ILPC 2027

In this paper I will discuss corporeal entrepreneurialism in the context of commercial sex and neoliberal agency at the US-Mexico border. I want to situate the sex trade in a larger neoliberal context of economic need, mobility, and commercialization. The paper addresses how bodily entrepreneurialism can function as a gateway to upward social mobility and how erotic capital can level existing social and economic inequalities and thus act as a catalyst to exit marginalized communities.

I draw on Wacquant’s work on corporeal entrepreneurs and also on the notion of bodily capital that he has developed therein. When using the concept of bodily capital in the context of sex work, it makes sense to further specify the kind of bodily capital which constitutes the primary currency in the sex trade. Therefore, I will integrate Isaiah Green’s definition of erotic capital, illustrate how women make use of their bodies to enhance their erotic capital, and explain what their strategies and perceptions are. Inspired by Alexander Edmonds’ work on beauty and race in Brazil, I will elaborate how corporeal entrepreneurs strategically use their bodily and erotic capital in order to counteract their socio-economic marginalization and challenge traditional hierarchies.

Tijuana’s sex workers have incorporated managerial techniques of self-examination, self-inspection and self-management into dealings with their own bodies which are targeted at maintaining their bodies productive and competitive for the market. As part of a professional practice, sex workers calculate the value of their own bodies in a market, which depends on a mixture of global economics, beauty value, age, race and geographical location. They have developed a set of strategies to enhance the value of their bodies and a commercial language to talk about them. Such practices of self-governance are an expression of women’s subjugation of their bodies to their will, which effectively means a strategic and time-limited colonization of their bodies.

We can see this phenomenon emerging in different contexts of poverty and exclusion, where individuals find that their bodies have become a last resort for enhancing their options and a means to catapulting themselves to a higher social status. Corporeal entrepreneurism is also a form of agency and subject-formation. Women consider themselves as businesswomen, selling their bodily services as a commodity. By subjugating their own bodies, and engaging in practices of self-governance at the same time, they advance their lives, creating a future for themselves and their dependents. Corporeal entrepreneurialism is both necessary premise and response to the market, and self-governance and the colonization of one’s body are effects of market dynamics.

Despite being successful corporeal entrepreneurs, however, sex workers have not yet gained social recognition as speaking subjects. Tijuana’s sex workers are still without a public voice and representational power. The exchange of commercial sex at the US-Mexican border is founded on gendered, sexualized and racialised inequalities which persist in late capitalism, alongside the self-empowerment of corporeal entrepreneurs. Following a dream of social advancement, disadvantaged and marginalized subjects become agents as corporeal entrepreneurs, unable to escape the global politics of neoliberalism.