Camilleri, Jonathan; (2025) Choices, Boundaries, and Ideological Divides: A Study of Sex Work in Malta. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

In this thesis, I examine how sex workers and non-sex-working stakeholders in Malta interpret and navigate decision-making in the context of sex work. Positioned within wider debates about agency, victimhood, and the legal and moral dimensions of sex work, I ask how decisions to engage in sex work are experienced or framed through shifting configurations of agency, constraint, and coercion, shaped by intersecting structural, social, and personal conditions. I explore how these framings inform contested understandings of sex workers’ agency, vulnerability, and place within public and policy discourse. Malta provides a setting where global debates about sex work unfold within a distinctive legal, cultural, and socio-political environment. Drawing on interviews with 17 sex workers and 35 other professional stakeholders, I identify patterns in how sex work is problematised, justified, or normalised. Stakeholders engaged with narratives of trauma, substance use, and third-party involvement in varied and sometimes conflicting ways, often framing sex workers as coerced or exploited – narratives that implicitly underpin criminalising approaches – depending on ideological commitments and perceived roles vis-à-vis sex workers. Sex workers, in turn, described navigating financial precarity, stigma, and legal ambiguity while attempting to maintain control over their work and relationships within structurally constrained environments. I draw on the concept of ‘satisficing’ to interpret how decisions are made when choices are limited, information incomplete, and outcomes uncertain – characteristic of human behaviour generally rather than unique to sex work. This framework challenges binary framings of full agency versus coercion and questions the assumption that sex workers’ decisions must align with idealised rational models to be viewed as legitimate. Instead, it foregrounds how constrained and often mundane forms of decision-making shape both experience and perception, supporting policy approaches that move beyond punitive framings and are pragmatic, evidence-informed, and responsive to the realities of lived experience.

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