The EU referendum

On 23 June 2016 a referendum was held allowing the UK public to advise on leaving the EU, known as the Brexit vote. It may seem odd that Brexit features in a study of the most hidden populations of off-street sex workers. Brexit was a prominent theme in the research due to the timing of the data collection phase in the UK between 2016 and late 2017. Sex workers are not considered when assessing the potential risks and benefits of geo-political decisions such as leaving the EU yet what occurs in the political economy affects all workers whether their contributions are recognised as part of formal marketplaces or not. Contributors discussed how Brexit would affect their work. They talked about race, or more accurately, culture and citizenship as phenomena that influenced their earning potential and the way they marketed themselves. Some contributors worked in the EU and shared a sense of uncertainty about how that would continue. Juno, for example, worried about her tax status:

Brexit has been characterised as a protest vote in response to years of Conservative government austerity measures that most profoundly affected working class families residing in the North of England (Seidler, 2018). European and non-European immigrants were portrayed by some in the right-wing media as a threat to Britishness. It was reported that some working class people felt that due to globalisation, London, as the seat of Britain's political elite, was no longer part of, or working in the interests of, ‘their country’.