The presence and absence of sex workers' mothering

A number of studies demonstrate that some migrants sell sexual services as a survival strategy that allows them to provide for their children and for the family they have left behind. The entanglement of familial intimate relationships and the organisation of female sex work have been largely neglected in the literature on sex for sale. This chapter therefore examines how female migrants selling sexual services organise their mothering and the various ways in which their identities as single mothers, migrants, and sex workers intersect. Drawing on the literature of transnational motherhood, the aim is to analyse how mothering is conditioned by the Danish prostitution and migration regimes, by the organisation of sex work, and by a variety of technologies. The chapter demonstrates how different constellations of absence and presence and of the virtual and the physical make the single motherhood of migrant sex workers rather complex.