problematic, as it creates additional burdens on these communities while burnishing the ‘expert’ credentials for researchers with unclear impacts on equity outcomes⁶

Rarely does a research paper/thesis/book/documentary go back to the subjects to show evidence of whatever the researcher had wanted to prove or gather. Moreover, in most cases, research subjects are often faced with having to answer uncomfortable questions and dig deep into years of traumatic experiences without being offered the space to resolve issues that came up during discussions from questions posed by the researcher.

The three of us (Ntokozo, Ruvimbo and I) held more than five meetings before the 2020 fieldwork process began. During these meetings, we discussed different ideas around using digital media such as WhatsApp to collect data while applying a FPAR methodology. One researcher who has used digital ethnography is Admire Mare (2017)). As part of our literature review, we read Mare’s work and also listened to an audio recording of him advising Ntokozo on the study. This is when I knew that using the WhatsApp group as part of the research process was in fact possible and can be classified as a research process (methodology for qualitative research) rather than just being a discussion amongst queer migrant sex workers. All we had to do was to stick to the methodology, ask the right questions as research assistants, and lead the voluntary participation by also answering these questions in the WhatsApp group. We then had to formulate rules of engagement to help guide how conversations could best be used to give us the qualitative research we were seeking.

Exercises in the group started at a slow pace with just the normal ‘introduce yourself’ and ‘tell us about yourself’ exercises. We drew up the questions with Ntokozo and we also had to lead the consent signing process. This is when things began getting interesting. Some members of the group easily consented to using their real names, whereas others chose pseudonyms, while some chose sexual orientation and gender affirming names. During this process, we began learning more about what it means to have communities living in the shadows because certain parts of the world still criminalise sexualities outside of the heterosexual norm and/or sex work.

As the weeks progressed, we continued to do the planned exercises within the group. I found myself having to introspect more into my own identity, my own sexual orientation, and what it means to be a sex worker, a pansexual wom_n⁷ of colour and my time spent as a research assistant in a project that sought to build understandings and knowledge that encouraged a better society. Therefore, as much as I was part of the formulating and conceptualising team, I also needed to be honest. And I needed to dig deep into myself and truly participate. Only then could I give impact and weight to the research and provide evidence that can help contribute towards creating societies that do not marginalise, push or pathologise both sex workers and non-conforming gendered sexualities.

The closer we got to the end of the study, it was apparent to me that we had to face our own truths as co-researchers. Although I have, for instance, seen the Genderbread Person and have sat in many creative spaces with SistaazHood (the transgender women sex workers’ support group at SWEAT) during my activist life, when we went through the illustration of the Genderbread Person and reviewed the documentary on the impact of Covid-19 on transgender sex workers as a weekly exercise, in my mind I had to think about sex work and the impact that it has had in how I am very open about my pansexual orientation and identity. I had to think about who I was before sex work. Although I already knew I love and like all genders – and really, I love humans as they are beautiful in-and-out – my sexual orientation openness had come with my experience of moving away from home and doing sex work where I was obligated as part of my packages. I offered to do threesomes and had lesbian experiences, which pay more. This made me realise that sex work does have some influence on your sexual orientation, especially if you are do it whilst moving around.

Ruvimbo: '[u]sing a smartphone app in qualitative research'

Working alongside Ntokozo was very exciting. I participated in both the Cape Town digital storytelling workshop and the WhatsApp research group. It helped me to have a better understanding of the relationship between the question at hand and practical ways to unpack it in order to arrive at the most probable answers. The WhatsApp research project was conducted during the Covid-19 lockdown when movement was restricted so we could not go out to look for participants or get participants to fill the forms and hand them back to us in the old-fashioned manner of field research. We were unable to interview participants one-on-one and have a focus group together in one room. It was a challenging time as adjustments had to be made to timelines of the research project. We had to be very flexible. Ntokozo came up with the idea of having a WhatsApp group. It made so much sense, and we were keen to explore this method.

There was a learning curve when I first started working as a research assistant on this project. I only have a high school education because of circumstances beyond my control. I love reading about a wide range of stuff and I am constantly working on my writing. Nevertheless, I sometimes felt uncomfortable and intimidated. But my lived experiences have always been a form of education to me no matter what situation I have gone through in my life, good and bad. These life learned skills and my love for reading became very useful in working with academics. I might not have the language to articulate such experiences but I can explain what I think and feel until my points are understood. Terms such as sexual citizenship, mobility, sexuality and gender (to mention a few) were a bit challenging to me at first. But Ntokozo worked with us step-by-step to help us to break them down and understand them within our context. Why was it important to be part of the research process from start to finish? As Black sex workers we are seen as uneducated women without agency; who cannot think for themselves. We are judged as criminals and our human rights are abused. We constantly have to fight for space and to be heard. We are over-researched and have research fatigue. I have done fieldwork myself and have learned to collect data from previous research projects but this project was quite different.

When I first heard the topic – Queering Sex Work and Mobility in South Africa: How does migration/mobility/movement influence gendered sexualities in sex work? – it was as a participant in the digital-storytelling workshop that was held in Cape Town. I understood the mobility, movement and migration part but could not understand the queering sex work part. It was an interesting question and the intersectionality brought about by the FPAR methodology made me curious. Seeing sex workers as queer or thinking about sex work as queer got me excited.

Although being a research participant is one thing and being a research assistant is another, both roles at the same time allowed me to see the entire research process. The challenge for me was that at times I felt a bit uncomfortable with the other participants in my role as a research assistant; someone helping to get information from participants and being paid when the others are just taking part in the research process. Even though this bothered me sometimes, I had to put into consideration that even though this might have caused a slight imbalance in my power dynamic with my fellow participants, I also came with my own complex layers of experience, including the skill of being a field research assistant while being part of the community of interest. And, at the end of the day, work is work.

A Google Survey form was created to recruit research participants. A link to the survey was sent to different groups and individuals who we thought might be interested in taking part in the research. When responses came in, the forms were evaluated and the most suitable candidates (based on recruitment criteria) were shortlisted. One of the most important points of setting up a WhatsApp research group is that the administrator needs to keep a close eye on the content and context of what is happening in the group, as social media groups can get out of context and chaotic. Nosipho and I also had a role to play in motivating the members to engage with the weekly exercises by sharing our own responses, and making notes of the interactions that were happening in the group. The most challenging part of this process was accessing good internet connection. Sometimes we could not communicate clearly and would have to drop the WhatsApp calls or move around looking for a stronger network.

Ntokozo also gave Nosipho and I book allowances. It was a thought-provoking process for me as I could not decide which books I wanted. It was my first-time buying books online. We had to stick to the budget and at times I struggled with the decision of buying one book or getting a few. I also had to consider the theme of the project and not just think about my wish list. My final selections were: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997), Black Tax by Niq Mhlongo (2019), and Dr T: A Guide to Sexual Health & Pleasure by Tlaleng Mofokeng (2019). Ntokozo also gave us academic and grey literature to read, which was very useful as it helped us to learn what other scholars had done. We discussed these readings and how we could do some of the things we had learnt from them when we met once a week during our check-in sessions. Some of the readings I enjoyed were: the manual ‘Using WhatsApp for Radio: A toolkit by the Children’s Radio Foundation’ (Petit-Perrot & Daniels, 2019) as it showed us how WhatsApp can be used as a tool to reach out to and interact with young people; ‘Using a smartphone app in qualitative research: the good, the bad and the ugly’ (García et al., 2016) whereby researchers in the United Kingdom (UK) got participants to use a smartphone app as a diary to document what football means to them; and the ‘Lockdown Diaries’ research project website, which showed us how people from different backgrounds coped with Covid-19 in South Africa (specifically Cape Town). Working through the Covid-19 lockdown levels was new to everyone. We had to find a new strength as a community as others lost their lives.

What l loved the most about this research project was the feminist approach Ntokozo used. We could question one another, thrash out ideas in order to come to a common understanding, and contributed equally to meetings. Our weekly meetings were a learning space of breaking down words and of sharing thoughts, ideas and our understandings of the reading of the week and how we could apply it to the project. Although Ntokozo came with a detailed plan of how everything was going to happen she was also very flexible. She would make sure that since this was a new learning experience for everyone that we should rather not move too fast but get the best possible results and explore different ways of approaching a topic. In the WhatsApp research group, language was also broken down. Everyone was free to speak the language they were most comfortable with and translations were offered by the research team and some participants when needed (for example, in Shona, Zulu and Afrikaans). Even though words such as gender and sexuality were difficult to explain in English it helped when we collectively explored how we could articulate them in our mother tongues.

Ntokozo: 'demystifying the research process'

Gatenby and Humphries (2000) note that the true power of FPAR lies in its potential to bring about positive change, which ‘happens both by empowering women in the research and by distributing information which changes the actions of others. The process includes demystifying research itself, so that its political consequences are then available to all women’ (p. 90). Indeed, sharing some of the literature guiding the methodology of this study with Nosipho and Ruvimbo, and collectively engaging with its content helped in demystifying the research process for us as a team. For even though I was essentially the principal investigator – I admit – that at times I too struggled to make sense of the readings and figure out how their teachings could be applied to the study. It was during such moments that Nosipho and Ruvimbo’s wisdom from having worked in the sex work industry became invaluable. Their embodied knowledge yielded insights that guided the crafting of the research instruments, informed the fieldwork process, and unveiled interesting findings in the initial data analysis.

Even though Nosipho and Ruvimbo expressed not having a problem with me recording our weekly meetings, I felt it was important not to do so as to keep our meetings sacred. Instead, after every meeting I emailed them minutes detailing what we had discussed and agreed upon as our respective tasks for the following week (as is common practice amongst scholars collaborating on any research project). Extending this professional courtesy encouraged Nosipho and Ruvimbo to take their roles as intellectual partners seriously. For instance, Nosipho took it upon herself to create a more synthesised and appealing online poster of the study participation e-invite to circulate amongst her social media networks, which included her personal contact number for those who were interested in joining. Also, during one of our WhatsApp call FGDs Ruvimbo routinely asked one of the participants (also from Zimbabwe) whether he needed help with English-Shona translations, especially when she sensed he was struggling to either understand a question or relay his response.

Actually, writing this article was not my idea. Nosipho and Ruvimbo were the ones who submitted an abstract for the special issue call and it was only after it had been accepted that they asked me to help them as the third author. So this publication output (or ‘action’) was never planned, another demonstration of the added benefit of employing a FPAR methodology. Such unsolicited displays of ownership over the knowledge production process are testament to the power of FPAR in destabilising traditional researcher-researched power dynamics, thus affording participants authorship over the knowledge produced by and through them.

Conclusion

Conducting research with criminalised and/or marginalised communities such as sex workers, migrants and LGBTQI+ persons, requires a methodology that is sensitive to these populations’ vulnerabilities so as not to expose them to further harm or exploitation. The above reflections illustrate how FPAR can be used to lessen extractivist scholarship by destabilising traditional researcher-researched power dynamics, and enabling studied communities to meaningfully engage as co-creators in the knowledge production process. Most importantly though, this paper demonstrates that migrant/mobile sex workers are experts of their own lives. Scholars should, therefore, learn to recognise and engage marginalised communities as intellectual partners who can theorise their own realities. In addition to the knowledge exchange between participants and researchers, what is also needed is practical support in the form of equipment (e.g. laptops, etc.) and material resources (e.g. data, airtime, etc.) for the co-researchers to be able to sustain and transfer the skills they learn to members of their communities. Supporting studied communities to actively engage in their own research is the true ‘action’ in Feminist Participatory Action Research.

Acknowledgements

In Memory of Ruvimbo ‘Zoe Black’ Tenga

This article and its thoughts are dedicated to Ruvimbo ‘Zoe Black’ Tenga our feminist thought leader, intellectual partner, sister and friend who left us on 07/06/2022 as we were finishing this paper. Ruvimbo, as you would introduce yourself in many meetings and conferences as the ‘WhatsApp mom’, or ‘womxn who loves womxn, not necessarily a bisexual womxn or lesbian’, to being our queer sex worker rights feminist thinker, we miss you already. As we finalise this paper without you, we are finding ourselves having to reminisce in such a way that we start hearing your voice sharing ideas, which were always critical, full of wisdom and courage. One of your favourite quotes was, ‘if the prey does not write or speak then the predator will remain the victor’. We are happy and blessed you taught us who you are through your scholar-activism. Rest in power Ruvi. You will live forever through your work, articles, resources and wisdom shared with your children, community and the world.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Notes

1 When this paper was published, the doctoral thesis was being written up and finalised.

2 During the writing of this journal article Ruvimbo Tenga sadly passed away on 7 June 2022. Through this paper we honour her memory and ideas.

3 Truncation of cisgender heterosexual.

4 Eighteen is Sisonke’s membership entry age.

5 GALA Archives, ‘COVID-19 and Cape Town's Homeless Transgender Sex Workers’ YouTube video, 1 September 2020: https://youtu.be/MPFlfaQJodA.

6 'Healthy Community-University Partnerships' blog post by Kate Derickson, 10 June 2019: https://create.umn.edu/tag/extractive-research/.

7 Mainly used in feminist literature as an alternative spelling to ‘women’, in order to avoid the suggestion of sexism perceived in the ‘m-e-n’.