Street-Level Bureaucrats and Ethical Conflicts in Service Provision to Sex Workers

ABSTRACT

Social workers and other service providers are the agents that often have initial contact with sex workers, a highly stigmatised population that has a fraught history with the social work profession. In this paper, I use Lipsky’s theory of street-level bureaucracy and show how social workers use professional discretion when working with this population, even as it might conflict with their personal ethics. Specifically, I focus on the dual service technologies of abstinence and harm reduction, and how service providers have negotiated these technologies in their work with sex workers. In regards to these technologies, I focus on how the emotional and moral discourse surrounding sex work has shaped the response of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) that work with this population. Using qualitative data from interviews with 29 frontline service providers in a midwestern US state, I argue that these frontline workers use interpersonal modes of discretion to understand ethical conflicts in working with sex trade-involved persons, conflicting with both agency and field-level policy. Implications of this project show how frontline service providers negotiate their responsibilities to this population amidst conflicting personal ethics and service technologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Sex work
• harm reduction
• street-level bureaucracy

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors of the special issue on ethical conflicts for inviting me to submit to this journal. The anonymous reviewers provided extremely helpful insights which led to a stronger paper. A special thanks go to Sara Terrana, Rachel Wells, Ethan Park, and Chris Dingwall for comments on an earlier version of this paper draft. I would like to thank the Oakland University University Research Council for funding for this project, and all of my excellent respondents for graciously providing their time.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Theresa Anasti is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Oakland University in Rochester, MI. Her work focuses on sex work, organisational theory, and harm reduction methods. She received her PhD in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago.

ORCID

Theresa Anasti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1554-1948

Notes

1. In this paper, I use the term sex work to mean a person that exchanges sexual service for tangible goods. I use the term sex work consistently throughout the paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Oakland University's University Research Council (URC) [grant number 23723].