Australian and international literature provides strong evidence that intravenous use of psychostimulants increases the harms experienced by users, including heightening the risk of blood-borne virus (BBV) infection. The few Australian studies that include women who inject psychostimulants identify street-based sex work as the main method of income generation and highlight the harms that result from combining these practices. However, there has been little exploration into the way these practices are shaped by the environments in which they occur or the ways in which women manage these harms. This thesis aims to provide an in-depth exploration of the daily lives of women who inject psychostimulants and engage in street-based sex work in Kings Cross, Sydney. Over 18 months between 2005 and 2007, the author conducted ethnographic fieldwork with women who injected psychostimulants and engaged in street-based sex work in Kings Cross, Sydney. Data sources included observations recorded as fieldnotes and transcripts of in-depth interviews with 12 women. Thematic analysis of the data was employed with particular attention to the women???s shared narratives. Key findings of the thesis were that 1) the Kings Cross environment plays a prominent role in shaping the lives of women, their psychostimulant injecting and street-based sex work practices; 2) psychostimulant injecting reinforces the opportunistic nature of street-based sex work as the primary method of income generating for women, restricting the development of occupational norms; 3) synergies exist between the drug and sex markets in Kings Cross, increasing the harms associated with both injecting and street-based sex work practices; 4) public health messages relating to sharing of injecting equipment and condom use fail to account for contextually driven decision-making and risk prioritising; 5) women develop lay epidemiological understandings as they attempt to reconcile the public health messages with the lived reality. The value of these findings is in the insights they provide into the everyday lives of these women in Kings Cross that have not been documented previously and their potential for informing ???bottom-up??? rather than ???top down??? approaches to future policy, practice and research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/279729 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Hudson, Susan Lee, National Centre in HIV Epidemiology & Clinical Research, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. National Centre in HIV Epidemiology & Clinical Research |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Hudson Susan Lee., http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
Page generated in 0.0013 seconds