Abstract:
Digital-economic intermediaries are growing in centrality to many aspects of both work and life. These intermediaries have in recent years been increasingly understood to take the form of ‘platforms.’ With their own attendant online ‘platform economy,’ critical literature has emerged exploring how these changes are affecting the ways that people work. Largely ignored within this literature are the changes incurred upon industries predominantly comprised of women, or involving intimate labour. Sex work represents such an industry, and digital mediation is becoming progressively more pertinent to its operation. This research examines the relationship between the ‘platform economy’ and Aotearoa/New Zealand’s sex industry, with a focus on the city of Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland. This investigation sought to understand how these developments may have changed the nature of this work, and the industry more-over. A mixed-methods approach was used for the research, involving online methodologies such as anexamination of a sex work forum, as well as the collection of data through interviews with key informants. These participants predominantly had sex work experience, or had some industry experience through working for the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective (NZPC) or through operating a platform. This thesis uncovers how the differing forms of labour undertaking by sex workers are often misrecognised and/or capitalised upon by a monopoly-rentier of advertising space, demonstrating aspects of platform-economic circulations. In lieu of such circumstances, workers successfully maintain an engagement with forms of internet-mediation to resist challenges such as historically resolute managers within the industry. Furthermore, workers within the industry are noted to be expanding their organisational repertoire to deal with these new challenges.