Tijuana’s Zona Norte
Border Experiences of Sex Workers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46661/relies.12663Keywords:
Sex work, Border, circular mobility, intersectionality, TijuanaAbstract
This article examines Tijuana’s Zona Norte as a border enclave where global dynamics, local regulations, and the subjective experiences of migrant sex workers converge. Drawing on a qualitative methodology that included 20 structured interviews, 2 in-depth interviews, and an exploratory ethnography conducted between 2021 and 2024, the study reconstructs trajectories that highlight circular mobility, bodily hierarchies, and strategies of agency within this market. The testimonies of Esmeralda and Rubí reveal how youth, corporeality, and social networks operate as initial capital, while competition, sanitary regulation, and business architecture reproduce intersectional inequalities. The findings suggest that the Zona Norte should not be understood merely as a red-light district, but as an urban laboratory of globalization where precarity and agency, desire and violence, exclusion and circulation are deeply intertwined.
Key words: sex work; border; circular mobility; intersectionality; Tijuana.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Alberto Hernández Hernández, Diana Monserrat González Lozano
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