Precarious Empowerment

Pilar Ortiz is a sociologist, writer, and media artist. She is a recent graduate of The Graduate Center at the City University of New York; her research examines socio-spatial inequalities and the role of class, race, and gender in the exchanges that take place in public life. She is a postdoctoral researcher at Instituto Milenio VioDemos and Universidad Alberto Hurtado, where she studies the structural violence that migrant women face in various cities and borders across Chile.

"Pilar Ortiz’s brilliant and insightful ethnography of Santiago’s “cafés con piernas” situates them as a transnational space where we can see the intersection of immigration, work, globalization, and sexuality. Rather than treating women as victims of their marginality, Ortiz illustrates the complex relationship between agency and exploitation. It's a must-read book for scholars interested in work, labor, transnationalism, and neoliberalism." Carolina Bank Muñoz, Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Building Power from Below: Chilean Workers Take On Walmart and Transnational Tortillas: Race, Gender and Shop Floor Politics in Mexico and the United States."Writing with elegance and an eye for detail, Ortiz provides a fascinating account of the intricacies of Chile's geography of sex work. It is sophisticated, yet teachable. Her interlocutors appear as full subjects readers will care about and the analysis is sharp."Gregory Mitchell, Chair and Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Williams College. He is the author of Panics Without Borders: How Global Sporting Events Drive Myths about Sex Trafficking. "Precarious Empowerment is much more than an ethnography of erotic businesses that masquerade as coffee shops in Chile. The author contextualizes these workplaces within the country's political economy and shows that sexual labor in these shops, while stigmatized and criminalized, can be superior to other jobs available to poor women, affording them greater autonomy at work and enhancing both their income and self-esteem. A 'must read' for anyone interested in sex work in the Global South."Ronald Weitzer, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, George Washington University, and editor of Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and Erotic Dancing.

• 1. Coffee and Sex: The Invisibilization of Sexual Labor 2. Sexual Labor in a Neoliberal Context 3. Mothers and Whores: Norms About Gender and Sexuality 4. Racialized Bodies and Sexualities in ‘Tinted Cafes’ 5. Working With the Body and Emotions Conclusion. Unfulfilled Demands for Recognition Appendix I. On Embodied Ethnography and Politics of Representation