Contested identity, contested struggle : A critical discourse analysis on victim-agent narratives regarding commercial sex in Thailand

Abstract: This thesis examines how efforts regarding the commercial sex industry in Thailand can be positioned in relation to an agent-victim framework. In the context of the expanding sex industry in Thailand, it becomes relevant to look at how efforts regarding it risks reproducing notions of ‘the prostitute’ as the victimised Other, and thus reinforcing neo-colonialism. However, the response in the form of an agent narrative has also been criticised for not taking into account intersecting forms of oppression. Here, a model coming from an emerging literature on the ‘third way feminist approach’ is used to illustrate how these instead can be combined. Using critical discourse analysis, this study draws on postcolonial feminist theory to scrutinise the ways in which non-governmental organisations imagine women as either agents or victims, or rather a combination of the two. The starting point has been that this binary definition might not be sufficient, neither for theoretically addressing the issue, nor for describing discourse. Two ideal types based on the agent-victim framework has been used to study to what extent the discursive practice of the organisations NightLight and Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers can be placed neatly into one of these ideal types, or whether a third perspective is indeed needed to account for their perception of the women they work with. The analysis has been conducted using different forms of information gathered from the official websites of the organisations, in order to understand they ways in which the organisations themselves choose to communicate their work. The results show that the discursive practices of these organisations to some extent can be accounted for using this framework, yet that in order to fully understand them, one should consider the third way which combines the strengths of both.