Areas of Interest: migration and border regimes, gender and sexuality, precarization and informal labor, law and policy, race and ethnicity, critical trafficking studies and sex work, and ethnographic methodologies.
Doctoral Dissertation
Governing in the Name of Caring - The Politics of Migration and Sex Work in an Era of New Humanitarianism
My ethnographic dissertation research examines migrant sex work from the Global South in the Global North. Through rich ethnographic material, the research offers a window to contemporary contestations around mobilities and the global reorganization of labor and intimacies - as well as into the often-hidden lives of migrants who use their intimate resources to advance their lives. In the dissertation, I use a feminist-inspired prostitution and anti-trafficking policy approach that has taken center stage in global prostitution and anti-trafficking debates as a lens to understand broader transformations in the governance of migration and sexuality. The aim of this policy is to ‘end demand’ for sexual commerce in the name of gender equality and protecting and caring for the vulnerable. It criminalizes the buying (rather than the selling) of sex - the rationale being that without buyers there would be no sex trade and trafficking. As most people engaged in the sex industry are now migrants, the policies and practices of regulating sex work and trafficking are shaped by immigration policies and migration politics. Relying on large scale three-country ethnographic, interview and social media data - which includes 210 interviews with migrant sex workers, policy-makers, police forces and activists in the Nordic region where the "end demand" approach originates - my work contributes to research and policy debates by producing the first evidence-based account on the impact of the approach on migrant sex workers as well as an analysis of its global appeal. Drawing on theories on new humanitarianism, precarization and intimacies, I examine how the governance of migration and sexuality intersect in this feminist-humanitarian "practice of care", the way it shapes the lives of migrant sex workers, as well as what kinds of understandings of justice this very intersection produces.
You can read a policy brief summarizing the policy-relevant findings and recommendations here and an academic summary of my findings here.
Dissertation Committee: Arlene Stein (Chair), Catherine Lee, Zaire Dinsey-Flores, Carole Vance (Columbia University)
Fieldwork: Ethnographic, interview and media data collected over the course of 35 months including 210 interviews with migrant sex workers, policy-makers, police forces and activists in Sweden, Norway, Finland
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Other research
Deported - project
The Deported project (2015-2017) funded by the Kone Foundation brought together artists, journalists, activists and researchers to raise awareness of the effects of border regimes and criminalization of migration. As the lead researcher, I coordinated an international research conference on deportations and politics of migration and advised on the other outcomes of the project (play, photojournalistic book, city event, school info package, art exhibition). More information about the project you can find here and Katja Tähjä's photographs related to the project here.
Article "The discipline of hope: abolishing the prison of immobility in post-deportation narratives" based on the photojournalistic material was published as an open access article at the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies in 2023.
Thai Massage Parlor Workers’ Access to Public Health Services and Language Training
Pro Centre (2010), Finland.
Dishonorable Daughters of the Nation? –The Meaning of Race and Nation in White Finnish Women’s Interracial and Interethnic Relationships
MSSC thesis (2010), University of Helsinki.
Postcolonial Theory at the Age of Globalization
BA thesis (2010), University of Helsinki.
The Deported project (2015-2017) funded by the Kone Foundation brought together artists, journalists, activists and researchers to raise awareness of the effects of border regimes and criminalization of migration. As the lead researcher, I coordinated an international research conference on deportations and politics of migration and advised on the other outcomes of the project (play, photojournalistic book, city event, school info package, art exhibition). More information about the project you can find here and Katja Tähjä's photographs related to the project here.
Article "The discipline of hope: abolishing the prison of immobility in post-deportation narratives" based on the photojournalistic material was published as an open access article at the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies in 2023.
Thai Massage Parlor Workers’ Access to Public Health Services and Language Training
Pro Centre (2010), Finland.
Dishonorable Daughters of the Nation? –The Meaning of Race and Nation in White Finnish Women’s Interracial and Interethnic Relationships
MSSC thesis (2010), University of Helsinki.
Postcolonial Theory at the Age of Globalization
BA thesis (2010), University of Helsinki.