Visiting Bye-Fellow Rashalee Mitchell presents her research

Rashalee Mitchell, the 2024/25 Margaret Anstee Visiting Bye‑Fellow at Newnham College, is from the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus, where she is an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work. In addition to her teaching duties, Ms Mitchell is completing her PhD at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), UWI Mona.

On 10 June 2025 she delivered a public lecture at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, entitled Social Protection for Femal Sex Workers in Jamaica: Implications for Social Policy and Development.

Research focus

Ms Mitchell’s scholarship examines the lived experiences and the working realities of female sex workers in Jamaica and the layered vulnerabilities that accompany this occupation. Her fieldwork documents heightened exposure to gender‑based violence, sexual and financial exploitation, harassment and abuse, as well as elevated risks of sexually transmitted infections and substance misuse. A central aim of her research is to identify how social‑protection policies can be widened and strengthened to offer meaningful support and safeguards to these women.

Sex work is criminalised under Jamaican law, a status that deepens the marginalisation of those who rely on it for income. Ms Mitchell tracks how intersecting hierarchies of race, gender, class and informality compound exploitation, noting that female sex workers often occupy multiple disadvantaged categories simultaneously. She argues that the Jamaican state nonetheless bears a clear obligation - consistent with its commitments to labour standards, gender equality, human rights and inclusive development - to extend protection to this key population.

Historical framing

At Ms Mitchell’s lecture at Newnham College, she placed today’s policy debate in its historical context, she revisited women’s multiple roles during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Drawing on several works by Hilary Beckles, including Social and Political Control in the Slave Society (2003), she shows that enslaved African‑Caribbean women were prized chiefly for their reproductive capacity, even while their labour underpinned plantation economies. This combination of economic indispensability and social denigration, she argues, laid the foundations for contemporary stigma around sex work. Prostitution was effectively institutionalised during slavery, and patriarchal legacies continue to devalue women’s work, especially forms of labour that remain illegal and informal, and thus rarely addressed through comprehensive legislative protection.

Challenging criminalisation

Ms Mitchell calls for a fundamental re‑evaluation of Jamaica’s legal approach. In line with the International Labour Organisation’s Decent Work Agenda, she contends that sex work should be recognised as legitimate labour, entitled to the same workplace rights and protections as any other occupation. Her research includes a comparative analysis of regulatory regimes in jurisdictions that have moved towards decriminalisation, legalisation or other hybrid models. She supplements this literature review with primary data gathered from social‑policy and legal experts, civil‑society advocates, faith‑based organisations and, most importantly, female sex workers themselves. Highlighting these first-hand perspectives is, she insists, critical to understanding the multifaceted and multi-layered realities of sex work and designing policies that respond to workers’ actual needs.

The “citizenship veil”

To capture the sense of social exclusion articulated by her interviewees, Ms Mitchell introduces the concept of the “citizenship veil”, adapted from W. E. B. Du Bois’ notion of the veil. The term describes the perception - shared by many sex workers - that they are second‑class citizens, barred from full participation in Jamaican society because of the criminal status of their occupation. Internalised stigma, shame and low self‑worth are common, and discrimination may come from family members, clients, police and the wider public. Workers often conceal their profession to avoid humiliation, even as it remains a primary source of household income.

Towards a new policy framework

While acknowledging the exploitative dimensions of global sex markets, Ms Mitchell cautions against an overly essentialist reading of sex work in Jamaica. Her interviews reveal that many women experience the trade as both constraining and empowering: it exposes them to risk, yet also provides vital economic agency. Meaningful reform, she argues, will require learning selectively from international models while grounding solutions in rigorous local research and social dialogue with those most affected and other stakeholders.

Ms Mitchell concludes that Jamaica needs to create a more inclusive social‑policy framework - rooted in its particular history, culture and intersecting inequalities - to uphold the dignity, rights and safety of female sex workers. Only by embracing a rights‑based approach and extending comprehensive social protection can the country move towards truly inclusive development.

Video clips of Rashalee Mitchell's lecture on Social Protection for Female Sex Workers in Jamaica.

Photo: Dr Mezna Qato (Director, Margaret Anstee Centre) and Ms Rashalee Mitchell (Margaret Anstee Visiting Bye‑Fellow).