CosmopolitanCare · On the frontiers of public health. Care for refugee sex workers in Paris as a case of internationalization of cities.

The “refugee crisis” is turning cities into controversial arenas of the internationalization of public health. Local governments, unprepared to deal with the situations of poverty and exclusion experienced by refugees and migrants, call for coordination with humanitarian professionals. The research project aims to understand the ways in which the health problems of a growing and extremely marginalized urban population, that of migrant and refugee sex workers, are addressed. Research lies at the intersection of two theoretical debates that are mainly based on ethnographic and historical approaches. A first body of literature is only recently trying to overcome the dominant anti-trafficking discourse where care for sex workers has been confined. A second body of literature sees cities as the most convenient contexts to investigate controversies of global health – especially humanitarian care - in dealing with vulnerable and marginalized populations. Based on the combination of two inquiry methods - ethnography of outreach work and participatory action research – ""CosmopolitanCare"" aims to investigate the ways in which new forms of coordination among sex workers, humanitarian professionals and civil society affect migrant and refugee sex workers’ experiences of public health in the context of moral and political tensions emerging around both the issues of migration and prostitution in Europe. Main objectives are: (a) to generate a frontier perspective on cities, health and migration