In Plain Sight: An Examination of ‘Duality’, the Simultaneous Involvement in Sex Industry Work and Square Work

This study investigates the practices of people who take extraordinary risks to manage work, information and relations, while engaging in ‘duality’ -concurrent sex industry work and square work (SIWSQ). Reasons for living dual lives (DL) include addressing financial emergencies; funding interim projects, such as university degrees; and as an indefinite strategy for financial security and social mobility. Participant experiences contribute to the constitution of the UK ‘whorearchy’, which is a system of valuation that ranks sex industry workers (SIWs) according to their ‘Britishness.’ The degree to which people adhered to this identity was a prominent sentiment due to the data collection phase occurring during the 2016 EU referendum. Participants contribute to role transition theory and the splitting of dispositions across SIWSQ. They both traverse and create the field that boarders SIWSQ. Their experiences form the ‘Continuum of SIWSQ’, which documents behaviors that comprise duality along with sole working in either industry. Their practices of sustaining duality demonstrate the complexity of managing social identities, i.e., the chameleon aspects of identity; in situ information management; and stigma-avoidance. Participants’ abilities to control discrediting information on- and offline, in seven distinct fields of interaction, depicted in the ‘Dual-life Relational Paradigm’, is indicative of the introspection, courage and skills needed to manage duality. Ultimately, this population of hidden workers are a precariat class; not only because they engage in insecure work, but also because they are denied status as workers while doing SIW but not in square work. Unlike other studies that compare SIWs with other service jobs, these participants perform and embody both. Duality is done in response to income insecurity and participants highlight the exploitation inherent in both SIWSQ. They offer new insights about blending SIWSQ, and in doing so, force us to examine work in new ways.