Futures

The IRW hosts feminist researchers from around the world as Visiting Scholars, enabling them to pursue their own research and writing in a supportive environment while accessing Rutgers’ unique feminist resources. Visiting Scholars participate in the IRW seminar, present public lectures and speak in classes throughout the university.

Niina Vuolajarvi

"Sex Work, Migration and the Feminist Politics of Care"

niina smallpictureI aim to explore the notion of care and its potential in imagining feminist futures. To do that I build on recent insights in feminist theorizations of care and precarization, abolitionist thinking, and transformative justice. This theoretical work stems from my ethnographic book project "Sex Work, Migration and the Feminist Politics of Care" that highlights the impact of migration, populism and precarization on the politics of sexuality. In the book, I examine a feminist-inspired anti-trafficking policy that has taken center stage in political debates around sex work in recent years. The book draws on my three-country ethnographic dissertation research among migrant sex workers, the police, and policy-makers in the Nordic region, where the policy approach originates, including 210 interviews and policy document and media analysis.

Niina Vuolajarvi has a Ph.D. in Sociology from Rutgers University. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, The New School of Social Research and has an appointment as Assistant Professor in International Migration at The London School of Economics