Exploring or Floundering in the Sex Industry? Understanding Sex Work as Job Explorations for Emerging Adult Sex Workers.

Based on in-depth interviews with 40 men involved in the Chinese sex industry, this study compared how engagement in sex work impacts, whether positively or negatively, the career development and transition to adulthood of middle-class and lower-class emerging adults. Most middle-class sex workers h...

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Published in:Archives of Sexual Behavior Vol. 54; no. 2; pp. 519 - 535
Main Author: Tang, Chaoting
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Feb2025
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: Exploring or Floundering in the Sex Industry? Understanding Sex Work as Job Explorations for Emerging Adult Sex Workers.
      aug:
        au: Tang, Chaoting
        affil: https://ror.org/0190ak572 Department of Sociology, New York University, 383 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor, 10003, New York, NY, USA
      su:
        China
        Sex work
        Young adults
        Sex workers
        Career development
        Sex industry
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          Sex work
          Young adults
          Sex workers
          Career development
          Sex industry
          China
          Professional and Management Development Training
          Vocational Rehabilitation Services
          All other miscellaneous store retailers (except beer and wine-making supplies stores)
      keyword:
        Emerging adulthood
        Inequalities
        Male sex worker
        Emerging adulthood
        Inequalities
        Male sex worker
      ab: Based on in-depth interviews with 40 men involved in the Chinese sex industry, this study compared how engagement in sex work impacts, whether positively or negatively, the career development and transition to adulthood of middle-class and lower-class emerging adults. Most middle-class sex workers had concrete career goals outside of the sex industry and were on track to achieve those goals using their educational credentials and social and cultural capital. In contrast, most lower-class male sex workers relied on the lucrative nature of sex work to accumulate capital for their long-term goals, such as starting small businesses. Lower-class sex workers without career goals often spent their income on addictive habits, such as video games, and their engagement in sex work was not conducive to their long-term career development. Extending the literature on emerging adulthood to the context of sex work, I argue that for emerging adults who engage in sex work consciously with career goals, sex work could be viewed as a form of job exploration, while for those who engage in sex work without clear career goals, their engagement could be better described as floundering.
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      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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