Managing intimacy How sex workers negotiate boundaries on webcam platforms

This study examines how online sex workers engage in boundary management in platformized work environments. It does so through the lens of webcam sex platforms, using data derived from 21 qualitative interviews with Dutch online sex workers. Based on our analysis, we argue that three interrelated processes characterize the relation between platformization and sex workers’ boundary management. (1) Platformization creates a radical blurring of sex workers’ boundaries between public and private selves and commodified and non-commodified intimacy. (2) Performers respond to this blurring and its emotive challenges through boundary management in order to negotiate intimacy between their working and private lives. (3) However, platformization undermines these efforts: increased, dynamic competition limits the degrees of freedom sex workers experience in setting symbolic boundaries.