At Your Own Risk 2012
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At Your Own Risk: Narratives of Zimbabwean Migrant Sex Workers in Hillbrow and Discourses of Vulnerability, Agency, and Power For her MA in Forced Migration, Greta Schuler explored self-representations of crossborder-migrant, female sex workers in Johannesburg, employing creative writing as a methodology to generate narratives. Ms. Schuler’s study was the first academic research employing storytelling as a methodology with migrant sex workers in South Africa. Over the course of three months, she conducted creative writing workshops with five female Zimbabwean sex workers in Hillbrow; the women generated stories that became the basis for one-on-one interviews. Contrary to assumptions that all sex workers are forced into the industry or foreign sex workers trafficked into the country, the participants in this study spoke of active choices in their lives. Ms. Schuler is continuing this research for a creative nonfiction book, Tricky Business. Follow her on Twitter @gretajschuler for updates on this work.
1. An example of a workshop participant’s narrative writing.